This year, or the latter half, at least, has been a big harvest year for us. And one of the things that goes along with harvesting your own produce (or whatever) is the packaging and storage: you don’t want the stuff you picked to go bad. So there’s been a lot of freezing and canning this year as well.

This is the first time I’ve ever canned, believe it or not. Me personally, I mean; my mother canned all sorts of things when I was growing up. But having never done it myself, it was always a bit mysterious as to the process; turns out, it’s very, very easy. Most of the work comes in processing the fruit before it even hits the jars.

Check it out:

• Our July trip to Hood River yielded a bunch of cherries and blueberries: about 12 pounds of the former and about three pounds of the latter. We vacuum-sealed and then froze them.
• Between my small hop vine and the hops at my parents’ place, I picked several pounds of hops, which yielded something like 11 or 12 ounces of dried hops. Which I’ll be brewing the next several batches of beer with.
• The four pounds of wild plums from my parents’ place that I blogged about yesterday is yielding one gallon of wine.
• Another fruit-picking trip to Hood River a couple of weeks ago netted us about 130 pounds of apples and pears. Literally. Plus we brought home 12 or so pounds of peaches. The peaches went into freezer jam, and I’ve made (and canned) applesauce, canned four quarts of sliced apples, and eight quarts of halved pears. So far; there is still a lot of fruit to go.
• Three nice tomato plants were very productive.
• Our small garden this year (which was flooded out by torrential rains in the spring) yielded a number of carrots, onions, and a bit of lettuce; one medium-sized pumpkin (which is still on the vine as of this writing), and even one very small watermelon!
• I have a giant bulb of fennel from my mom’s garden. And come to think of it, several pounds of frozen rhubarb from her garden earlier in the year, too.

There’s more canning to be done this weekend, and I’m also thinking up other things to possibly do with the pears and apples—but since my creativity in this area tends to run towards alcohol, what I’ve come up with is apple/pear beer and pear wine. Perhaps a pear vodka sounds interesting too.

Oh, I was thinking about making some apple butter also.

And I’ve been making more beer this year, I suppose that counts. In fact, I have two five-gallon batches in carboys ready to bottle (likely this weekend), and if I want to brew with the fruit I should probably have another batch going soon.

Our house has become so domestic…

At my parents’ place in Alfalfa, they have a wild plum tree that produced fruit for (I believe) the first time ever this year. They were small, golden fruits that were terrifically sour as they grew, but ripened and turned a deep pink-purple and ended up being rather sweet.

They picked a bunch of the plums, and then picked a bunch more for me (at my request): I ended up with almost four pounds of them, many very ripe! I debated for a bit on what to do with them and decided to make wine.

I found a plum wine recipe online and went with it (the "basic" recipe at the top of the page); for a gallon of wine, it calls for three to four pounds of plums which worked out just right (four for sweet plums, three for wild—I compromised and used all four-ish pounds). The pitting of the plums was the biggest chore, as many were (over)ripe and almost falling apart, and many others were very small. The rest went fairly smoothly: making wine is easy.

That was about a week ago, and I racked it from the bucket to a gallon-size glass jug tonight for secondary fermentation. I’ll rack it again in about three weeks, and then again about three months after that. Then, of course, I’ll bottle it and (according to this particular recipe) age it for another six to 12 months.

(Making wine is easy—I didn’t say it was quick!)

No idea how the final product will turn out, but I did taste the sample I drew for the hydrometer reading: still fizzy with fermentation and a bit yeasty (especially the smell), it was fairly sweet and—if not for the yeastiness—would make a tasty drink right now.

Nothing to do now but shove it away in the the closet and be patient.

In June my wife and I spent the weekend in Lincoln City, Oregon, for an anniversary trip. It was fairly low-key, and though we’ve been to Lincoln City a number of times before, we’re usually passing through; our last "big" trip there was in 2006. This time around we were able to spend some more time than usual exploring the town.

I’ve said before, Lincoln City is one of my favorite Oregon Coast towns, and it may well be moving close to the number one position. It sits about halfway between Newport and Pacific City, two other towns I really like; it’s big enough to be a destination city but small enough to be charming and quaint; it’s the easiest coast city to reach from Bend and sits at a relatively major intersection of Highway 101 and Route 18 (a connector for McMinnville, Salem, and Portland); the weather is (anecdotally) more temperate than other areas on the Central Coast.

