On Sunday I finally, after 6 years, got to go up for an acquisition flight in one of our company's Cessna Caravan's with our UltraCam Eagle camera. We were acquiring 3 inch resolution imagery for the entire Portland Metro area and I will be the project lead for the data when it is all acquired. That, and the fact that it is now the city we live in and our house will be imaged with both LiDAR and hi-res photos, made this flight even more special. 
Dude's Night Out... This was just plain epic. Aaron, a friend from work, who's last name I'll leave blank decided it would be a fun time to invite Eric and I out for a dude's night out at some sketchy bars along North Lombard Street in Portland. Eric bailed and after several of his friends called off I was ready to bail too but he was determined and said he was going out regardless at 8pm to the MouseTrap and that I should meet him out... Challenge... Accepted!
When I got to the bar I found Aaron with about 5 friends.... including a heavily inked girl whose name for the night I was told would be "Steve" I believe... All of them were great people. A couple were co-workers and a couple were his old bandmates. They all welcomed me warmly to the drunkfest. Game on! 
I'm not going to go into details about what happened because what happens on Dude's Night Out stays there. Some highlights though.... skeevy bars (Mouse Trap, Sweet Home and The Perch), scary drunk old men, massive amounts of arm wrestling (which I won until the 250lb Karoake WWE wrestler dude finally beat me), stolen shopping carts, really, really bad karoake skills, and steering Aaron on his bike into a bush. Thankfully, besides my dignity, I didn't lose anything and actually made it home by 3am all the way from St. Johns which I don't even remember biking too. Needless to say my Saturday was a total waste.... but worth the epic memories.... perhaps.... :) Oh, and although we were drinking all night and had many many many beers and cocktails I don't think any of us spent more than $30... yeah, those kind of bars....
This weekend Emily and I joined Nicole, Ian, Coleen, Jake, Richard, ____ and Chris Harmon for a wonderful weekend on the Mckenzie River in central Oregon. We left Leo with friends in Portland and headed south on Saturday morning to meet up with everyone else who had camped Friday night at the McKenzie Bridge Airfield in Blue River, OR. We got an early start and met everyone around 10am at the upper trailhead for the Mckenzie River bike trail near Clear Lake. They were a little late to arrive which was good as it took us a little bit to get our bikes put together from the back of the Prius. Read on for all the details
Tonight we had a wonderful night of wine and homemade pizza at Arley and Katie's. Of course Ryan was there to teach us how to make everything correctly. Anna also joined us for the good times. This was special for Emily and I as it was the first time we had gotten out of our new home for a local get together. We were so excited we put Leo on a leash and biked over to their place which was a little far for poor Leo who was out of shape and too hot in the summer heat. He made it but looked pooped for the rest of the night and thankfully Ryan gave us a ride home in the Red Dragon. We finished off the night with a great bonfire in the backyard.
Our first home! This past April, after about two months of looking, our wonderful realtors Karim and Jessica showed us a wonderful looking home in the Piedmont neighborhood of Portland. We checked it out for about 20 minutes on a Friday after work with Karim. We asked Karim if we should put an offer in... we were hesitant and worried about the chances of a better place coming up. He looked at us and simply said, "you two need to buy this house". Well.. that was that and we put an offer in that night along with a nice letter about how amazing it would be to start a family there. Read on for more photos.
This weekend Anna Li asked a bunch of friends to come over and help paint her shed which she affectionately named "Jerry". She and a few friends sketched out an amazing scene and outlined it with markers. All we had to do was fill in between the lines with paint. It actually took a bit longer than we thought but by the time it began to get dark and Anna and other left for the Portland naked bike ride we had pretty much finished. 
This year there were 10,000 people who got on their bikes buck naked for the ride.... definitely not for me but super cool that that sort of thing happens in our wonderful city. On Sunday they wrapped up the mural and the shed turned out amazing. Very creative Anna Li!
This Saturday our friends Sarah and Adam got married at the “Grange Dance Hall” (Cody and Nicole’s Barn next to their house in Shedd, OR). We drove down in the afternoon after we had a semi-successful tag sale in our driveway in the morning trying to get rid of as much as we could before our move to Portland. Their wedding was at 7 so we had time to meet up with Chris and Paris before hand to check out their new house on Kings Ave and also get some food at Cafe Yum in downtown Corvallis before heading over in the Prius. 
Their wedding was very beautiful in a barn that was protected from the rain that evening and was lit by literally hundreds of candles. The ceremony was very nice and lasted about 20 minutes with a lot of emotions. Out of the wedding party I knew Adams friend Bill and out of the Bridesmaides I knew Stacy and Nicole Younger. We saw Ben and Tiah and their boys as well as Ian, Colleen, Martin, Brian Carrington and of course Cody with Jesse who was an amazing host as was Nicole. They had about 5 long tables of deserts for after the wedding and a yummy shrimp gumbo that I helped myself too. I was a bit hungover from Josh’s backyard party the night before in Portland so it was great to get a bunch of good food in me. 
