We drove from Bainbridge Island down to Portland on Wednesday afternoon/evening pretty much directly to our AirBnB. The purpose is to go the the 2025-26 USATF Cross Country Championships tomorrow (Saturday) where some of the fastest runners will compete on golf course. The weather is supposed to be horrible.
We’ve discovered a nice coffee place down here in Southwest Portland, maybe the Multnomah area. The coffee place is PDX Coffee Club. It rivals our other favorite place call Deadstock in the Pearl District.
Yesterday we went to the Apple store to start the process of getting Arlene laptop repaired. Then we walked to Powell’s; the rain wasn’t too bad at that point. We had to lug the books back to the car but I thought it was easy since Arlene carried them.
Our final stop was a brew shop on the other side of the river. There we picked up grain, hops and yeast for a batch of brown that I’ll be brewing on Sunday (with some help). It was an interesting place since they had been operating continuously since 1918. They had an area for all of their grains which we weighed and bagged on our own. At some pont in the process a tallish young man with a camera asked us if we minded being in the pictures. Pictures? Apparently we happen to arrive just days before this place went out of business, it was covered by local media, and their stock of everything was low. They didn’t have quite enough 2-row so I topped it off with Vienna. The recipe I started with included 3 infusions with East Kent Goldings and I tried to piece together something similar with some Chech hops I’d never heard of and some Northern Brewers. Beer is very forgiving. The dude at the cash register rung it all up and it was a bit over 20 dollars. I said, “that seems a little low.” 50% off everything.
Last night Arlene and I went to the Christmas lights at the Zoo. We used to make trips like that regularly when the kids were younger and we’d been saying we should go again for a few years. It was a fine display.
This morning Arlene and I both got on the erg. I kind of wussed out and ended up doing something short. Arlene rowed a full 5 x 2k. We ended up having a late lunch at Safeway, going to a shop with a wide variety of beer in cans and bottles for a couple of different Browns (in preparation for Sunday) then returning to the AirBnB for some quiet time.
For dinner we went to a place on Burnside (other side of the river from Powell’s) called Noble Rot (https://noblerotpdx.com/) Arlene had a flight of Syrahs from a newish vineyard in the northern Loire Valley. I had a flight of Oregon Pinots. They were both nice flights in the sense that each of the wines was distinct. Some of the wines were pretty good, but perhaps not all. 😎 For dinner Arlene had a piece of halibut with various forms of root vegetable. I had a pork steak thing that was fantastic.
Now we’re back at the AirBnB watching How the Grinch Stole Christmas before bed.
I’ll add a separate post for the race tomorrow.