Kendo Catch-up (Weeks 2, 3, and 4)

< Week 1

Week 2

We had to miss the second week of beginner’s Kendo, but made up for it by observing a normal Friday night practice.

• Comparisons might abound between martial arts and military training, but based on what I’ve seen on TV and at this practice, warming up in Kendo is more fun. Everyone stands in a large circle in the gym and lays their sword down so that it points to the center. Then the most senior student (the sensei gets to relax) yells ICHI NI SAN SHI (one, two, three, four) and everyone else yells back GO RUKU SHICHI HACHI (five, six, seven, eight) while they do an exercise or stretch. First they run around the circle, then run backwards, run sideways, and finally stand in place and do an aerobic move or contort their body in an impossible fashion.
• The students ranged from two- to many years of experience. There were two younger kids who were age 8-10 I guessed. After the warmup two lines are formed which face each other, and each pair of students go through a routine where one practices hitting the other with a specific strike. At first they aren’t wearing armor so they do the strike and stop before making contact, and later when the armor is on they actually whack each other. What I really liked about the pairing up is that every few minutes everyone moved clockwise to get a new partner. More than once I’d see the adult who was paired up with the younger student stop to correct something the younger student was doing. So it’s the community who provides instruction, not just the master.
• The sensei walks around and offers a correction whenever he sees something done the wrong way. At one point he stopped everyone to voice a general observation. He’s very soft-spoken, so when he speaks you can hear a pin drop as everyone (even my boy this time incredibly!) stops making noise to listen. He was concerned that people weren’t continuing to move their sword in a line after it struck the opponent. He said, “You might score the point in a match, but you’re ruining the stroke.” I appreciated the emphasis on executing the move the correct way, whether or not a point is awarded.

It was my son’s turn to pick dinner and he elected to have Burger King instead of the McDonald’s with the alluringly massive play area around the corner from the gym. I knew that his choice was based on a Transformers toy that would be forgotten five minutes after leaving the restaurant and he’d have more fun at Micky D’s (my good dad instincts), and I knew that play area would give me more time with the book I was reading (my selfish dad instincts), so I talked him into Mc D’s which was not difficult.

Week 3

The boy was not good this week. So not good that the delay in this blog series stems directly from the enthusiasm drop the not-goodness caused. He was constantly running around and I was constantly snapping at him to stop.

A nice moment for me was a confirmation that my instincts about Kendo are on-track. The Shinnai (wooden practice swords) had been handed out in the second week so when we arrived the other students in the class (mostly older boys) were messing around with them. They were swinging them in mock fights, carrying them around by the part that would be the sharp edge on a real katana, and generally not treating them like the killing weapons they are meant to represent. I knew that this was not right, even as something done before the formal lesson started. When the lesson began one of our sensei’s first topics was how to carry and treat your practice sword. There are specific stances and ways to hold it even in casual situations, and each simulates the way that a samurai would carry around his own extremely sharp blade. For example, the samurai would typically carry one sword at his side in his belt. This is simulated in the way a Kendo student holds their blade before drawing it to a ready position: held up with one hand at their side.

I used my dinner pick on BK, 45% because it was what the boy wanted the previous week and 55% because it had a play area and I wanted to read a chapter or two. I told the boy that if he acted the way he did again there would be no guy’s dinner the next time, and I had every intention of following through.

Week 4

But the boy was really good this week. So good that I’m writing this catch-up post a day after the lesson.

It was a really fun session, too. Just like the normal practice, we made a circle and did stretching exercises. We learned a fun exercise for home that involves swinging the sword in a vertical arc and stepping forward and backward. Then, again like the normal practice, we made two lines and got to practice basic strikes on a partner. Mine was a nervous kid who might have been fourteen: he was amused and terrified when I did my vertical strike and stopped inches from the top of his head. I only came down too far once and very slightly. I’m really glad that he did the same one time, making us even. From what I saw when I glanced at my son every so often, he did not whack the short girl he was paired up with and more astonishingly he stayed in the place he belonged for the entire session and executed a reasonable facsimile of the strikes we learned.

The softly-speaking sensei was in attendance as well as our usual beginner’s class sensei. When we kneeled at the end he gave a short lesson (I had been sitting with my hands on my lap expecting us to get to stand up any second, but when he started talking I had to put my hands on the floor and began to sweat; I’m making progress though). He said that Kendo was about doing those same strikes we learned every week, always striving to perfect them. I thought about that normal practice we’d watched and connected what those experienced students did in pairs with what we’d just done: essentially the same routine.

The idea of doing the same thing over and over to perfect it resonates with me. I often enjoyed the first few stages/hours of a video game more than the middle and end of what the designers cram in. I’d play those first stages and try again when I fail, but when I got further I’d be more inclined to turn the game off when enemy X or pit Y did me in. The next day I’d start again from the beginning, always getting closer to perfecting those basic challenges and extending my comfort zone a little further in.

