Portland Oregon

Portland is a great city. Great in the way that almost everyone you meet has been drawn here from all other big cities in the states for the ‘lifestyle’. It is uncertain what that lifestyle is but there is evidence about what it is not. Portland seems to be lacking an air of conspicuous industriousness. In the thick of downtown there is absolutely no one rushing about with a corporate agenda. In fact the thing you notice is people perched outside on ledges, in parks on sidewalks reading paperbacks. It is uncertain whether these too are homeless (a huge very prevalent homeless population with their strollers of plastic bags and bottles) or whether they are just your average residents with nothing better to do on these beautiful (although we are told very rare) sunny days.
Although the economic downturn has supposedly really affected this city, especially its population of young people, there are not the visible empty retail spots that you see in other cities. I was shocked to see the young age of the people lined up outside a church food bank. This is paradoxically more evidence of the great lifestyle draw – it lures in inordinate number of young unemployed people who are only too willing to talk
about how they came here bravely without a job to ‘escape’ the pressures of New York, LA, Texas – you name it. The whole thing intrigues me and I have explored the topic with anyone who wants to talk, and there are many of them, which I also find fascinating. People simply want to talk. Unusually friendly.
It is also hard to find a poor spot to eat. The food so far (although one tiny questionable Indian restaurant that may be responsible for my 3 day stomach flu) has been so tasty: innovative, loyal to the attempts to be local, and wonderful white wines and locally brewed beers. In fact the one restaurant that we were compelled to leave was only because their wine list had no Oregon wines on the menu and being our last night I wanted one final glass of the wonderful white wines. Elk cove makes a beautiful Pinot Gris. I had to try and justify my palate to this particular restaurant and exclaim how I don’t like European wines I only like Oregon. (I failed to mention Okanagon as I knew this would go way over their heads.)
Shopping is very exciting here especially for someone like me. They have the most amazing book store, supposedly the largest in the States, where they mix up all of the new and used. It enabled me to whirl in – just visit the A and B sections - and wind up with almost 20 novels from Alice Adams and Anita Brookner – all unread by me before. How wonderful is that? The whole spotting and shopping experience took 5 minutes. I can’t even begin to gush about the plethora of vintage clothing stores – all museum quality with wonderful nic nacs strewn about. I purchased a beautiful black velvet chapeau with a huge ostrich feather from the early 1900’s, sooo beautiful. At the same time a very unusual green glass egg from 1920’s Prague whose inside is outfitted to serve some weird liquers (perhaps Absinthe?) The colour of the glass is unimaginably beautiful. Joop is prancing around in a 70’s Spanish leather coat for the unbeatable price of $30. I am still torn about this antique german doll with a kid body in perfect condition.
Then there are the leather purchases – the size and weight of which necessitated another suitcase purchase.
The leather shop was found in the old area of downtown – supposedly China town although we only found signs of a large gate – nothing else. There was the most peculiar odour in that region of town – quite horrific – and one we have occasioned upon in different areas since. It seems like a foul, concentrated urine smell. Maybe because of the huge homeless population? It is a weird problem. I haven’t noticed it in other large cities before.
Although it is entertaining enough to just remain downtown we have forced ourselves on other excursions – namely to the infamous coast. Enroute we drove through the most beautiful pastoral loveliness. Who knew Oregon was so agrarian? Just to the north west of Portland on the way to Cannon Beach is just lovely undulating pastured and treed hills. As you get more in towards the coast it becomes more heavily treed and all of the farms seem to be financially struggling, not quite as lovely.
I liked the coast but failed to see its huge draw. True it is nothing but expanses of sand and waves and wind, but you would have to be beyond brave or insane to venture in, particularly this time of year (there were a few), and there is nothing to find. Absolutely no beach combing, nothing visible from the outside of the ocean ( ie no spots for little sea creatures to collect and be seen), no boating. Just waves and wind buffeting you around as you walk endlessly. Perhaps good for the psyche as there were many doing this very activity. Despite the walkers there is a huge sense of loneliness where all you hear is waves, the lonely stacatto sound of sand being pelleted against empty crab shells and very rarely a seagull.
The coastal town of Newport does have a bay and a harbour populated with very loud sea lions and a lot of hopeful fishing boats. Once again you are forced to question – does anyone still catch anything? The whole ocean fishing thing is very regional and questionable. It is hard to get a sense if a particular area is suffering.
Driving back from the coast and in areas along the coast you pass through many farming areas interspersed with forested and clear cut areas. Clear cuts are random and aggressive looking and it makes you wonder if Oregon is the clearcut capital of the States. In amongst that ecological horror there is also pernicious sight of that invasive yellow broom type plant. Its flowers are the most beautiful yellow but once you know its stealthy quest to subsume all other flora you are unable to look at it. It is like a bright yellow blight. So there are periods of driving when you can’t almost look outside the car for fear of being confronted with ecological nightmares and even smell nightmares. For some reason certain areas are ripe with the smell of manure and this can go on for miles. All in all the countryside must be navigated carefully to try and avoid despair. That makes it sound awful because the truth is that pastoral loveliness abounds as well. It is just that juxtaposition that keeps you on your toes and nips in some fantasies of moving to Oregon and living on a farm.
This is our last morning here, Joop has gone off in pursuit of his lost camera. Let us pray that he finds it. It is unlikely after the Amsterdam loss that he should be lucky enough the have it returned to him by a miraculous path again.
In the couple of hours remaining I have to decide which illustrious purchases I will allow myself. I am committed to the crystal ball purchase but the rest I am still undecided. Our dollar has climbed enough to justify more than less.