Throughout the evening there were musicians on stage playing guitar and singing, including a few Chris Holm classics and I finally got to see the Grange Hall Drifters play (Adam’s band with Bill). They were really amazing and their songs were a lot of fun. I set up the DSLR to record video from a table below so I could send Sarah and Adam the video later as a surprise as I think I was the only one recording. Adam is an amazing performer and song writer (as is Holm) and I hope to see them play again someday. We were both so happy for the two of them as they make a great couple and I have no doubt their marriage will last and little ones will be on the way soon I bet!
Just a post with a few photos of what we all did for our boss’s birthday at work. It certainly took a while but it seemed like everyone contributed to blowing up a few balloons. Matt was certainly surprised when he got to the office. Watching him push his way through them to his desk was pretty fun. They stayed there for a few more days until he began blowing them into the office with a fan. 
Ryan put tacks in a cardboard poster tube (his “boom stick”) and made quick work of killing them at our end of the office. But this was after he made “balloon angels” in Matt’s room and I swam through a wall of them myself. Pretty fun, and cool that we work in an office where this kind of stuff is not only ok, but sometimes encouraged….
This Easter Emily and I traveled down to Corvallis to have dinner and drinks with friends at Tim and Lindsay’s new home in South Corvallis. They have a great place with a big backyard and plenty of garage space for all their gear. They were graciously continuing on the tradition that Kev and Alexa had started years ago and the majority of us all came dressed in our Sunday best. Unfortunately, due to work obligations we were missing Scooter and Jason and Danielle was in California on vacation. 
In the morning I awoke to both girls laughing at me. Apparently, as I usually do at Jason’s, I got up for the bathroom and ended up heading into the wrong bedroom and climbing into bed with the wrong woman! ha! As Jen tells it, “Jon climbed into bed and I said, “Ellinger??”, and he said, “Krebs??” and then started chuckling to himself”….. That’s when I climbed slowly out of bed and wandered back to the right room and correct wife all while Jenn was giggling behind me. In the morning I woke up and had no recollection of the event at all! When Jason got home a few hours later after we had taken the dogs for a nice walk in the park he got a kick out of the story as well… :) It was a great weekend with friends for sure with a story I’m sure will be remembered….
On Saturday Emily and I decided to make the best of the nice warm weather and headed out past Hood River for some high desert mountain biking on the Washington side of the Columbia River. We shuttled cars and biked a 31 mile “Rail-to-Trail” loop down Swale Canyon and then the Klickitat River to Lyle, WA. It was a beautiful day and we saw lots of wildlife. Click the title to read on….
On Saturday after interviewing a Real Estate agent and stocking up on groceries, Emily and I joined Katie, Arley and Ryan for a night at the Roller Derby. We met them first at the Oaks Bottom Public House in Southeast Portland for some Totchos (Tots with Nacho toppings) good beer, and great clam chowder. I had wings which I hadn’t had in a long time and the mess was worth it! After a few pints we headed over to the Oaks Bottom Fairgrounds for the Roller derby. To our surprise it was mostly girls that seemed no older than Jr. High… Apparently this was the finals for them, which is why the tickets were $20 each. The rules of Roller Derby are pretty unique and it was certainly “interesting” watching the young girls push each other around and knock each other over on old school roller-skates. The tall boy cans of PBR and Girl Scout cookies for sale there helped.
We watched a match and a half and Emily and I kept losing to Katie who seemed to be good at guessing the winning team (I owed her a beer on the way out). Since it was still pretty early and there was a Timbers game on TV we headed into town to watch the Timbers pull off an amazing last second game tying goal before heading to Life of Pie for some late night pizza. The Margharetta pizza was the best I’d had in a long time. Although it was an odd night watching young roller derby girls I did get a roll-by high five from “Jill the Ripper” and it was a lot of fun hanging out with Arley, Katie and Ryan as usual.
When I woke up I didn’t have any plans for us for the day but since Emily had Friday off she had done some thinking and suggested we go check out a clam chowder competition. This pleased me in two ways - 1. Emily never really puts any effort into suggesting weekend activities for us although I often suggest she think about it, and 2. I love clam chowder! So, we headed down to the Lompoc Brewery and got in line at about 1pm. The event was supposed to last until 4pm but when we arrived they had already run out of one of the 12 chowders there. By the time we were done enjoying and rating our 11 small cups of chowder the even was closed because they had run out! We were happy to have arrived when we did. We each voted for our favorite chowder and handed in our ballots before leaving happy with full stomachs. 
Tonight Ryan Anderson finally made the long journey up to our place to cook dinner for us. He made the same delicious pasta meal with fresh slipper bread that I had eaten with him at his place earlier in the fall. Arley and Katie also joined us for dinner. Because of traffic and where we live nobody arrived at our place until nearly 8pm so our planned World War Z movie didn’t happen but it was great to have an amazing freshly prepared dinner with our new Portland friends!