The perfecting idea probably applies to other sports which have been a source of unhappiness for me: for example in baseball practices you catch or hit or throw a ball over and over, always striving to perfect the action. The difference is that in those sports the big game is always a week away where you’re expected to deliver outs and runs and face shame from your teammates if you don’t. I’m going to try my best to inject the Kendo philosophy in my boy’s athletic upbringing: perfect the whatever for your own sake; don’t ruin the stroke.

All day before the lesson I had been engaged in mental suggestion for my boy’s restaurant pick, casually mentioning every Red Robin we drove by and bringing up the nice dinners we’d had at Red Robins. Before the practice he said, “Dad, I know what I want for dinner and it’s Red Robin… Why did you just say, Yes!?”. But afterwards he changed his mind to the new McDonald’s, in the hope of getting a blue lightsaber in the Happy Meal. More than once we’ve wished that we’d never let our kids know about those f*&%ing Happy Meal toys. I’m going to break down my desire for Red Robin as 33% about me getting food I like and 67% about wanting to have a sit-down meal as father and son. I made an offer that’s financially and nutritionally dubious but I think was justified in dad-liness: “We can go to Red Robin and if we have a nice dinner we’ll pick up a Happy Meal on the way home.” We did and we did.

Beginner’s Kendo: Week 1 of 8

Posts about the beginner’s class of Kendo that I’m taking with my son.

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I enrolled with my son who’s five years old in a beginner’s course put on by a local Kendo club, Obukan. Neither of us has any history with martial arts — I decided to do it after a co-worker at my new location who is the club’s president mentioned that the class was starting. My son has had good experiences in weekly programs for soccer and basketball, but this is unique in that instead of watching/playing with my phone with the rest of the parents I’ll be in the course with him.

The evening before the first lesson my son and I were not at our best: I’d become increasingly frustrated at the sub-five-year-old way he’d been acting — since we moved he’s spent every hour with his three-year-old sister and I feel like he’s been aging in reverse — and finally I reacted with an outburst that was well below my thirty-year-old age level. This event brought to focus what I’d like us both to gain from our Kendo outings which will be followed by “guy’s dinners” we’ll alternately pick.

I don’t want these posts to be too long: in the spirit of Kendo they’ll be direct and formulaic: three things I learned about Kendo and one thing I’d like myself and my son to work on for the next lesson.

Kendo facts:

• When I decided to sign up I didn’t know what Kendo was about except that it was a martial art. Someone explained it as “Japanese stick fighting” and someone else as “Japanese fencing”. Videos like these dispelled the fencing idea, and I was pleased to learn that “stick” is really not an appropriate term for the weapon. While it’s wooden, the shinai is actually a stand-in for a katana; it has the same dimensions and the only area you can strike your opponent with to score a point is the part of the katana that you would use to cut/dismember most effectively. Yes!
• After the introduction, the class of about thirty was split into two groups. I went with the kids (all in the 10-14 range, my boy was the youngest) into the gym. Our sensei pointed out that Kendo was a martial art and asked what “martial” meant, and like a dope I couldn’t come up with the answer that martial=military. Like a military, respect and obedience are stressed above all else. You’re constantly being shouted at to form up in a line, and that means you step your ass to. In Kendo lines the most experienced students stand at the right and the further to the left you stand the more of a noob you are. To make the line straight, each person looks to their right and aligns their shoulders with that person’s. So the most senior student decides where the line is, and everyone else stands on that line.
• Besides how to line up and how to kneel — more on that below — the only thing we learned was how to stand and walk forward and backward. Of course there’s a specific way to do all of these, and it’s easy to remember: your right foot is always slightly in front of your left. When you walk forward, you take a step with your right foot and then a step with your left. When you walk backward, it’s left and then right. Either way your right foot is always in front after a step. This way you are always facing your opponent and ready to react to any move that they make. This was described as “Kendo philosophy”, always facing things head-on, even when retreating.

The thing that I’m focusing on before the next lesson is training myself to kneel. The first thing you do in a lesson is line up — so far, so good, we know how to do that — and then KNEEL AND SIT ON YOUR LEGS ON A HARD GYM FLOOR. No pillow no mat no sir. For my boy and the other kids this was not a problem, but for me it was excruciating. Instead of resting my hands on my lap with grace like the sensei and other club members, my hands were behind me helping to support my weight like a goof. I looked down the line and was glad to see some of the other adults in goof position as well. I’m following some tips to practice at home: train with a pillow, kneel in front of the couch while watching TV and rest my back against it. I’m able to do the latter for a few more minutes every night, so I’m looking forward to trying that gym floor again. I get two weeks to practice because the holiday weekend is off.

