Another Busy Saturday

Marie's friend, Rose, spent Friday night with us at our house. She is pregnant and Marie is going to be the Douala at the birth. We discussed education and pregnancies for a few hours and then went to bed. On Saturday Marie and I had a race to get to at 11. We all ate breakfast together and then Rose headed to Portland and Marie and I headed to the Coast Range to participate in the Trask Mountain Assault.

The Assault is awesome. It is a cross-country race sponsored by our high school. They race middle schools, high schools and there is an open division. I ran it last year and was trying to train for it this year. There are 2 river crossings and 4 mud bogs, as well as 2 ...um...puddles is the closest word for it. The worst part is that there is a .5 mile uphill climb to the top of Trask. It is a killer. This year I walked 3/4 of it. The mud is awesome. There is a downhill which they fill with mud, and I sat on my butt and "sledded" down the hill slaloming past other runners. It saved me a lot of time. Marie did the same thing.

I am not sure times or places this week. I finished right around 30 minutes. Last year my time was around 33:30, so I knocked off about 3 minutes. Marie finished under 35 I am pretty sure.
We returned home, sore, tired and filthy. Marie hosed off our clothes, and we both took extended time on our showers.

Marie took a nap, and I decided to finish up a wine rack that was a project I started a few weeks ago. We did not have any nails or screws so I picked up some supplies this week. I made the rack out of wood in our fire wood pile. I have no idea how old it is, or when/where it came from. It is 2 old 2X6's and some tongue and groove pieces that could be from an old floor? All the tools I had were a hand saw, hammer, nails, measuring tape and I used a cordless drill to help make initial holes on some pieces. It turned out ok (better than Marie expected) but it isn't great. It will work for our needs though.

After that, Marie and I drove to Portland to see Beethoven's 9th Symphony from the Oregon Symphony. It was incredible. It is one of my favorite pieces because of the use of voice and chorus in a symphony. Also the 2nd movement is just fun. I saw a fellow Mac Teacher there and Marie ran into a friend at intermission. At the end of the show, people were leaping out of the seats to give ovations. Myself included. When the choir hit the finale and the Ode to Joy that we all know to well, I teared up and my heart was full. Incredible. Afterwards, Marie and I joined her friend, Jess and her boyfriend John, to go to a cocktail bar and had drinks and dessert. It was another big Saturday and Marie asked me which race and concert is next week. My only answer is that the Portland Marathon is next Saturday........

Habitat Run

Marie and I took part in a 4-mile run for Local Habitat for Humanity. I have been running most of September and part of August. There were 2mile, 4 mile, 9 mile and 13 mile options. I ran the 4 mile and took 4th. I ran unofficially at 27:40. I am happy with under 7 minute miles. Marie ran around 32 minutes, so she made 8 minute miles. Lots of high school students were volunteers and it was fun to see them all out on a Saturday morning. We are headed to Portland tonight to watch a fellow teacher who plays in a band.
Next weekend there is a race called Trask Mountain Assault. I ran the race last year and it includes mud bogs, a 1/2 mile climb and muddy mountain trails. It is a 5k that is awesome. I am hoping to better my time from last year and complete the whole race running. I will post pictures and official times if I get them.

Wine Bottling

Today, Marie and I volunteered to help a local winemaker bottle some of his 2007 wines. We showed up at around 8 am and they were still setting up. The Carlton wine makers are small scale, and it is not worth the money for them to invest in their own bottling equipment (~$100,000). When they want to bottle, they pay a traveling bottling trailer to help them. The winemaker purchases the bottles, labels, foil, cork, and the trailer operators help out. There were 10 volunteers there today, and only 4 had ever helped with a bottling.

After introductions, coffee and scones, we all mounted into the trailer. Marie, myself, and another OSU alum named Josh were assigned foiling. This consisted of putting aluminum caps on bottles after they are corked and before they are labeled. Our first 20 bottles we had the wrong foil caps and they had to be removed. WHOOPS!

Once we got going we cruised through lunch. We bottled Atticus Wines 2007 pinot noir and 2007 pinot select. It was monotonous, but I loved the music that was pumping through the speakers. The wife of the Atticus winemaker made a terrific lunch for the crew. We all sat in the sun and chatted. The two winemakers there invited our classes to the vineyard anytime for field trips, although I am not sure I could get the high school principal to sign onto letting sophomores go tour wine country.

After lunch, Marie helped with loading boxes of bottles and handing them to the person who put them on the beginning of the conveyor belt. We began to bottle the Raptor Ridge (a different wine maker) pinot noir from 2007. I continued with the aluminum caps. After a short break at 2, I assumed the position of putting bottles on the conveyor belt. The empty bottles come packed in a twelve-case box with one end open. I picked up the box, squeezed, and gently poured the bottles onto a table and slid them onto the belt. It was good physical labor. Marie took a position at the end of the line putting the full, labeled, corked, and foiled bottles into the boxes I had emptied. At the end, we were finished feeding bottles, but needed more empty boxes to package the full bottles and I smashed the only bottle of the day. Bummer.

We stopped at 3:30 and everyone was smiling. We bottled over 1200 cases (12 bottles a case). For our labor Marie and I walked out with 5 bottles of wine, all valued between $28-$40. Although it was assembly line work, if we can find a few weekends to volunteer and earn wine, I think we will be happy. I included a video of the pouring station. In the back right you can see the foilers putting on caps!

Open Mic

In my local town of 1000 people there is a little wine and cheese shop that does live music Friday and Saturday nights. They fill the house with fun blues and folk music.
They just recently began open mic nights on Wednesdays. I went the first week and it seemed there were only three artists that night, myself included. I played three tame comedy songs, two of which I wrote and the crowd (10? people) asked for one more. I looked at the owner and she seemed okay with pushing the line a little. I played a fourth song, but as I saw the owner's face turn red, I knew my time was up.


I came back this week at the request of some friends and when I walked in, the owner was gone and only the wine pourer, a server and the open mic host were there. Marie, myself and one friend were the only others there. The gentlemen asked me to play my more questionable tunes, so I obliged. I played 5 songs, of all levels of rudeness and then finished with the Last Saskatchewan Pirate. As I finished a couple with homemade wooden flutes and a conga drum showed up. They were very fun to listen to. I feel bad that the open mic nights are not better attended, but then again I can play some dirty songs that I wrote.

My set list for next week:
Amurika (my song about our great country)
Rippy the Gator (Arrogant Worms)
Carrot Juice is Murder (Arrogant Worms)
Coffee Shop love song (AKA bavarian creme donut)
Rock Hair Song (the true story of my hair)

School

School started this week and Marie and I are back in our classrooms. I am teaching 6 classes of sophomore general physical science, and Marie is teaching 6th and 7th grade science. This week went way better than our first week of last year. We both feel like we have set our classrooms up for success, and that our students are responding better. I think it is because we have a year under our belt, but I also feel that the students are more receptive.

Life is good. We are getting back into the routine of things and dealing with unpleasantness. I hope everyone is having a great start to their Septembers.