Our first motorcycle/estate auction was a huge success. Saturday May 8th, was a perfect central Oregon day. The Bidders started to show up at 8am, and spent a couple hours previewing the collection. When the bidding got underway the bid cards were flying in the air. We ended up selling over 30 motorcycles and over 300 lots of tools, equipment and vintage parts. Keep checking back for news on our upcoming auction later this summer.
Planting something new
I’ve always planted a backyard garden, its so easy to grow your own food here in the PNW . The weather conditions are perfect for growing your favorite vegetables. This year I planted potatoes, carrots, cucumbers, beans, peas, tomatoes and beets. Plus a bunch of my favorite herbs.
One of my old friends started a small batch microbrew a couple of years ago, so I thought I would try my hand at growing hops for his latest brew. Almost all hops used in beer production are grown in either western or central Washington.
I choose the Cascade and Nugget variety. I ordered them online from a local grower, and planted them in some of my best soil. It took awhile but in a short time they had grow to a height of fifteen feet in a matter of months, and in the last 30 days my first hops have appeared.
Looking forward to see how they’ll taste when they’re added to the new brew.
Cascade Hops
Fourth of July
The holiday gods blessed Oregon with perfect weather for the 4th of July weekend. I decided to get out to town for few hours, and headed east for the open roads of central Oregon. I was surprised with the amount traffic, I guess everyone felt like getting out of town too.
This time I took hwy 26, which takes you around the base of Mt. Hood. While the sun was out, the mountain air was cool and crisp, but as I drop elevation and headed closer to central Oregon it started warming up. While, it would have been nice to be enjoying a big celebration like in years past, getting out alone on the open road is a great way to celebrate too.
Ride around Mt. Hood was a shot of the mountain looking to the north.
Social distancing shadow.
Getting out
The dry weather has arrived in Portland just days after the summer solstice, hopefully our rainy June will be replaced with sunny days in July.
I did manage to squeeze one bike ride at the beginning of the month, I headed out of Portland in search of nicer weather in central Oregon. I was optimistic, so I headed east and managed to out run the rain. My luck held out the whole day until I was ready to cross back into Oregon at the Bridge of Gods. I got caught in one of the biggest, wettest rainstorm I’ve ever been in.
I got soaked! It was raining so hard the cars were pulling off the highway. I pressed on for the next thirty miles and was almost dried out when about ten blocks from my house, the Oregon weather gods emptied their clouds on me again.
I’m hoping to get out of town for another trip after the fourth of July, wish me luck!
Garden Life
This spring I decided to convert my backyard into a garden area. When I was a kid, we always had a huge garden. So instead of more shrubs I planted sunflowers, pumpkins, cucumbers, watermelons, tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, onion and garlic. All the things I like to eat and cook with. Its amazing how good food taste fresh out of the garden. This week the tomatoes are ripening and cooking with fresh garlic is a real treat too.
Dry Falls
I finally got a chance to hop on my motorcycle for a quick trip. I have missed riding my Kawasaki. But this weekend we were reunited again. I did a quick service and grabbed my backpack for a run up to Dry Falls, Washington which is about five hour northeast of Portland. Dry Falls is located in the Channeled Scablands of eastern Washington. The falls were created by the massive floods that engulfed eastern Washington during the last ice age. It an impressive site, and the amount of water that rolled over the area is estimated to be all the rivers in the world combined and multiplied by 10!
Dry Falls
Up through the canyon, 12,500 years ago I would be at bottom of the river, with 300 feet of water above the top of the canyon.
Selfie!
Time to wait.
Time has a way of making you forget how much work it took to take a photograph with a traditional film camera. A couple months ago I dug out my old 35mm cameras out of the storage closet.
I was surprised after I had done some basic maintenance they both still worked. Well, at least the shutters still functioned. So I ordered a couple new batteries a roll of black and white and color film.
My oldest camera I received as gift from my parents when I graduated from High School in 1980, and the other one when I got out of college. I discovered Blue Moon Camera, here in Portland they specialize in vintage cameras and developing. I unloaded the film, drove to the store, dropped it off and waited. It took a week to get my negative back, and to too my surprise out of the all pictures I took there were a half a dozen good ones. It was worth the wait.