The thing I hope the boy improves is his ability to do the most basic of Kendo actions: stand still and listen! Every time a new thing was introduced his attention would be on it for about five seconds and then he would spin around in circles or pull his shirt up to his neck. My hope is that in the next lesson he can stand still for ten seconds, and we’ll work up from there. Despite this, I was impressed with how much detail he could show his mom what we’d learned with. He didn’t change immediately, but now that we’re three days out from our outing he’s had long bursts of markedly improved behavior.

For the first dinner we had my pick of Buffalo Wild Wings. This was not a great choice because there is nothing on the menu he likes: I’d assumed they made grilled cheese, but no. We ordered soft pretzels with some excitement, but they were not liked either: “I don’t like them with the cheese or without the cheese”. I had to eat my Parmesan garlic wings quickly and from behind a menu barrier because he declared them to be smelly. Feeling guilty about the smell and my choice in general, his dinner was chocolate cake. Next week’s choice will be predictable: an unvisited McDonald’s play area was spotted near the Rec Center. After that, well, I know that Chili’s makes grilled cheese.

Japanese words that I learned and remember: sensei (master, obvious), sempai (higher-ranked student who teaches you, impressed?), hai! (yelled to confirm that you understand something the teacher says. Obvious too, but fun to finally get to yell for myself)

Okkervil River @ The Crystal Ballroom on 6-21-2011

To recap: I like Okkervil River and had bought tickets to this show when I still lived in North Carolina.

We took advantage of last-minute kid-sitting services from an incredibly generous relative of an excellent friend in Raleigh. I sped onto the on-ramp after dropping them off and then stopped abruptly: Beaverton traffic again! We still got to The Crystal Ballroom with plenty of time to have dinner downstairs.

I’d known of McMenamins from a pub/restaurant in Corvallis which I didn’t realize was part of a chain of over 50 locations. One of them is the CB where you can get food from a pub called Ringler’s downstairs. I think that our waiter was one of the security guys behind the stage later on. The burger and fries were the same as those that I liked and loved in Corvallis, the latter being those hand-cut kind of fries that I normally don’t like. Whatever McMenamins is doing to them, I like it.

We went upstairs early, around 8:00 which my feet at 12:30 wouldn’t appreciate later, and were able to see the ballroom in its empty glory. It was easy to imagine snobby people in tuxedos and whatever nice dresses are called tittering around.

Here’s the stage by daylight:

We were close to it:

I come from a proud line of people who don't smile in photographs.

Julianna Barwick performed first.

Julianna Barwick

She only used her voice, a few sounds on a keyboard, and a recording/looping thing to build these complex, beautiful arrangements on-stage. I would have to guess that you can’t do that.

Next, Titus Andronicus played.

Titus Andronicus

They were really good and I’m enjoying their most recent album that I picked up after the show, something I hadn’t done for an opening act before. They have that passionate monologue singing like Neutral Milk Hotel combined with The Clash. I am not a music reviewer. If you were going to try one song, this would be the best $.99 you could spend today.

Right before they started playing, the world’s #1 Titus Andronicus fan appeared out of nowhere to stand in the small space between us and the stage and then jump, sway, and writhe though all of every song. The guitarist who’s pictured far-right was visibly amused and later the singer noticed and both high-fived #1 fan in the middle of a song. When the singer called out her enthusiasm before the next song, she screamed, “EAST COAST!” I guess I’m from the East Coast too but I missed the memo about the jumping. It might sound like I’m complaining, but I enjoyed her energy as well . As early as her second jump I predicted that she would disappear as soon as Titus Adronicus left the stage, and like that she was gone.

As soon as it was fully dark outside — this might be the only indoor place I’ve seen a concert where there are windows — Okkervil River took the stage.

Will Sheff

Okkervil River

Hidden picture revealed by lighting change halfway through

Will Sheff in encore clothes, Patrick Pestorius

The setlist was a treat that was inexplicably customized to me, 15 songs plus a 3-song encore. I was keeping track of it as the songs were played; not wanting to bother anyone with a bright screen my notes were old-fashioned. I know that my notebook scans are well-loved, so here you go:

I did a pretty good job with spelling and song recognition, expect for writing “Arryn” instead of Allyn in “John Allyn Smith Sails”. I was getting my Things I Like mixed up. “Black Sheep Boy (2nd)” is actually “So Come Back, I Am Waiting”, a nine-minute song that I can’t believe was done live. The (!)’s are for songs that were performed markedly differently from the album versions which is apparently all that it takes to excite me:

• The Valley was played after Piratess, the opposite order as the album. I especially loved the way they were chained together in a way that would have impressed The Arcade Fire who are responsible for my favorite transition ever between The Suburbs and Ready to Start.
• Here is a recording of So Come Back, I Am Waiting from our show that someone else took.
• Your Past Life is a Blast is one of my favorites on the new album whose songs seem more complex and varied than those on earlier ones. I was really taken with this stripped down live version. I don’t think it’s likely, but if a simple, acoustic or something version of I Am Very Far was released I think both would be worth revisiting and complement each other.
• For Real’s (!) is for the intense emotion it’s words were screamed with. Will Sheff: “AND THOSE BLUE BRIDGE LIGHTS MIGHT REALLY BURN MOST BRIGHT WHILE WE WATCH THAT DARK LAKE RISE”. Me: … (!).

