This month is Bike to Work month, and a good time for me to get back into commuting to work by bike. I’ve biked several times already over the last couple of months, but I’m going to try ride in more often.

I’ve started keeping a log of my miles, once a week I’ll post them in an entry like the one below:

Categories: WorkoutLog
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Seeing as we spend a great deal of time trying different pubs around the Northwest, and beyond, I thought it was time to start writing up some posts on our experiences.

The Brew Therapy website will be where they will be published. Over the last few weeks we’ve been to and reviewed:

• Brouwers Cafe, in Seattle, with disappointment.
• Hales Brewery & Pub, in Seattle, with enjoyment
• Tap House Grill, in Seattle, with much enjoyment
• Pike Place Pub, in Seattle, with some disappointment
• Collins Pub, in Seattle, with much satisfaction
• The Elephant & Castle, in Seattle, with satisfaction
• McGlinn’s Pub, in Wenatchee, with good food & service

I’ll be trying to add reviews as we visit places, and from time to time I’ll post on pdxbrit with links to each of the posts on Brew Therapy.

Categories: Brewing, Travel
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For the past eleven weeks I’ve been studying away in brewing school, a course from the American Brewers Guild. I’m about half way through the course, and have just taken my first exam. In June I’ll be spending a week Sacramento for a week of hands on experience and a final exam.

You can read all about my experiences on my Brew Therapy website by clicking this link.

Categories: Brewing
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At the end of January we adopted a new member of the household, a little black and white kitten, from a friend of a friend. She had taken in a stray pregnant cat and had been looking after the litter of six kittens. We were originally going to pick up the little fella after Christmas when he was just 6-8 weeks old, but unfortunately we had to wait until tests for feline leukemia came back clear.

For the first four weeks we had him we failed to agree on a name for him, I’ve been calling him ‘Trigger’, Dude, Dave and Oi get off the table. Kari’s been calling him all sorts of names too ‘Sir Pickles’ was pretty much the worse..

After some deliberation we stuck with “The Dude”, or “El Duderino” if you’re not into the whole brevity thing.

Categories: Uncategorized
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Today Kari & I went up to the mountain to snowshoe at White River with Victor. The weather was pretty terrible, heavy rain on the way up, and was sort of sleet snowing by the time we got to White River.

This is the first time I’ve been up here in recent years and the parking lot was virtually empty. So although the weather wasn’t good it was wonderful being out in the woods for a few hours away from everyone!

No photos from this trip, but Kari & I did the same snowshoe trip in February on a absolutely stunning sunny winter day. It was so warm I had my sleeves rolled up. See the photos below.

Categories: Travel, Uncategorized
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We just spent a great week up in Wenatchee with Kari’s family for Christmas. We took off early on Friday for the drive up there, and stayed through till Thursday morning. It was a busy, but also relaxing week. Not only did we manage to cross-country ski around the orchard every day, but also managed to catch up with Mike & Wendy, and Erin, Shane, Sim & Conner as well.

The weather was stunning, the company was great. Always hard to come back to Portland after spending any time up here.

Categories: Social, Travel
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A few weeks ago I got a letter from Hawaiian Air telling me my paltry 3000 miles were about to expire. A couple of days later I received another letter from a company that calls itself “Magazines for Miles”. They offered subscriptions to various magazines in exchange for my pretty worthless air miles. So I signed up for a couple of magazines - The Smithsonian & Conde Naste Traveller.

We’ve had a few magazines now, which since we’ve started receiving I now realize that we don’t have time to read. Far worse unfortunately is that “Magazines for Miles” sells your mailing information to mass marketers. We now have a steady supply of junk mail addressed to the ’special’ misspelled address I used for the mailing.

The folks who operate “Magazines for Miles” is actually a company called The Synapse Group Inc. who describe themselves as :

The leading independent provider of customer acquisition and management services for US publishers of consumer magazines.

So lets see, they acquire air miles from folks, for whatever financial reward they make out of it. Then at the same time they probably receive enormous discounts from their clients the magazine publishers for the subscriptions the saps like me just took out. On top of that they then continue to market other magazine subscriptions to us.

Anyway, that was the long version. The short version is DO NOT SIGN UP WITH MAGAZINES FOR MILES unless you want lots more junk mail. Lots more!

Categories: Uncategorized
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Finally have most of the wedding photos on-line. There are still some coming in from friends and family. I’ll keep adding them as and when then come in.

If you have any photos that you haven’t sent us yet, drop me an email and let me know. We’ll figure out how to get your images to us. Thanks to everyone that has already sent us photos!

Categories: Brewing
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Saturday the 1st of September 2007 was my Stag Night, a full week before my Wedding day. Kari & I drove up to Seattle to meet my family who had just got in from a stay on the San Juan Island of Orcas.

