Seattle

Nate had work-related meetings in Seattle for a couple of days early this week, so we decided to extend the travel into a long-weekend trip and drove up on Saturday. Nate's advisor Lorenzo and his wife Meta and son Luca also made a weekend of it; having lived in Seattle for 5 year, they were great tour guides. We even lucked into a few rain-free days! Seattle is a city of neighborhoods, nestled among hills and lakes. Upon arrival, we drove straight to the Fremont neighborhood and got a great lunch at a fun vegetarian restaurant, then walked around to visit some of the famous Fremont street art. We took in the sites at the Pike Street Market, went on the Seattle Underground tour and had a great meal at Wild Ginger, a well-regarded Asian restaurant in the downtown area. On Sunday morning, we were the lone tourists at the Space Needle/Seattle Worlds Fair grounds. We also took in some beautiful views of the Olympic Peninsula from high up on Queen Anne hill and of snow-capped Mt. Ranier from the UW campus. And we ate some delicious food- sushi, asian bbq, Pagliacci's pizza and french pastry were some of the highlights!

Flyfishing in the rain

Despite the continual rain, Nate and I decided to try and flyfish for steelhead on the Alsea River on Sunday, mostly just to get out and practice technique. After reading over the thick OR fishing regulations to make sure we found a legal stretch of water to fish, we headed out. I fished just upriver of Nate and we enjoyed our time in the mist; we even spotted a few coho salmon jumping in nearby rapids. No bites, but that was no surprise, considering that skilled fisherman (and women) can spend hours and hours on a river before catching one. Nate subsequently learned that many folks around here tend to use spinning rods for winter run steelhead because of the speed of the water.

Last night, we headed to the Mid-Willamette Fly Fishers group to meet some local flyfishers and learn more about west-coast fly fishing. It was an entertaining evening, mostly because of one old guy named Dick Turner, easily in his early 80s. Every time someone paused during the reading of the chapter business and announcements, Dick would pipe up with a comment, always completely unrelated to the business at hand. For example, a woman from the OR Council of the Fly Fisher Federation got up to talk about the group and her work. When she was finished, she asked if there were any questions. Dick raised his hand, and then proceeded to talk for a long while about a favorite Chinook hole that no one seems to fish any more. Another time, he told the group about a bunch of high school kids he once took out to the coast to plant trees (?). At one point, he started telling me all about the chickens he used to raise, until feed got too expensive. What a character! The folks in the group seemed to tolerate his random interjections just fine, and it’s probably a nice thing that he has an outlet for his stories. We also got some hands-on instruction about tying a few steelhead flies: The Undertaker, The Boss, and the Silver Hilton. We plan to set up our own vices and equipment soon and settle in for the long dark winter by tying some of our own.

November rain

Nate and I invited our Norwegian friend Kjell over to carve pumpkins on Halloween. When Nate asked Kjell if he'd ever carved a pumpkin before, he replied, "I've never touched a pumpkin." He actually said that one of his friends won a pumpkin in a lottery in Norway, and his mother made 10 lbs of pumpkin jam. Some of the conversation may have been lost in translation, but you get the point. Attached are pictures of the results of our carving, including one of the crazy Norwegian (Nate's phrasing) in a mask he purchased at the store earlier in the day. You may also notice that Kjell's preference for american beer is Natural Ice - "high school beer" as he termed it.

We only ended up getting 4 trick-or-treaters, which was far fewer than I anticipated. At one point, Kjell started literally pouring candy into one little boy's bag while his mother looked on in disbelief, but the boy stopped him quickly - "That's enough". Kjell was in disbelief that a 6-year old (dressed up as an army ranger) would ever turn down more candy! Needless to say, we had lots of left-over candy, most of which I made Nate take into his lab.

The start of November seems to have brought the anticipated rains -- we've had gray skies and on-and-off rain since Halloween. But that's to be expected and the weather doesn't seem to impact the number of people out biking or walking. Everyone is commenting that this year's fall colors are spectacular compared to last year, when they seemed to turn and fall very quickly - must have been a good spring 2008.

We attended our first OSU football game, against Arizona State, on Sat night (OSU won!) As luck would have it, Cory and Todd, the first couple that we've become good friends with here, have some connections. Todd is the manager of the OSU marching band, so he offered us free complimentary tickets to a game and we took him up on it. We had great seats under the overhang at Reser Stadium, which came in handy when it started raining during the second half.

Yesterday, I had to bring our car (Nate's Honda Civic) in to have a tune-up and a loose belt tightened. I must have mentioned something about it being our only car on the phone, because the woman at the fix-it shop offered that they'd be happy to give me a lift home, and then back when it was fixed. Since it was raining pretty hard, I took them up on their offer and ditched my plan to ride my bike. So, to and fro, Bob (the owner) chatted to me about the niceties of Corvallis, road trips to take in OR, his wife (who also happens to have grown up in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan), etc...What service! Clayton's Auto Shop has earned my repeat business for sure (though I hope we don't need it too much...)