Lunchtime walk

I don’t take a lunchtime break because I prefer to work the 7:00am – 3:00am shift and get a good chunk of my afternoon to enjoy the sun or take care of weekday errands.  The traffic is much lighter, I spend less in gas because I’m not stuck in stop n’ go and I get a nice chunk of afternoon back.  However, I do still take one of my 15 minute break periods to fit in a lunchtime walk and clear my head a little.  Over the last few months I’ve been increasing the length of my walk as I get more familiar with it and of course get a little faster at the route.

This is my current route.  I’ve added three blocks since I first started doing it and I already feel a little fitter as a result.  I’ve still got a long way to go in terms of getting back in shape, but the daily walks have been helping a ton.  I’m hoping that I can enjoy the route for another couple of months before the really cold weather kicks in.  I’ll still take my walks, they just won’t quite be the same without the sun shining and the birds singing.  Speaking of which, I’m going to head out and take one right now.

Lunchtime Walks & DDR

My latest contract finds me working in SouthEast portland, which is conveniently located near Kavi where my friend Davida works.  We have been threatening to venture on lunchtime walks together for a couple of months, but the fact that I was working in West Beaverton made meeting up for lunch problematic at best.  It can take the better part of twenty minutes to get across town at that time of day, which is more than half the lunch hour when you factor in the return journey.  However, now we are located only a scant ten minute drive away and even more importantly a very walkable half mile apart.  We met last Wednesday for a noontime bridge parambulation that culminated in SW Portland and a rather neat little deli; time just enough to order a sandwich to go and start the return leg.  We managed to fit a good walk into just under forty-five minutes and I was back at my desk within the hour.  We’re hoping to be able to walk at least once a week and (for me at least) to help shed some of the winter pounds that the gnomes seem to attach to my stomach while I sleep.  Understand, I don’t gain weight, my body is a temple and I keep an uttermost watchful eye on it.  However, every so often a wandering night gnome will come along and attach several pounds to my sleek frame in complete mockery of the extremely healthy beer and hamburger dinner I had the night before.

As it is, severe gnomage has resulted in my need to shed a couple of these untoward extra pounds and I’m hoping that the lunchtime walks will be a step towards that.  Not to mention that I have a nasty habit of taking sub five-minute lunches at my desk with a couple of sandwiches.  Walking will mean that I take a proper lunch break and get some fresh air too.

In addition to walking, I’ve been feeling a distinct hankering for some Dance Dance Revolution recently.  I bought the XBox 360 version: DDR Universe but have so far been less than thrilled by it.  The responsiveness of the software doesn’t seem quite as crisp as the PlayStation 2 titles and the career mode is simply an exercise in confusion.  The song list isn’t as peppy as I’ve been used to in previous titles, but the biggest frustration is that I’ve had to go back to a soft mat to play it.  I bought the hard dance pad a couple of years ago so that I could tackle the most difficult songs in the DDR games.  The soft mats are great for the easy and medium songs, but can be a struggle with the Hard settings and are an exercise in twisted ankles by the time you reach Extreme difficulty.  Made of a mixture of foam and thin plastic, they slide all over the floor when you’re feet are flying through Max 900 on Hard.  The plastic cover and foam get crinkled too, which means that sometimes the arrows fire without anyone stepping on them or failure to register at all when you’re hammering them with five toes.  The hard mat is a solid wooden and metal frame with raised plexiglass arrows that have a very quick and firm response.  (Yeah I’m a DDR freak and I don’t care; I love it!)  When I bought the hard mat it came with a control box that supposedly could be switched out for any console.  The idea being that you buy the mat once and then buy the cheaper control boxes for each console you want to use it with.  However, the company hasn’t yet released a box for the XBox 360 and have no plans in the near future to do so.  So I’m back to being stuck with the soft mat.  Poo!

With that in mind, I’ve set up the hard mat and PlayStation 2 downstairs in the living room and I’m going to go back to playing the four great DDR games I have on that platform.  The song lists were far superior IMHO anyway, and using the hard mat is simply indispensible.

Timberline Lodge

Here are some pictures from last weekend, hiking a trail alongside one of the ski lifts at Timberline Lodge:

The wind coming across the snow kept the temperature low enough as to trick me into not applying sun lotion.  Needless to say, some lessons just keep getting learned!  Really fun day though and walking up that incline was great for the legs.

McMenamins, Silver Falls, and OMSI

I had an absolutely fantastic weekend.  The weather was spectacular and despite having prior plans to do some housework, we decided to take advantage of the opportunity to spend some time outdoors and play tourist for a couple of days.

The weekend started on Friday night with a trip out to the local McMenamins.  We both got dressed up, which is really fun once in a while, and went out to grab some food and have a few drinks.  Later in the evening one of Tawny’s friends showed up, so we stayed for another drink.  It was really hot on Friday, a prelude of the scorching weather to come.  After a week at work and a couple of drinks, the hot weather was sapping energy pretty quickly.  Time to call it a night.