Most of this travelogue entry is going to consist more of random notes I jotted down than any particular narrative.

Lincoln City is funny in that it seems more like two towns than one, due largely to the fact that most of the town is stretched out along Highway 101 and is roughly divided into distinct north and south sections. When the highway hooks east around a promontory, you feel isolated enough so that you think at first you’re leaving the town (if you’re unfamiliar with the area).

The "northern town" stretches roughly from the Lighthouse Square and Chinook Winds Casino area to the Factory Stores; the "southern town" looks noticeably older and houses the Taft Historic District, before Highway 101 curves south and east around Siletz Bay.

Chinook Winds Casino is to a large extent what Lincoln City is known for these days, from a tourism standpoint. We spent some time there, naturally, but didn’t win anything. (Overall I rate their casino experience as "kinda meh".) More interesting was the fact that they were celebrating their 14th anniversary the same weekend we were; not only did they have Billy! Ray! Cyrus! live in concert both Friday and Saturday night that weekend, but they also had a fireworks show on Saturday night that we were able to see from our room overlooking the beach.

(A hint for those foregoing the concert experience but still want to catch some of the live music: in the gift shop, a vent in the back corner pipes in the music from the theater really well.)

Yes, we splurged a bit an got a nice beachfront room for the weekend, at the aptly-named Beachfront Manor Hotel. It was quite nice, and we had a terrific view of the beach and ocean from the deck.

Just up the road from the Beachfront Manor there is another hotel called Surftides, and they have a restaurant on premises named Mist that we checked out. It’s a hell of a neat place—the lounge in particular has a funky ’70s maritime Tiki bar feel to it, with low-backed faux-leather chairs, bench-style seating in one section, a sunken bar, and a central open fireplace with a hammered-copper hood above it. (No torches, though, so it’s not a complete Tiki experience.)

They have good drinks and good pizza and a decent beer selection (for a small coast town)—stop in for happy hour.

At the other end of the day you might want to try Richens for breakfast; they’re a bit pricey but they serve up some of the biggest (no joke) portions of, well, everything on their menu. Seriously, I couldn’t finish my omelet (with bay shrimp and Tillamook cheddar, I think it was), and that’s unusual. And just look at the size of these mimosas:

Yes, those are large wedges of orange on the sides; you almost need both hands to drink these. We ordered them expecting the typical champagne-and-OJ in a champagne glass!

Though the prices were a bit on the high side, don’t expect anything too fancy—they’re a down-home diner with comfort food and no pretensions. I enjoy that sort of place, my wife not so much, so your mileage may vary. (But I recommend it.)

Cognitive dissonance: there’s a restaurant named Lil’ Sambo’s right there on Highway 101, on the north end of town. It’s a pancake house, and even has a statue of a tiger out front with a big stack of ‘cakes and lots of melted butter… yeah, it’s like that. There’s even a Google Street View so you can see for yourself.

We discovered what may be the greatest used bookstore ever (outside of Powell’s): Robert’s Book Shop. We stopped in because I wanted to check it out and it was across the street from a series of quaint gift shops we were visiting; from the street it looks like any run-of-the-mill used bookstore in an older building but it looks promising. You enter, and right away you know you’ve found a gem: the shelves are packed, and spaced pretty close together—two people don’t easily squeeze by each other.

You wander the shelves, checking subjects and picking up the occasional book, when you realize that you’ve reached what you thought was the end of the room (based on how big you thought the store was from the outside), and there’s another large room of books beyond that. And then there’s yet another larger room beyond that. And you wander back the other way and head towards the "back" of the shop and there are more rooms than keep going like the others.

This place was like, five times bigger on the inside that it appeared on the outside, and they’ve packed an astounding number of books into the place, so it feels like you’ve entered a TARDIS. Lots, lots, lots of great books and I could easily blow a day there. If you love books, there is simply no excuse not to visit Robert’s if you’re in Lincoln City.

At the south end of town is the Taft Historic District: a shopping district with a bunch of public parking and beach access. Mo’s Restaurant is located there, and you can get a (free) WiFi signal from the parking lot nearby, in front of the Looking Glass Inn.