The Unbearable Sadness of Leaving

It is so sad to be leaving - tonight at midnight - so today we will try and keep the day as routine as possible in order to not have the feeling of hawaii end too prematurely. The feeling of hawaii is a gradual encroachment, so gradual you don't even see it happening until you think back to what awaits at home - mostly just responsibility - and then you realize that you have been operating in days where the most taxing responsibility has been making sandwiches for lunch and when to leave the house for starbucks and the beach. And the biggest worry is always the quality of the water - how big are the waves, is the water clear? I think for the true health benefits to be had one should stay in this mode for a month, maybe to tempt fate - long enough so that the routine is boring. Wouldn't that be great? I wonder how long it would take before I found snorkeling boring? Each day is so new and exciting.
Yesterday we were guests of Harmen and Donna at the beach at Mauna Kea. Normally there is public access but it is very sparse and hard to come by unless you are there at 9am. The water was great for snorkeling which was such a relief because all week the ocean has be tumultuous and it is sometimes too wild to go out and because of all the tumult definitely too cloudy. But yesterday in the good conditions I managed to see an octopus. It was very darling and terrified. It crouched in a rock crevice looking so frightened every time we dove down to see him. You could just feel the intelligence radiating from his dear little body. In fact if I had to grade them you could sense they were more intelligent then our beloved sea turtles.
We were unable to fulfill my goal of snorkeling at captain cook. The day we tried the waves were so ferocious that the intrepid (or stupid) people that had gone out were having a very difficult time disembarking their kayaks. We witnessed one double kayak that sidled up to the cement pier and just when the helpful guys leaned down to give them a hand up the 3 foot cement drop to the ocean, a giant wave came and the one being lifted was flailing in the air getting knocked on the cement and the other poor sucker was almost tossed out of the kayak. Even in the world's most perfect conditions that disembarking is too difficult for me, I can't hoist myself up in a wobbly kayak with nothing to hold on to and somehow manage to leap to the pier. Last time one of the helpful guys leapt into the kayak and paddled me around to a beach. That beach was under too much wave action to even dare approach it on the day we contemplated a trip. My only consolation was that I was able to buy much beautiful Hawaiian fabric at a store coming home from Captain Cook. Now I need a new suitcase.
We managed to rouse ourselves for the botanical gardens and we took many beautiful shots of the exotic flora. The only consolation of the rough oceans has been the boogie boarding has been good for the boys. On the day of the picture I wasn't even able to go into the water the waves were so high. Kyr says that they were often boarding in 10 foot waves. It was terrifying to watch for the mother.
Farewell from Hawaii and pray we don't have too much difficulty getting home to snow bound BC.