The first highlight and reason I say that the show was customized to me was a completely different version of the song I gushed about the most in my gushing about the Black Sheep Boy Appendix here.

Compare it to the studio version:

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Compare! I was recording the video above from another part of the crowd, but that guy (and another in Columbus two weeks ago) beat me to the upload.

The second reason the setlist was customized to me is the last song before the encore. Shouting along with every “la” made me remember how my throat would hurt on the drive home from Cedar Point on the drive home from this.

Toward the end people were shouting for Westfall, a request that I also keep seeing in comments to the band’s posts on Facebook. I like it too, but given it’s subject matter and point of view it’s a little strange to hear typical Okkervil River fans — young, mostly but far from exclusively male, outcasts to judge by appearance — shout for it and watch them sing along

And when I killed her, it was so easy
That I wanted to kill her again.
I got down on both of my knees and
She ain’t comin’ back again

I get that it’s about acknowledging darkness and not only looking for evil in obviously evil people because there aren’t any — or something, maybe I don’t get it. It isn’t like every song has to be positive or even not about homicide, but to me it’s just a weird thing to request with such passion. I freely offer that I’m really upset about being older than the average fan and because nothing on Down the River of Golden Dreams was played. Westfall is still a great song: every track on my fantasy “I Am Very Far Naked” album would include a mandolin part.

In conclusion, speaking realistically, was this the best concert ever?

Yes.

Ready to Start: Part 3/3

Blog-y posts about our drive to Beaverton, OR and week of settling in.

Prologue Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

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Day 7

On Saturday, May 28 we responded to the growing piles of unpacked clutter and un-assembled IKEA furniture by fleeing to downtown Portland to look around. We tried out the train for the first time which is extremely clean and safe (so far) and only about fifty paces from our townhouse’s front door. You can buy an all-day pass for $4.75 which works on the train, buses, and trolley cars downtown. It took about 25 minutes to get from our stop to one by the Willamette River and yes, this paragraph is getting as boring to write as it is to read.

We didn’t have any particular plan other than to stay away from the bad parts of town (the location of which we conveniently didn’t research) and to check out the street food vendors we’d been hearing so much about. According to one person they would be found on 3rd St., so 3rd St. is where we started out. Not seeing any vendors we walked to the river — the city was cool enough but most of the stores were closed as 9:00 am. It was as if the city was sleeping/hung over until later in the day, which is probably true of any major city and shows what an upbringing in the country and suburbs respectively have failed to prepare us for.

Not having any places to enter we just walked around and around. We took the trolley car up the hill from the river to the west side of town and then walked back down. By the end of the trip I felt like we had seen pretty much all of Portland, but when my wife mapped out our route online it looked something like this (I don’t have access to the cool online map):

Four memorable stops along the way were:

1. Diners were the exception to everything being closed in the morning. We ate at a good one called Bijou Cafe where we found all of the people who weren’t walking around outside. The food was more normal than the name suggests: I had eggs and bacon.
2. We walked around Powell’s City of Books which occupies an entire city block for about an hour without stopping for any extended period of time. Picture a large Barnes & Noble, multiply by two, and add four identically large stories.
3. Around lunchtime we tried to find vendors on 3rd St. again but only managed to discover Chinatown. Nothing against Chinese but I had a stubborn craving for nachos. We tried going a few blocks back toward the river and managed to find people sleeping under a bridge and a guy shouting to himself as he traversed blocks like a Pac-man ghost. I tried to turn the opposite way he turned at one point, only to have him appear within ten feet of us at the next corner.
4. We gave up on the vendors and tried the first diner we found, Morning Star Cafe. This one had a normal name but weird food. I had a plate of fries with aioli sauce, unknown to me but it turned out to be a delicious chunky version of a Papa John’s garlic butter cup.

Back in Beaverton we put together our bed and rewarded ourselves with a movie — Bridesmaids, A+ — and the nachos that I had been trying to find in Portland all day, available in abundance at Red Robin.

Day 8

One question I’ve answered in person a few times is “Why Oregon?” On Sunday we took a trip that was pre-ordained since we decided to move: the city of Corvallis where I lived for six months and decided that someday I would live in Oregon.

