After a quick stop at Archie Mcphee’s we headed south on I-5 to Portland. Archie Mcphee’s is one of the strangest stores I’ve ever been in. If you need an inflatable beard, a plastic chicken (or rat, bat, or woodchuck) or, say, bacon lip balm, then that’s the place to go (www.mcphee.com ).
We arrived in Portland just in time for the final stages of the great trampoline assembly. For her birthday, Ken had bought a huge trampoline for Keili. The size, on every scale except one, was overwhelming. It was huge with thousands of parts. The only area it came up short was the instructions on how to assemble the thing. Ken Sr had been working on it for a couple of days. He had figured most of it out, but by the time we arrived he was done. The only steps remaining was assembling the netting around the trampoline to contain the inevitable flying kid.
Andy, Kelli’s uncle arrived on the scene and together we put up the netting. The wrong way. But then we figured it out, reworked it and had things pretty well done except for a few hundred knots to tie the netting down. Finally it simply got too dark to make headway and we went in for Judy’s Swedish Meatball dinner.
Within the waterpark there are rooms with themes. Kelli’s was in a nautical room and her pizza and cake was served on a large table shaped like a boat. Just outside these rooms there are dozens of little kiosks with math problems, brain twisters, and other factoids that were fun and entertaining. Bobby did pretty good at the problems.
(Answer at the end of this post)
Bobby, with his built-in life jacket in his spiderman swim suit, just started kindergarten. But he reads like a second going on third grader. He was the only boy in a sea of girls.
Kelli and her friends were given a little science experiment before lunch involving a non-Newtonian fluid. A non-Newtonian fluid has the properties of both a solid and a liquid (yeah, I just learned that). Held loosely, it’s a liquid, but when handled roughly it’s a solid. It’s weird. And fun. The girls seemed to love it.
After pizza and cake it was off to the pool. Ken Jr, Sr. and Juli gave heroic performances staying in the pool with the girls (and Bobby) and a few hundred others. It was fun to watch. For a while. Then Bobby’s dad, Rob, mentioned that he belonged to a couple of wine clubs and was off to the nearby vineyards to pick up some wine.
Nearby vineyards? This is truly a great area.
In about 10 minutes we were at Carlton vineyards tasting a nice, crisp pinot gris followed by several abundantly acceptable pinot noir’s. The afternoon was really turning out to be wonderful.
We climbed back into the car and on the way back, stopped in at Troon vineyards on a whim. Rob had never heard of them, but there was something inviting about the front of the winery. We took a flier and headed in.
What a gem. Troon’s grapes are from Southern Oregon, and there was not one Pinot in the line up which was unusual given the area we were in. Their wines were bigger and bolder and they had nice cheese and jam pairings for their tastings. Wonderful.
We had been naming wines by the days of the week – Wednesday Wine was something for the middle of the week, pleasant, but nothing special. Say to go with a quick pasta dinner. Tuesday wines were a little worse than that, Thursday wines were higher in the pecking order. Troon’s wines were in the Friday/Saturday range.
After about an hour and a half of good conversation and wine tasting we headed back the huge building with the 747 on top and thousands of screaming kids. The rest of the party was just wrapping things up. Jodi and I rode with Rob, Christina and Bobby and hit one more winery on the way. It was Joe Dobbes winery which was excellent.
Dinner for the evening was at Ken Jr’s house, home of a newly completed HUGE trampoline.
We picked up some Salmon and other makings for dinner on the way and arrived to happy bouncing kids and a rather frantic Ken Jr pacing back and forth in front of his TV.
Ken had gone to NC State and closely follows college football. Down 16 to zero at the half against the number 3 ranked Florida Seminoles, NC State wolfpack seemed well outgunned. The Seminoles were aiming for a national championship.
When we walked in, the Wolfpack had blocked a Florida punt and the momentum appeared to be changing. Could the unranked Wolfpack really pull a shocker of an upset? That question hung rather heavy causing Ken Jr to pace in front of the TV with periodic outbursts.
Jodi prepared the appetizers, salad, and topping for the salmon with quite a bit of noise and distraction in the room.
Ken and I worked the grill and the salmon. It was an aerobic workout for Ken, dashing in to check on the score, as the final seconds wound down. The score was 16 to 10, the Wolfpack behind, but marching down the field with precious little time to go. Twice it got down to 4th down, twice they made 4th down conversions to keep the drive alive. Clock ticking down (quick! Flip the salmon), a third 4th down, with only 3 yards to go, the final play with no time left.
Touch down Wolfpack! Point after good. Unranked underdog shocks the college football world. Crowds go crazy, one of which was in a suburban Portland house.
Jodi’s Salmon turned out wonderfully and dinner was great!
And the answer to the brain twister?
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