My Best Man, Barry, had some great Polo shirts made up with a cool embroidered logo of a pint of beer and the US flag. He had enough made up for everyone who came along.
Tim took the train up from Portland, Bryan came in from Bellevue and Pat flew in from London. After meeting with the family at the Roosevelt Hotel Barry, Tim, Dad & Myself took a cab out the Brouwers Cafe in the Fremont district, and we met up with Bryan & Pat.

Brouwers is a great Belgian style bar that Kari & I visited on our last trip to Seattle. They have a huge selection of draft beers, many of them are Belgian, they also do some decent european food.

It was great to catch up with Pat & Bryan, its been about 9 years since Bryan & I have had a pint, and a couple since I last saw Pat. After a number of pints at Brouwers we started on a a quest to find a curry house. The one in Fremont was already closed, so we took a cab back into downtown. We strolled the streets of Seattle looking for an open curry house, with no luck at all.

We finally came across a place called ‘Tig’ an Asian Tapas bar near Pioneer Square. It was after 10pm so we decided we should just head in and see what we could get. It was a great pick, our server John was a Star! The menu was huge and he had no idea what to get, so we just asked him to keep bringing out his favorite foods. He did a top job, and as well as feeding us with some incredibly tasty bites he also kept the beer flowing.

Our next stop was to be a err… “Gentleman’s Club” for a little Stag Night entertainment. We asked our man John for some advice on where to go, he told of us a couple of places and then mentioned that in Washington you can either have Drinks or you can see Boobs, but not both at the same time. General consensus was for drinks so we skipped that idea and headed to another pub.

We managed to get last orders in at McCormick and Schmich’s just before they closed at 2.30am. On the way back to the hotel we tried to find one more watering hole, but they were all closed for the night. It was a great night, just what I wanted, low-key, just a few friends going out for drinks and dinner. The best thing was I wasn’t even hungover the following day!

Thanks to Tim, Barry, Bryan, Pat & Dad for a good night out!

Categories: Travel
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This last weekend Kari & I rushed out of town early and headed out to Central Oregon. We were planning to camp on the Metolius River, hopefully at our favorite campground - Allen Springs. After an early start at the office, I managed to leave early and we were packed and on the road before 4pm. We arrived in Camp Sherman around 7.40pm, only to find a sign stating “All campgrounds on this road are FULL”…. Bugger….

Well we didn’t let that stop us we tried five different campgrounds before we came to the conclusion that sign must be correct. What to do??? Try and find a cabin for the weekend, that would be spendy? Drive 3.5 hours back to Portland? Drive to Bend?

We tried two different lodging options and they were both full. The second place we tried also happened to an RV resort. The old timer running the place wouldn’t see us driving back to Portland, and said he could squeeze our tent in somewhere. He directs us to a lawn area right outside of a privately owned cabin and tells us we can stay there for the night for $20. Not wanting to head back to Portland we take him up on the offer. We’re told the guy that owns the cabin isn’t coming up that weekend and to make ourselves at home and use the fire pit and chairs too.

Just as we start unpacking the tent the owners of the cabin show up for their quiet weekend in the woods only to find to bums from Portland setting up home on their front lawn. Kari has a quick chat with the woman who owns the cabin, and she tells us to go ahead and camp there. It just doesn’t feel right though, we’re encroaching on another persons property and weekend, and of course there is not much privacy for ourselves.

We ummm’d and ahhhh’d over the decision for about 10 minutes, and the lady comes back out and tells us that they would really be happy with us staying. Her sister was apparently supposed to be camping with her children in front of the house but they were unable to come. She made us feel very welcome, and almost insisted we stayed. After the very kind pep talk we decided to stay, we unpacked and set up the tent. It still felt pretty awkward so we decided not to cook dinner, but we did start a fire.

It turns out our hosts were Harvey & Deb from Eugene, and we had the fire pit to ourselves for most of the night, but they eventually joined us around 10pm after we asked them several times. They really were wonderfully friendly people, and very easy to chat with. Harvey, it transpires, is also a home brewer! So our evening wasn’t a total loss, we thoroughly enjoyed chatting with unexpected hosts.

Saturday morning we packed up early, had a cup of tea, and then after bidding farewell to Harvey & Deb headed to the Canyon Park Meadow Trail and hiked to the base of Three Fingered Jack. What a fanastic hike! Just below the imposing Three Finger Jack is a beautiful meadow full of wild flowers. In the afternoon we headed over to Bend on the off chance we could get a hotel for the night. Our first choice, the McMenamins St. Francis School was fully booked but the receptionist suggested we tried the Phoenix Inn around the corner. It was very comfortable for a business chain.

We had a great evening in Bend, starting with a pint or two at Deschutes, followed by a quick trip to Bend Brewing Company, then over to High Tides for one of the best seafood meals I’ve had in quite some time. After dinner we had a night cap at the Bend Distillery Martini Bar.
What started off looking like a possible camping disaster turned into a great weekend!

Categories: Hiking, Travel
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