The moment is memorable and sums up my reason: I was walking home from lunch at my favorite restaurant in any city: Jamie’s Great Hamburgers. Especially near the end of my co-op I walked nearly everywhere and only used my car for trips on the weekend. It was a sunny day but there weren’t many people outside, just quiet houses behind un-tended lawns, and I was seized with a feeling of envy for the people that lived in them. It would take eight years and some uncanny coincidences to get there, not least being more than one team upheaval putting me in the right place to work with a manager in Beaverton to make that aspect of the relocation easier. But here I am… well 90 minutes north of Corvallis but the future isn’t written. Parking the car until the weekend. Not caring about a lawn. Jamie’s.

Another affirming coincidence is that the two people I’d worked with who I looked up after deciding to move still lived in Corvallis with their families, even though both had moved on from the jobs we had together. In my second email to them I had the courage to ask about Jamie’s, phrasing it like, “I know it must be closed, just go ahead and tell me”, but they said and I can now confirm that it’s there and is exactly the same as it was: the kind of divey place that should not be able to stay in business.

Before Jamie’s we drove around to all the places I’d remembered and found most in the same place and condition. In front of the dumpy house in whose attic I’d lived was a sign that was just one coincidence to many: “For Sale”. Then we drove closer and saw the words “Computer” written on the bottom of it. Who the hell sells or buys a computer that way?

After Jamie’s my friends walked with us around downtown (in Corvallis we covered 90% of the three blocks that comprise downtown). Near the end these old ladies in hats were getting into their car and we only caught the end of their conversation: one of them exasperating, “That was an okay store. For Corvallis.” When I said how amazed I was that both of these guys still lived in the town (it isn’t that amazing, they’re just really happy there), they laughed about it being okay for Corvallis.

We said goodbye for now — in August we’ll drive down with the kids; there’s a park I never got to and I’m picturing greasy take out bags from Jamie’s — and took the same drive to the coast in Newport an hour west that we’d taken when my then-girlfriend visited during my co-op. I really only had one agenda: to replace the header image for this blog from a Wikipedia image to a real lost coastline.

On the drive back we stopped at a Native American casino we randomly passed. $9 richer and with smelly clothes I finally pulled the trigger on a dinner choice I’d been threatening since we arrived: Shari’s which is pretty much Big Boy but with really good pie. There was one across the street from my attic home that I’d gone to a lot. This time the food wasn’t great but the S’mores pie was really good.

Days 9, 10, and 11

A flurry of unpacking which was increasingly panicky as the time to pick up our kids at the airport grew closer. A big break was finding a hidden crawlspace in the master-bedroom-turned-media-room. Don’t open that door if you visit. In between we tried new places Extreme Pizza — one new pizza place to try down, eleven to go — and Burgerville — you’re okay Carl’s Jr. but I might never visit again — and had a lunch at Red Robin. Put me anywhere where there’s Red Robin and I’ll go to Red Robin. A lot. We took in Scream 4, which was okay.

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Today when I got off the train after work to another nice day I had a feeling of being in just the right place similar to the one in I’d had in Corvallis. I also thought about the truly good people I’d met in Raleigh who started this series off by helping us pack up and my family in Toledo who graciously entertained our kids while we had this adventure. Feeling mixy, but okay. For those inclined to visit, we have an extremely comfy couch and know a good place or two to eat.

Where I Live: The Media Room

I’d insisted on having the TV and collection of media in the living room for both of the first two places we lived in since college. As we planned this this third move I was in a less materialistic and more uppity frame of mind: since about a year before the move I’d had a specific plan to have the living room be screen and clutter free and to put as many screens and as much clutter into a separate “media room” as possible.

Because we wanted to have a place ready to move in when we finished our drive while the kids-with-grandparents time bomb ticked away, we’d signed a rental agreement on a townhouse without seeing it ahead of time. I discovered to my dismay that neither of the two non-master bedrooms was big enough for this room. Demonstrating a non-materialistic streak of her own, my wife surprised me by suggesting that we use the master bedroom. Whoa! That is why the Murray’s media room has its own bathroom and shower.

The room from every angle — don’t get dizzy!

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The three posters were also decided upon months in advance: Kill Bill (as promised), Lost (I like Lost), and this one. Wanting that specific Kill Bill poster turned out to be costly: that exact image from the DVD cover is the one I wanted, but as I learned it is not the theatrical artwork and it doesn’t seem to be easily available online. I think that the one I bought was meant to be displayed in a store shortly after the DVD was released. It was $75 on eBay and my offer of $40 was accepted. So either I bought a rare poster or I’m a sucker; either way I got the image I wanted.

