Doug and Tully had split Thorns Season Tickets this year and he couldn’t make the game on Saturday so he gave the tickets to Emily and I to enjoy. It was yet another spring rainy weekend so it became the highlight of our weekend. As usual we grabbed some of our favorite pizza before the game. The seats Doug had were pretty close to the field and just under the awning above us but we were lucky to have the rain hold off for the length of the winning game! Thanks Doug!
The original plan this weekend was to go for a road ride on Saturday and then climb Mt. St. Helens for Mothers Day on Sunday. Unfortunately, the weather had other plans for us. Instead, we were fortunate to get a call from our friend Nicole from Shedd, OR who was interested in coming up for a visit Friday night. That led to us connecting with Chris, Marissa and Colleen who we rarely get to see. Read on..
It’s hard to believe that it has been a full 10 years since the first night I met my wife at the City Tavern in Saratoga Springs, NY. We were introduced to each other by Mike Lamanto who I had met through John Hughes, whom I had become good friends with through the Jones family. Ahhh connections. 7 years and a wonderful dog later, on the other side of the continent we married each other and a year later we have a house together. It’s been quite the ride. We celebrated with a wonderful dinner window-side at the Portland City Grill but I thought I’d take the time here to list off some of the highlights of our past 10 years together.
Convincing Emily to move out west and a great Cross Country Trip together doing soEmily’s support while I got my Masters Degree, tore my ACL and lost my fatherOur engagement trip to Hawaii where we got engaged on top the largest volcano in the world and sailed off the Napali coast of Kauai and swam chest-to-chest with 2,000 lb manta rays.
Our amazing vineyard wedding with family and friends and Mt. Hood in the distance.Our many backpacking, rafting, biking, and ski mountaineering adventures throughout the Cascade Volcanoes and peaks of the Pacific Northwest and countless nights under the stars.
Trekking, kayaking, and visiting penguins in the Patagonia region of Argentina and Chile on our honeymoon.Rafting, Zip-lining and exploring the forests, rivers, and wildlife of Costa Rica on our honeymoon.
Giving our beloved Leo a home whom has become the centerpiece of our lives together and the love of all our family and friends.Purchasing our first home and redesigning it as a social location for our friends, and even a convenient office as I switched jobs.
And most recently, our amazing trip to Tanzania where we summited Kilimanjaro, our first “7 summit” and had numerous close encounters with wildlife as well as cultural experiences we will never forget.
This weekend Mike D, Andy, his buddy Sam and I planned to ski the Wy’East Face of Mount Hood. By mid-week the weather was looking perfect for an early Sunday morning ascent and corn skiing at 10,000 feet but the mountain weather had other plans when we woke up. Instead of the Wy’East we had a wonderful day skiing corn off the east shoulder of Pea Gravel Ridge and even got to skin up the entire length of the ridge to just underneath the Newton Clark Glacier. Read on…
I just got back from another business trip to Phoenix. As usual I can't talk publicly about who we did work for or even the partners or platforms we used... which were cutting edge, expensive and freaking amazing! What I can briefly talk about is the cool Kildeer bird we saw protecting it's eggs in the back lot of the Scottsdale Cardno Office, the great people I worked with and the great views I had from our job site, both of mountains and cool critters!
With Emily gone this weekend to Waldport for a girls weekend on the coast I decided to get Leo out of the house for a bit. Leo’s getting a little creaky with age so instead of an epic 3,000 ft climb in the gorge we stuck to a couple hundred feet over 4 miles up the Wauna Viewpoint off of the Eagle Creek trailhead for some views over the Bonneville Dam and the Gorge. Read on…
Just a quick note that Emily and I had a wonderful time going to see Heiroglyphics with Conrad at the Wonder Ballroom tonight! Bad Habitat opened for them and were also amazing. It was great to see Deltron there (although he was high as hell) and Pep Love was great on stage. Their performance was short, under an hour, with no encore, but it was worth it for sure at the small venue. We had some bbq dinner at the People's Pig before heading over. Sad note of the night was hearing that Phife Dawg from the iconic Tribe Called Quest had passed away. RIP Phife.
This year Emily and I were able to get 4 weekends in at Meadows Ski Resort. First with Ian where I got stuck in a tree well taking a safety break in the woods with him. Then a couple times by ourselves where I relived my youth hitting the terrain park with a bunch of mute 360's and the half pipe where I can still boost out above the rim, although all of this was much less graceful than it was five years ago.
Our most recent day was with Eric when we met up with Porter and some others after only about 3 runs on very wet, sticky snow for a bbq in one of the parking lots. It was a short day skiing but a good time meeting good people at the BBQ, one of which, Peter, is a guide on Denali and had some good beta for me. A great connection. Not much skiing for us this year with Africa in the middle but at least the mountains got more snow this year than the last 2 combined!