The beach from Taft is pretty awesome: it fronts the Siletz Bay and has a real park-like quality to it, the kind of beach you want to bring a grill and several coolers down to and spend the day, with a big driftwood bonfire. (Several groups were doing this, sans the bonfire.) A bit of a walk takes you to the entrance of the Bay where the beach turns into the "real" ocean beach and curves north.

There’s a ton of driftwood and really good beachcombing to be found here. And a lot of people were fishing and crabbing right off the sand in the Bay.

Some warm summer day we’re going to go to Lincoln City and just spend the day chillin’ on this beach, with the afore-mentioned grill and coolers. And maybe a bonfire.

In the older northern stretch of town—you’ll know it when you drive through it, it seems like it might once have been considered "downtown"—the Bijou Theater claims to be the oldest theater in Oregon (their website says since 1937).

In the same stretch of town, close to the Bijou, the Old Oregon Tavern looks similarly historic. It intrigues me, but I’m sure it’s just a seedy old dive bar. Inexplicably the sign has a rainbow on it. (Sadly, I did not take a picture.)

And finally, while walking along that stretch of "old downtown" shopping, I came across the greatest (or most evil?) car ever:

I have some other notes about Lincoln City, but they’ll wait until our next trip. In the meantime, you really should go visit.

So about two weeks ago I saw the new Star Trek movie (at McMenamins Old St. Francis School, in their second-run theater), and this weekend I saw Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (also at McMenamins). I really liked both of them—Star Trek in particular was fully redeemed for me after I had some serious doubts about it—and it occurred to me, as I started to write this up, that both of these movies are in the top five highest-grossing 2009 movies in the U.S. (Transformers, #1, and Star Trek, #5) and both are intrinsically geek movies.

Is that a great thing or what?

Naturally I have some thoughts about each movie, but in case of spoilers you’ll have to click through to read them. You’ve been warned.

Keep reading

Star Trek

My initial worries of J.J. Abrams and company crapping all over the Star Trek universe were happily unfounded. I’m definitely geeky enough to have a thing about canon and continuity issues with (science) fiction—and with Star Trek in particular—so when I’d heard early on that they were "rebooting Star Trek" I was rather indignant.

Not with the concept of a prequel, though—I was fine with that. It was the idea that they were reinventing Star Trek to somehow make it "better" that was a sore point (for many fans as well), from what I’d seen online.

Forget all that. The movie was great, and they were completely respectful of the original concept and series and even tied it in with overall Trek continuity. At the same time, by creating an alternate timeline, they have for all intents and purposes rebooted the Star Trek universe—creating a completely open playground for them to explore. (Read: sequels!)

Here’s a thought, though: in every other Star Trek time travel story, much of the plot revolves around restoring the timeline and fixing any damage done. There’s none of that going on here, which is a bit puzzling—especially with the future Spock on hand. Wouldn’t he be seeking a way to repair the damage, rather than just accepting the alternate reality and moving on?

(On a more philosophical level, it’s always interesting to note that the heroes are always interested in fixing the past when something goes wrong, but they never seem to care in the least about the future—even though a bunch of the stories involve time travelers from the future. Are the people/timelines of the future that are affected by their present actions less important than those of the past?)

I was very surprised that they actually followed through with the destruction of Vulcan. That’s some kind of crazy stuff, right there. But then, they also rolled the destruction of Romulus into the "proper", canonical timeline, which is a big change also—although I think the way they did that was overly contrived. A supernova destroying a planet before they could stop it? Unless it was the Romulan homeworld’s own sun that exploded (it was not), they would have had years to prevent that from happening—well, you know, if it wasn’t science [space] fiction [opera]…

The characters were right on (especially Kirk, Spock, and McCoy) and I’m even converted on the redesign of the Enterprise.

I have to say, though, that the "red matter" of which a single drop can create a star-and-planet-killing black hole is possibly the worst Treknobabble deus ex machina from any Star Trek series or movie. (Okay, except for maybe the crap from "Spock’s Brain".)

And it’s stretching coincidence a bit too thin to have Kirk marooned not only on the same planet as Future Spock, but within a few miles of him. That’s an amateur mistake, right there. No, I haven’t come up with a better solution (yet), why do you ask?