Finally here’s the media itself. It’s sparse for somebody who loves movies, shows, and games as much as I do, especially if you’ve ever seen my collection before we decided to move. We sold most of the cruft and what’s left are titles that we know we’ll enjoy again.

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Complete or nearly complete TV series 24, Arrested Developent, Breaking Bad, Briscoe County, Freaks and Geeks/Undeclared, Joss Whedon library, Friends, Lost, The Wire, The Offices, Scrubs, Sex in the City

24 was my favorite show at one time and each of the first three season DVDs brought me a lot of joy. 2003 Dave would be ashamed that his 2011 self hasn’t bought the final season after it’s been out for more than a year. If I see it on sale I’ll pick it up, me!

Every Star Trek film and all 7 seasons of Deep Space Nine. PS3 games and "princess", then movie series that are complete: Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Kevin Smith, Quentin Tarantino, and random Blu-rays.

I’ve never been inclined to watch the original series of Star Trek. I used to have every season of The Next Generation, but they didn’t survive the media purge like their brothers of my favorite series Deep Space 9. My mom and her cousin used to ride the school bus with Toledo’s Casey Biggs who plays Damar; I understand that he carried one of their books home once and was then seen making out with another girl on the bus to Cedar Point a short time later. I only share this information because my Facebook friend request has gone un-accepted for two years. Anyways, I like Deep Space Nine.

“Princess” is my new PS3 who replaced “Blinky” who only blinks red lights when he’s turned on. She’s treated like royalty because I don’t want to stress her out to the point of breaking: the kids’ Netflix watching is done on the reliable Wii from now on.

Random DVD shelf and kid's movie shelf

Am I the only one that got so tired of watching The Matrix that I enjoy and only own the two sequels? I believe I am. We have a decent but far from complete collection of mainline Disney movies, but I’m proud to give my kids and self access to every Pixar film.

PSX games and random portable stuff, shelf of Wii, shelf of Gamecube.

The more heavy things I piled above the top of the shelf, the sturdier it became. Disaster pending. The Gamecube is the only console that’s purely decorative thanks again to “Old Faithful” the Wii.

And last:

Nintendo 64, Super Nintendo, and NES

Ready to Start: Part 2/3

Blog-y posts about our drive to Beaverton, OR and week of settling in.

Prologue Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

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Day 4

On Wednesday, May 25 we rolled into Beaverton at around 1:00 pm. Here’s the final notebook scan for the last 312 miles in the morning:

Basically we finished season 5 of The Wire, which is short at only ten episodes but its finale might be the best I’ve ever seen (or not?), and enjoyed the scenery. The last part of this trip is the most spectacular: the highway snakes around the Columbia Gorge so on the left you see giant trees and baby trees which I guess were planted after wild fires or just because — I’d never seen so many in a row together which was an awesome sight — and on the right is the river with Washington on the other side. For an hour it’s breathtaking (I took breath), and then it’s breathtaking but you’re ready to be at your destination so you get a little impatient. Enough gorge!

Our first impression of Beaverton was surprise at the ridiculous amount of traffic, inexplicably at 2:00 in the afternoon. Where is everyone going? After getting off the first exit we had to stop suddenly on the bridge, and right in front of us was a van with the custom license: “GET GRN”. You’re sitting in this traffic too, burning the same fuel in a non-hybrid, non-electric car! I’d had a mental image of people in this area biking or walking or taking advantage of the very good public transportation. I told this to a friend who lives in Corvallis, OR by way of California and he laughed and said, “No, the Portland suburbs are more like Northern California” in terms of its growing population I guess. I think there are millions of people like I’d imagined who don’t rely on cars, but that there are equal millions who do. I don’t think it will impact us too much, as there are no busy streets between our house and the nearest Max station. We’ll have to be extra sure that our kids learn to respect crosswalks. We did plenty of driving and consuming to get ourselves set up, don’t get me wrong, but now that we are I aspire to live that van’s license plate.

We’d arranged for movers to help us unload our trailer two hours after we arrived at the townhouse, so there was time to check out the shopping center called Streets of Tanasbourne which is 1-2 miles from where we live. So far, the layout of Beaverton seems to be 5 or 6 of these shopping centers and a downtown, so at any point you are within three miles of a Target or Kohl’s. Snoodiness about sustainable transportation notwithstanding, we’re big fans of these kind of American institutions: our first lunch was at Chipotle and first shopping trip at Trader Joe’s, and we didn’t go an hour without visiting the nearest Target. We each had our priorities for setting up at home and mine was the media room: buying a comfy couch was at the top of my list specifically. Using wi-fi at an obscure local coffee shop called Starbuck’s we found one for sale on Craigslist and arranged to pick it up that evening.

