Away We Go.

Checking something on my phone at the Hotel Oregon in McMinnville.

Portland Oregon has gotten so foodie that I feel like San Francisco has lost it’s cool. Not only does every lad above the age of 22 have a mustache, he has a fantastically crafted waxed gravity-defying plume of hair extruding from below his nostrils. Sometimes it even coexists with other dandy hairs from his face or neck.

It’s just so damned hip it hurts.

I feel full too. In Portland everyone is eating good food. Good cheap food. Of course there are those restaurants where you pay for white shirt and tie service, but when you see the pile of food on your arriving plate you have to sigh with disbelief that they expect you to eat this much!  Timothy’s cassoulet was as big as a Pyrex pie plate. NO kidding.

We went up North for Timothy’s birthday. We drove around the Willamette Valley and tasted the wares from small family owned wineries. It was definitely NOT the Napa, or even Sonoma experience that is had 600 miles south nearer to my house. Sure we visited the faux chateaux and paid $15 a sip for the opportunity to taste a fine Oregon pinot noir. But you look around the green countryside and you realize that although there are so many new wineries on Oregon’s horizon there will always be lot’s of other crops growing amongst the grape vines, and I hope this never ceases to be the case.

Maybe I’m just being nostalgic? I moved from PDX to start the family winery. Ten years later my family no longer speaks to each other. I gave up something of myself to keep the family farm. And all I got of note was loneliness, a divorce, and a ruptured family with no relationship. But I bring to this a stronger feeling of what I am now. What it means to me to work with my hands and feet. That doing something for others does not mean that it’s wanted or that it is always wasted.

Outside my window as I type this the wind howls through the tall trees that I’m lucky to live amongst. My home is solid. It’s what we make of it: my cats, my son, Timothy, and those whom I call friends.

Thanks for the experience.