Just days after our yard remodel was finished and our hot tub was installed and heated up Jen and Jason came up for an early Easter dinner/birthday dinner for Eric on Saturday night before we went out for the annual bar crawl. It was a great weekend of friends, drinking, and enjoying for the first time our new backyard! Read on…
I late January Emily and I had taken a Saturday to go check out the home and yard show at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum. We had done so with the idea of getting some initial research done on landscape companies that might re-do our yard this late summer/fall when we had saved enough money for the work. Read on....
This weekend Emily was visiting family on the East Coast after one of her now monthly work trips to Atlanta. I was invited by Jason to come down to Corvallis for the night and head to Shore Acres Park on Sunday just south of Coos Bay for a photoshoot of some enormous waves that would be hitting the coast from a storm system offshore. Read on…
This year Emily and I once again hosted the SuperBowl. Mike and Jess didn't make it down for the game and there wasn't much interest from anyone in the area because nobody we knew were actual fans of the Ravens or the Broncos, but it was the 50th Super Bowl so there had to be good commercials... And a good game of football is always worthy of a gathering.
The game also served as a great way to bring old QSI friends and our colleagues back together. Baqar, Ryan, Brian, and Matt all came over as well as Jason, Lindsay, Nate, Anna, Josh, Misty, Conrad, Tom, Andrea and Eric so it was a good showing. There were some decent commercials but the highlight was seeing everyone's favorite Patton Manning win the close game with a late touchdown that gave him the win for likely the final game of his career. Ryan had made spicy pork soft tacos and there was lots of other good food and drinks. Good times to end the pigskin season.
Doug and Tully had split Thorns Season Tickets this year and he couldn’t make the game on Saturday so he gave the tickets to Emily and I to enjoy. It was yet another spring rainy weekend so it became the highlight of our weekend. As usual we grabbed some of our favorite pizza before the game. The seats Doug had were pretty close to the field and just under the awning above us but we were lucky to have the rain hold off for the length of the winning game! Thanks Doug! 
This weekend was a rainy one so Emily and I decided to stay close to home. Instead of heading off for an adventure we decided to do some charter Salmon fishing on the Columbia with a an outfit called “Always Catching”. It was $125 for each of us and the owner, Jess, was super knowledgeable and happy to share tips with us. Although it rained the entire morning the boat landed two fish. The first one was caught by a local who had two visiting relatives with him but the 2nd and much bigger one was landed by me! Jess guessed it to be about 18-20lbs.
We fished from 6am to 10am and when we got back to the dock Jess cut up the fillets for us and was about to throw the head and bones out when I asked to keep them to make salmon stew. Em and I grabbed breakfast at a place down the road and then I spent the rest of the afternoon boiling the salmon flesh from the bone and making a terrific salmon stew that we enjoyed for several more days. 
There was about 3lbs of meat that would have gone straight to the Columbia if I hadn’t asked to keep it. Makes me want to hang out at the docs and ask for everyone else’s scraps as well!
Today I had a great afternoon riding Post Canyon in Hood River with Paris and Eric & Chris Holm. Chris had surprised me with an email on Friday afternoon about being in town and I had to bribe a local bike shop with beer to get my bike repair done early in the morning to join them. Emily hadn’t been feeling too good so she wasn’t able to make the ride. I had forgotten how much fun Post Canyon was to ride as the last time I had been there was 2007-8. 
Showers moved in as we were wrapping up our ride which made the final slide down the hillside amusing. We grabbed pizza and beer at Solstice along the Columbia and caught up on lives before I headed home. Can’t wait to go back to those trails with Emily!
The original plan this weekend was to go for a road ride on Saturday and then climb Mt. St. Helens for Mothers Day on Sunday. Unfortunately, the weather had other plans for us. Instead, we were fortunate to get a call from our friend Nicole from Shedd, OR who was interested in coming up for a visit Friday night. That led to us connecting with Chris, Marissa and Colleen who we rarely get to see. Read on..
It’s hard to believe that it has been a full 10 years since the first night I met my wife at the City Tavern in Saratoga Springs, NY. We were introduced to each other by Mike Lamanto who I had met through John Hughes, whom I had become good friends with through the Jones family. Ahhh connections. 7 years and a wonderful dog later, on the other side of the continent we married each other and a year later we have a house together. It’s been quite the ride. We celebrated with a wonderful dinner window-side at the Portland City Grill but I thought I’d take the time here to list off some of the highlights of our past 10 years together.
Our amazing vineyard wedding with family and friends and Mt. Hood in the distance.
Trekking, kayaking, and visiting penguins in the Patagonia region of Argentina and Chile on our honeymoon.
Giving our beloved Leo a home whom has become the centerpiece of our lives together and the love of all our family and friends.
And most recently, our amazing trip to Tanzania where we summited Kilimanjaro, our first “7 summit” and had numerous close encounters with wildlife as well as cultural experiences we will never forget.