I really missed my captain and crew for the U-Haul unpacking. The plural in “movers” applied in its smallest sense and this time there were two sets of stairs. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to help or stay out of the way. The movers wisely didn’t indicate the latter and said nothing after I was shamed into the former. On the bright side, the abuse I suffered made my move to choose dinner unassailable. I went for what I thought was a West Coast-only fast food place: Carl’s Jr. I should have paid more attention to the logo, though, as it only took one bite into the burger to realize that Carl’s Jr. is nothing more than another face of the Hardee’s machine. Their menu has some more exotic choices which I think are required to stay competitive out here and I’m not saying that Hardee’s is a bad place by any measure, but I was trying to go someplace new and should have gone with Jack in the Box or Burgerville.

The Craigslist couch turned out to be a bust: sort of comfy but overly broken-in and smoky-ownered. We stopped at a random mattress store and miraculously found something on sale that worked for us. In Raleigh we’d had a very stressful mattress experience with pushy salespeople telling us that high prices were low. When the guy at this place asked if we were buying other furniture my wife instinctively deflected as if he were setting us up for a screwing. I had to mention the comfy couch and he told us that a store nearby called Mor had a lot on sale. This has been a common pattern with salespeople in Beaverton: they are honestly and straightforwardly trying to help you. Or maybe they’ve so mastered their craft that they are screwing you without your knowledge. Either way they cannot be accused of being pushy. With so many customers they probably don’t have to be.

Mor turned out to be the biggest store of any kind that I’d ever been in for anything. On the way out we were sincerely unable to find the exit. Of course a salesperson finds you to introduce themselves, but only to point you to what you want and then disappear. Come back and take advantage of me! There were some deals, but the highlight was the clearance room in the back where the furniture is placed on a cold warehouse floor. I found my comfy couch.

Day 5

After Taco Bell, Carl’s Jr., and generally sitting in the passenger seat for days it was my wife’s time to shine, and she declared that the day would be all about furniture shopping at the IKEA next to PDX. I was talked to sternly in the car (before I’d even said anything!) about how crazy a place IKEA was and that I had to be patient while my wife looked around.

Since I’ve written so many words already I’ll spare the details about IKEA, but yeah it is crazy. One detail I wasn’t prepared for is the protocol about taking your purchases home. All over the store are these pencils and pads for you to write down the inventory number of the things you want to buy. I was writing them in a note on my iPod instead, and kept wondering if I’d have to transfer them to paper so that an employee could fetch the items when we checked out. It turns out that there is no employee: the end of the store is the warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Arc and you have to find every piece of every bed, table, etc… you want and load the massively heavy items onto a cart yourself. I’d recommend not going for an adult bed, bunk bed and kitchen table and chairs on the same trip.

We had to do two trips in and our of the store. Going outside the first time I was bad-tempered from the surprise at IKEA protocol and preemptively-suppressed complaining about furniture shopping. It was raining which is something I’d always heard about the Pacific Northwest but never experienced: every day has the potential to be rainy and what’s usually a light mist will start and stop within an hour or so all day long. This time was more than a mist but it still fell differently from other rain in a way it’s hard to describe. It sort of clung for a moment before falling down and seemed to say, “I’m rain and I don’t care what kind of mood you’re in. Get back in that store and stop acting like a baby”. I was much more even-tempered for the second trip, and didn’t react at all when we started the van and discovered that we had to wait for the person that parked next to us to come back out before we could drive away without our trailer scraping anything. My wife went back in to get our hotdog lunch while I waited and watched the rain at peace.

We had dinner at a place called Chevy’s which my wife had kept seeing and laughing at the name of: something we know as either a car or actor but wouldn’t associate with Mexican food. They claim that their kitchen has no cans so everything is organic and fresh. We’ll definitely visit again and no longer laugh at the name, but I need to try other entrees since the enchiladas were no match for Raleigh’s Las Palmas or even Eldorado.

Day 6

Friday was spent mostly at home unpacking and putting furniture together.

We made one outing in the morning to trade in our Sienna for a new Scion. I don’t have access to a picture yet but right after we bought it someone led us to an empty warehouse to take a picture for the website, for real. I liked our van for the ease of strapping in baby seats, but my wife claims she never made a connection — we had it for four years but apparently forgot to give it a name. Our baby seat days are behind us and we’ll be using the car less frequently so the benefit of a smaller payment outweighs the smaller leg room and space. After one day with it my wife remarked, “There’s our nugget” when she saw it next to a larger car and “Nugget” became its name from then on.

For lunch we tried another burger place, which the dealer recommended: this one local called the Helvetia Tavern. Based on the ambiance I was mentally writing into this post that I had found the Portland Abbey Road, but I wasn’t overly impressed with the burger. I liked the patties which were thin and square like Wendy’s, but fussed over the bun which was not embellished at all. I love when the bread is unique or toasted and buttered. However, writing about this burger has made me crave another one at Helvetia, so there’s that.