Happy New Year

Hawaii has to be the fireworks capital of the world. When we were driving home after the tennis party(those tennisers really need a how to through a convivial party tip) Waimea was thickly covered in smoke so thick that we could barely see to drive, as though it was a thick fog. And it was simply the smoke from local fireworks. Our neighbors were so intense that they started their continuous fireworks by 5pm and by midnight they were so fast and furious they must have had 3 people doing nothing but lighting them. It was quite a neighborhood competition, one you realize that they take very seriously. I will declare our immediate neighbors that we can see from the lanai the winners compared to those that surrounded us simply because of the intensity of the post midnight display and the longevity. I worked out that inbetween the big huge fireworks it was important to have those little noisy ones firing the most intently in the neighborhood, and then just when you think the others have given up or their little ones are fading, you shoot a big huger into the sky. But the other neighbors surrounding are also very sly and they also have saved a big huger to try and dominate. But I would have to say that our lanai neighbors appear to be the slyest (and richest presumably) so that they ultimately had the last big fireworks. So really the most interesting part of the 5 hour fireworks display is that time after midnight when all the competitors are trying to achieve dominance. I wonder how they greet each other the next day? Do you think there is any overt acknowledgment of the winner or is it just one of those things where they carry the knowledge smugly inside them and only let it out months later at an opportune moment? In the few days leading up to New years the grocery stores sometimes have up to 8 aisles devoted only to fireworks. Not the kind of island for dogs like the Tobes.
Snorkeling and boogie boarding continue at a fast pace as we try to outrun the cloud cover that is supposed to descend tomorrow and not leave until our vacation is over. If that is the case we will still try and be intrepid and beach it in the clouds, and sometimes that is okay. It is really the water conditions that dictate the success of the expeditions and those don't seem to be linked to whether it is sunny or cloudy.

Dinner Party in Waimea

I'm quite proud of myself. I hosted a dinner party for 9 people without any staples. I guess I would have to count the salt and pepper that were in the cupboard as staples, so I guess that isn't entirely true. It is hard to design a menu where you don't invest that much in things you have to leave behind. I did have to buy olive oil and vinegar but the rest was just fresh. The meal had 2 bulbs of garlic, 4 bagettes, fresh thyme, 10 lemons, 3limes, Kyr was juicing all day. Not entirely true, we did manage to beach it as well. The menu was sourdough crostini, scampi with margaritas. Followed by marinated beef, baguettes, rice-blackbeans-corn salad, greek potatoes, greek salad and caesar salad plus the au jus from the beef. It was delicious. Harmen's family seemed to enjoy it and they came fully insulated against the Waimea cold by wearing their Vancouver outfits.
We have spent almost all of our time snorkeling. The last 2 days have been spent at Hapuna which has been lauded as the best beach in the state. It is a lovely expanse of sand and we were treated to the humpbacks leaping wildly out of the water in their entirety - probably some kind of mating display. All of the people at the beach were in awe. We have found some spectacular snorkeling just south of the beach - 3 rocky inlets and miles of uninterrupted coral. Unfortunately Jacques' camera has developed a leak, much to everyone's disappointment and Jacques' despair. But we still soldier on even without the plethora of documentation. Jacques can still take about 9 pictures per outing so it is almost like going back to the days of film where you had to be very selective with your photography. I'll remind him of Shackleton's photographer where each plate of film was a jealously guarded thing, but yet the photos are amazing. The only visible perils of snorkeling at Hapuna are the fishermen on the cliffs above. Once a fishing weight came into the water beside me, and this is before I was even aware that there were fisherman. When I shot to the surface to look around and see what was going on, the guy casting looked really smug and I had a horrified feeling that perhaps he was trying to get me. Yesterday I swam by a fish caught in the wierdest way imaginable. It was as though he had two wire pincers holding his thorax and riggled wildly in the pincers. It was such an odd set up that I wondered if he were bait for a much larger fish. With that horrifying thought I swam away rapidly. So rapidly in fact that the flutter kick I was doing has damaged both kneecaps and the pain of bone on bone is so intense that I am unable to sleep. Just to give some indication - percacet doesn't touch it. Ah the perils of snorkeling.
It is raining again and the rain has the quality of maybe being on the whole island. Hopefully that is not the case and we can go to the beach today and I will avoid the flutter kick and do my own invention of a kick that doesn't seem to hurt.