Silver Falls
Saturday morning was gorgeous.  The sun was bright and there was not a single cloud in the sky.  It wouldn’t be right to waste such a day inside packing up boxes and doing housework.  Instead, we decided to drive down to Salem and head to the Silver Falls State Park.  We made a quick stop in Wilsonville for a new pair of shorts, a new t-shirt, and some breakfast at Sharis, finally reaching the South Falls parking lot just after noon.  After liberal application of sun lotion and the appropriate selection of a cap to keep my head from burning, we set off on the 6.9 mile loop around Silver Creek.  The full trail treats you to no less than ten waterfalls, three of which you can walk behind.  This map shows the route we walked, starting in the lower-left at the South Falls Lodge, walking north past Lower South Falls, then East past Lower North Falls, Double Falls, Drake Falls, Middle North Falls, Twin Falls, the half-way point at the other parking lot with North Falls, the Upper North Falls, and then back West past Winter Falls to the starting point.

I was able to get a lot of really great photographs.  The first couple are at the outset, overlooking the top of South Falls, which is a popular start-point for the full loop.  The second is from a bridge at the base of the South Falls looking back up at the outset from below.

These pictures are of the Lower South Falls.  We were lucky enough to pass someone on the trail who agreed to take a picture of us together.  The pedestrian traffic significantly thins out around Lower South Falls as most visitors turn around at this point and head back to their cars.  The trail heads behind the waterfall pictured here, which was a really refreshing moment in the pounding ninety degree sun.

This pair of pictures are of Double Falls and stack vertically to give the full 31ft height of the larger of the pair of waterfalls.  You can just see the second falls in the top right of the top-picture.

A little further along, we found some raspberries growing along the trail.  The first picture (top-left) is of Tawny after she had just reached through the brambles to pick some of them.  Shortly after that, we took a break to get our feet wet in the river at a nice spot we found just after Twin Falls.  The water felt surprisingly chilly considering the heat of the day.  The third picture is of the Middle North Falls, which are located right before the short-cut path that can take two miles off the route for those feeling tired.  The final two pictures are of the North Falls up close (bottom-left), and then from another great viewpoint (bottom-right).

Raspberries

River dipping

Middle North Falls

North Falls

North Falls Viewpoint

It was a fantastic day and even though my legs are still a little sore, it felt really good to get outside and enjoy such a beautiful walk.  I love living in Oregon.  Not only do we have access to Portland, the high-tech industry that pays my bills, a low cost of living when compared to Washington and California, Oregon also has gorgeous outdoor areas that are less than an hour drive away.

Sunday
Sunday morning started with a great yoga workout with Eoin Finn.  We did the Daily Dose of Bliss routine (38 min) and it was a fantastic way to shake off some of the stiffness of the hike from Saturday.  It never ceases to amaze me just how much a yoga practice can make me feel more energetic and less tired, despite being quite an intense workout.

OMSI
Sunday afternoon, we visited OMSI on a spur-of-the-moment decision.  Even though we didn’t arrive until after noon, that left almost seven hours to enjoy the exhibitions and see some shows.  Our schedule went roughly as follows:
1:30pm – Science Playground.  Playing with telescopes and morse code in the Physics lab.  Zoetrope fabrication.
2:00pm – Planetarium show.  Time-lapse exploration of the pacific NW skies.
2:30pm – Life Science.  They have a travelling show on pregnancy where actual fetal specimens from the full 38-week growth cycle are on show.  Although heavy feeling to know that the fetuses were real, it was fascinating to see them at the various stages of development, especially considering that my sister is currently about 17 weeks along.  I found the specimen that most accurately represented a fetus at the same stage as my future niece or nephew and was surprised to find just how developed they already are.
4:00pm – iMax “Coral Reef”.  The coral reef movie was fascinating.  Two researchers set out to explore and document the coral reefs around Fiji, Australia, French Polynesia, and Hawaii to discover why so many of the world’s reefs are dying.  It was sad in places to learn just how quickly they might all be destroyed, and very educational on an issue I’ll confess to having a certain ignorance about.  The iMax experience is always cool and this was no exception.
4:45pm – Earth Science and the Oregon Shell show.  The Oregon Society of Conchologists had their show on display.  They had some incredibly cool specimens and it was fascinating to see some Mediterranean shells I’d never seen before.  We were able to duck into the robotics show briefly before our next scheduled show and both Tawny and I got the chance to be owned by a robot that will race you to solve a geometry puzzle.
5:30pm – USS Blueback.  I’ve been on the tour of the Blueback before and absolutely love it.  I’m fascinated by the myriad switches, lights, and arbitrary dials in the control rooms, but the tour guide for this visit was definetely sub par.  The last time I was shown around this sub, the guide was a twenty year navy vet who had served on a myriad of submarines around the world.  He threw in all kinds of interesting information, such as the torpedo room being the most popular place to sleep because the loading hatch for the torpedos was also the best and most reliable escape route in case of an emergency and because the temperature in the weapons room was far lower than anywhere else.  This time, we had a kid who really just hated his job and was less than jazzed about taking us on “yet another tour” at 5:30pm on a ninety degree Sunday afternoon.  It was still fun to look around, and all in all rounded off another superb day.

iMax Coral Reef

Floormap

Sunday evening, Tawny let me cook dinner for her.  We had almond coated dover sole with brown rice, accompanied by a potato salad with homemade mustard dressing.  Tawny picked out some cheeses and breads for a light dessert and we washed it down with a couple of cans of Boddingtons.  Dinner done right!  So ends a totally awesome weekend. :)