For dinner we had my favorite at-home meal: sweet and sour chicken and rice from Trader Joe’s.

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Next time: downtown Portland, a memory tour, and extreme pizza

Ready to Start: Part 1/3

Blog-y posts about our drive to Beaverton, OR and week of settling in.

Prologue Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

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Day 1

For sanity, posterity, and fun we kept a log of milestones, things we saw, and activities we did on the drive. You’ll notice two sets of handwriting and we used four different colors depending on the entry type. Here’s the page for Day 1: Sunday, May 22 for the 620 miles from Maumee, Ohio to Greenfield, Iowa:

As promised, the first thing we did after getting on the Ohio Turnpike was listen to Okkervil River’s I Am Very Far. We still listen to it once or twice a day and are enjoying it more each time. Another album we enjoyed and continue to enjoy is Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane over the Sea. Cool readers probably know about it already, but I just discovered it as a going away gift. So good and it was bumped among the first three vinyl albums I ordered for our new turntable setup.

“P & P” refers to a stop for two words that begin with P. The term was coined by my dad and I remember the exact moment that he invented it. When I was in the seventh or eighth grade he used to let me ride along while he drove to several grocery stores in Indiana or Michigan to talk to meat managers or stick coupons onto products. While exiting the highway at one stop he said, “We can get some pop here, and go pee. Hey, those both begin with P. P and P.” and then chuckled. It’s been observed that my dad is Hank Hill.

“FCRS” stands for “crazy rain storm”. One of those where for a terrible span of seconds the windshield wipers could not keep up. Come on wipers!

It was supposed to be my wife’s pick for lunch, but options were limited and she was waffling a bit, so I offered to give her my dinner pick to stop at a place declaring itself “Best Wings USA”. They turned out to be the same as Wild Wings Cafe in Raleigh (not a bad thing!); even the graphics in the menu for the sauce choices looked similar. I think there’s some common corporate DNA there or something. Around dinnertime I made the mistake of rubbing my eyes and a severe case of eye strain came on out of nowhere. I had to take the next exit with tears running down my face and of course eye drops were $7 at the gas station. They had me and they knew it! I wanted to take a break and eat dinner, but the only choices at the exit were an unknown Mexican place and KFC/Taco Bell. We went with the devil we knew (is that the right way to use that expression?), to the horror of my wife who’s the editor of Life’s Healthy Journeys.

Day 2

The 746 miles from Greenfield to Rawlins, Wyoming:

We stayed at a Super 8 for all three nights, having gotten addicted to the sub-$80 room rate. Right outside of the lobby door in the morning was this mangled apple in the middle of a linear trail of splatter in two directions. I was so curious about how it got there: was it thrown from outside or did someone come out to throw it? I asked my wife to take a picture and she recoiled, then stated the obvious that the apple had been thrown *up* by someone (i.e. puked). That made sense and explained the splatter. But I'm still curious about whether it was road sickness or someone that was drunk, and if the latter whether the apple was eaten before or after the getting drunk.

Although it didn't get to that point, the puke turned out to be a harbinger for what would begin with an innocent stop for gas and snacks in the morning. I remember asking my wife for a "big drink" and a surprise snack. She came out with a 64 (!) oz. cup, some strange taco flavor of Dorito's, and two Heath-topping'd donuts. We shared one donut and I was going to save the second, then traffic came to a standstill an hour later and I ate the second one: with no way to leave the highway I might have been starving! Between the wings, Taco Bell, Dorito's, and donuts my body was not a happy temple. I vowed to have a salad for dinner, but by that time I was feeling good again and thought it would be dandy to have ribs and fries at an Outback. I ate all but the last rib and bushel of fries, and suddenly realized that I had to stop. "Dave, if you take one more bite the next trail of splatter in a parking lot will be your's." But splatter aside, almost getting sick isn't much more pleasant than getting sick, maybe less so. So for that night and the next day, I suffered.

Without really meaning to, one P (I’ll let your imagination decide which) stop happened to be here.

Day 3

The 734 miles between Rawlins and Baker City, Oregon:

This time I stuck with my resolution to eat better: McDonald’s oatmeal (without the brown sugar that makes that such a treat!) for breakfast and soup for lunch and dinner at Chili’s and Applebee’s. If you’ve never been to Chili’s with me, you will not understand how pitiful it is that I only had soup. Soup! FWIW, both places had both synchronized on potato bacon soup that day.

There was less variety in the entertainment because my wife had had the inspired idea that we could both respectively watch and listen to DVDs on our portable player by putting one ear bud in my ear. I listened to seven episodes of season 5 of my favorite show, The Wire: a great day stomach notwithstanding.

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Next: our arrival in Beaverton, some big spending, and a nugget.