This weekend Mike D, Andy, his buddy Sam and I planned to ski the Wy’East Face of Mount Hood. By mid-week the weather was looking perfect for an early Sunday morning ascent and corn skiing at 10,000 feet but the mountain weather had other plans when we woke up. Instead of the Wy’East we had a wonderful day skiing corn off the east shoulder of Pea Gravel Ridge and even got to skin up the entire length of the ridge to just underneath the Newton Clark Glacier. Read on…
This weekend Emily and I had planned on heading up to the Tilly Jane hut on Mt. Hood but after actually getting packed up and driving a bit towards it we hit a giant rainstorm in the gorge and decided to bail. There was no wood at cabin this time of year, everything was soaked, the trail would be a bog of mud and snow and I would have been hiking in my plastic ski mountaineering boots... and Leo if soaked would have been cold and stolen my sleeping bag so we decided to bail and head back to the house. 
But, we did decide to get leo out of the truck for a short walk around Latourell Falls which we hadn't been back to since our engagement photos in 2013. He enjoyed himself on the short loop hike and I got some HDR shots of the falls and historic highway bridge along with some macro shots of flowers and a really cool looking snail that we helped across the trail. Other than this short outing it was a pretty quiet weekend for the two of us after our work trips the week before.
I just got back from another business trip to Phoenix. As usual I can't talk publicly about who we did work for or even the partners or platforms we used... which were cutting edge, expensive and freaking amazing! What I can briefly talk about is the cool Kildeer bird we saw protecting it's eggs in the back lot of the Scottsdale Cardno Office, the great people I worked with and the great views I had from our job site, both of mountains and cool critters!
With Emily gone this weekend to Waldport for a girls weekend on the coast I decided to get Leo out of the house for a bit. Leo’s getting a little creaky with age so instead of an epic 3,000 ft climb in the gorge we stuck to a couple hundred feet over 4 miles up the Wauna Viewpoint off of the Eagle Creek trailhead for some views over the Bonneville Dam and the Gorge. Read on…
Just a quick note that Emily and I had a wonderful time going to see Heiroglyphics with Conrad at the Wonder Ballroom tonight! Bad Habitat opened for them and were also amazing. It was great to see Deltron there (although he was high as hell) and Pep Love was great on stage. Their performance was short, under an hour, with no encore, but it was worth it for sure at the small venue. We had some bbq dinner at the People's Pig before heading over. Sad note of the night was hearing that Phife Dawg from the iconic Tribe Called Quest had passed away. RIP Phife.
This year Emily and I were able to get 4 weekends in at Meadows Ski Resort. First with Ian where I got stuck in a tree well taking a safety break in the woods with him. Then a couple times by ourselves where I relived my youth hitting the terrain park with a bunch of mute 360's and the half pipe where I can still boost out above the rim, although all of this was much less graceful than it was five years ago.
Our most recent day was with Eric when we met up with Porter and some others after only about 3 runs on very wet, sticky snow for a bbq in one of the parking lots. It was a short day skiing but a good time meeting good people at the BBQ, one of which, Peter, is a guide on Denali and had some good beta for me. A great connection. Not much skiing for us this year with Africa in the middle but at least the mountains got more snow this year than the last 2 combined!
Just days after our yard remodel was finished and our hot tub was installed and heated up Jen and Jason came up for an early Easter dinner/birthday dinner for Eric on Saturday night before we went out for the annual bar crawl. It was a great weekend of friends, drinking, and enjoying for the first time our new backyard! Read on…
I late January Emily and I had taken a Saturday to go check out the home and yard show at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum. We had done so with the idea of getting some initial research done on landscape companies that might re-do our yard this late summer/fall when we had saved enough money for the work. Read on....
This weekend Emily was visiting family on the East Coast after one of her now monthly work trips to Atlanta. I was invited by Jason to come down to Corvallis for the night and head to Shore Acres Park on Sunday just south of Coos Bay for a photoshoot of some enormous waves that would be hitting the coast from a storm system offshore. Read on…
This year Emily and I once again hosted the SuperBowl. Mike and Jess didn't make it down for the game and there wasn't much interest from anyone in the area because nobody we knew were actual fans of the Ravens or the Broncos, but it was the 50th Super Bowl so there had to be good commercials... And a good game of football is always worthy of a gathering.
The game also served as a great way to bring old QSI friends and our colleagues back together. Baqar, Ryan, Brian, and Matt all came over as well as Jason, Lindsay, Nate, Anna, Josh, Misty, Conrad, Tom, Andrea and Eric so it was a good showing. There were some decent commercials but the highlight was seeing everyone's favorite Patton Manning win the close game with a late touchdown that gave him the win for likely the final game of his career. Ryan had made spicy pork soft tacos and there was lots of other good food and drinks. Good times to end the pigskin season.