Jacques Coustea Has a Mother

Jacques Coustea has a mother. She has a very important role. She trails Jacques in his underwater odyssey ensuring his safety. It is a dangerous and taxing role. Dangerous because she must always be on the alert for Jacques’ flipper getting her in the face, and if she should ever, ever accidentally finds herself above Jacques when he is finished diving and trying to surface, well let us just say the results could be catastrophic. Taxing because often she loses track of Jacques and has to surface and frantically look for signs of his snorkel or his flippers flailing at the surface as he begins a dive then she must swim blindly and frantically towards him lest he vanish from sight quickly again.
She also has a very important role corralling and gently flushing unwieldy sea creatures towards his lens. Often while swimming happily behind him she will spot exquisite sea creatures herself like a octopus or even her favorite fish – a darling tiny little fish with polkadots that looks like someone has pressed their lips to the fish and blown it up like a tiny balloon. By the time she has surfaced and screamed for Jacques to return she has churned up the water so frantically that there is no visibility and the creature has disappeared and Jacques really wonders what she is up to. Luckily sea turtles are not offended by her antics and stay patiently there and wait for Jacques to reach them with his trusty lens.
We found our turtles at our trusted beach again. All is well. It was a hot and sunny day and the water was quite clear, except for where the turtles were living.
Joop picked a branch off the orange tree and the orange blossoms smell amazingly like gardenias. It has even been sunny in
Waimea.
We'll probably beach it again, getting up the reserves to actually tackle the planned trips. We might be having Harmen's family over tomorrow for dinner. If they come (and this is a big if) I am trying to imagine a menu whereby I won't be a slave and can still beach it. I want to get an earlier start to the day today. Once again it is hard to drag the boys from their computers.

weekend and rain

One of the islands had quite a blackout because of the rains and in Hilo some of the streets were under 5" of rain. When I talked about the rains yesterday I didn't really think that they were that significant, I just assumed all is normal in the tropics, but apparently they were significant and destructive.
Yesterday was not that exciting. Both Kyr and I felt very ill. We hauled ourselves to the bigbox shopping mecca of Kona to gape at the tourists and buy a computer key board. Joop without his computer is like a person without oxygen. The good part of staying in Waimea is that the tourists are not that visible. In Kona they are. Then I end up feeling sorry for the tourists because I think what a dreadful place they have come to and subsisting on. I sure hope they rent cars in order to see the beautiful valleys and mountains of the ranchlands. I have included a view from our lanai so that everyone can experience the pastoral wonder, albeit the chilly wonder. This area was once just one big ranch, the Parker ranch. It came into world because Captain Vancouver gave a present to one of the Hawaiian kings of some long horned cattle. The hawaiian king saw them as sacred beasts and over time without culling they became vicious marauding beasts that were pillaging the flora and fauna and goring the people. The king brought over this cattle expert Parker who was also an exceptional shot and allowed him to start killing the beasts. With his keen eye he saved some that had traits that would lend themselves to domesticity. With marriage to the king's daughter, the gift of much of the north tip of the island and that initial tiny herd Parker ranch grew to be I think one of the largest privately owned ranches in the united states at 225,000 acres.
Our illness and cloud cover precluded any beaching. In fact I lay in bed most the day and read Blink, prequel to Outliers. You have got to love that Gladwell character. Today I feel a bit better, at least I won't be on a steady diet of tylenol. I have instructed the boys to pick one activity from the book that they would like to do so that it won't just be a vacation whereby default we always end up at the same beach. Kyr wants to go to the tropical gardens we have seen before. He is very keen to photograph the flora. Joop wants to go up to the high volcano where they have an observatory. The roads up to it unfortunately are closed with snow and ice. Maybe they will perk up later in the trip. Me, I just want to go back to the captain cook memorial, despite the trial of getting in the kayaks, just because the snorkeling is so beautiful.

boxing day in waimea

Had torrential rains all night. They started while we were having dinner at Harmen's and Donna's. The food was great and the company very entertaining. It is interesting to know people that live on the island because you become exposed to things that you normally wouldn't consider. Some aspects of living are so costly that you wonder how anyone could afford it. Harmen's electrical bill is $1500 a month. That does not include airconditioning which they don't use anyway. That is just lights and the pool. And apparently their municipal water charges are increasing by 50% this year. Perhaps they are being gouged for the water because they live in a palatial home in a very exclusive gated community. Those residual costs are too much for ordinary mortals.
My bouquet was a huge success. The bouquet looked very grand in the centre of the great room. On the way there we realized we had a little passenger in the car that must have come in on my bouquet. It was a dear little gecko that proceeded to leap with great skill and agility around the car. I felt vindicated because Joop had spent a portion of the previous day googling geckos, being quite sure that my initial blog post was an exaggeration. Kyr and I were quizzed as to what time of day we were actually seeing and hearing these beasts.
We snorkeled yesterday and Kyr made some great films of snorkeling. Whenever I'm feeling lonely for Hawaii I'll watch these videos because he has captured the experience so perfectly. It was our original favorite beach where we used to see lots of sea turtles. There were no visible turtles yesterday and it made the ocean feel empty.
Probably another beach day. We might go to Kona so that Joop can buy a computer key board. I was a bit premature in congratulating him yesterday. Apparently the miraculous liquid he used caused the entire key board to seize up.