Okay, enough nitpicking. It was really good. I’m sold.

Transformers

Two and a half hours of giant robots kicking the shit out of each other; what’s not to like? I know Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen got critically panned in a big way, but really, it’s like the first movie: you have Michael Bay directing a movie based on a toy line. One that involves giant warring robots that transform into fast cars and shiny toys. What were you possibly expecting on a film critic level?

So yeah, I loved the movie, just as I loved the first one. But let’s make it clear: it’s a ridiculous movie, for all the reasons I just outlined in the paragraph above. You have to know that going in. But I grew up on Transformers, both the cartoon and the toys, so I’m already geared for a certain amount of ridiculousness; and I think there’s a large segment of people that feel the same way about Transformers, which is why, despite the critics, it’s the number one grossing movie this year.

Moving on…

Optimus Prime was just way more badass in this movie, which was a little surprising—I mean, hunting down and killing Decepticons? That’s pretty hardcore. And his fighting skills have noticeably improved since the last movie, where he was being put through the pacing just fighting Megatron—this time around, he takes on Megatron, Starscream, and Grindor at once, smack-talks all of them, and (nearly) cleans house.

I’m bugged by how easy it was to revive Megatron. The whole point of dropping his body into the Laurentian Abyss (which the writers screwed up) was that the intense pressure and cold temperature would keep him incapacitated. The whole "cold temperature" thing was a major point of the first movie—freezing cold incapacitates Transformers. (Never mind how they survive the near absolute-zero cold of space…)

So not only should they not have been able to revive Megatron, but the Decepticons that went to the bottom of the Abyss to do so should have been frozen up too!

Yeah, yeah, "Gotta have Megatron for a Transformers movie!" Couldn’t they instead have had a salvage ship Decepticon trawl the trench for Megatron’s body and pull it up?

I got a big kick out of the idea that Transformers have been on Earth for a long time… particularly when Simmons was showing various old photographs of them—one of which was a Model T. That’s getting all steampunk, right there—what would even earlier-era Transformers change into as their alternate modes? Locomotive… Ironclad (which would be a good name, too)… Bi-plane… Chariot… Printing press…

It was a nice segue into the Jetfire bit of the movie, which was a nice bit of nostalgia for the cartoon, if a bit slapsticky. Do you really need a big robot acting geriatric? That makes about as much sense as having gender-specific robots. Oh well.

Bottom line—it’s a lot of fun, and I’d see it again. (I’d like to own both movies on Blu-Ray, actually.)

Ever since our friend Kina and her husband moved to Baker City to open a pizza restaurant a few years back, we’d been saying, "We’ll come for a visit" every so often, but there never seemed the time for it. Distance was a major culprit; Baker City is about 230 miles from Bend, a good hour farther than we’re used to traveling for a weekend.

But we kept hearing about Kina’s amazing pizza, and we’ve been especially curious about that section of Oregon, so over spring break we made definitive plans to visit.

The drive turned out to be not as bad as we’d feared it could be; we made it in about four and a quarter hours, if memory serves, and that was with a few stops. The weather was nice on the drive over, and that section of Eastern Oregon through the Ochocos and Wallowas is extraordinarily scenic—arguably one of the prettiest routes in Oregon.

Passing through Mitchell (48 miles east of Prineville), we stopped to see the only thing of any note in the town: Henry the Bear. Yes, right there in the middle of nowhere, there is a bear in a cage.

According to the (worn and peeling) sign, Henry is an American Black Bear who was born on a bear farm in Iowa. His owner, Hugh Reed, will also apparently wrestle the bear on occasion.

No, I am not making this up, nor will I debate the ethics of, well, any of it. It’s small town Americana, what are you gonna do?

Are next stop was in John Day, where we were planning on having lunch. It had been awhile since I’d been to John Day, so I wasn’t sure what was there that would be convenient—the GPS listed a Dairy Queen and a Subway, but you can never be sure: when you’re visiting towns in Eastern Oregon with fewer than 2000 people, it’s like the land that time forgot. You might be lucky to find an Arctic Circle or a Kentucky Fried Chicken that didn’t get the "KFC" name memo.

I needn’t have worried. Right at the western edge of town is a shiny big McDonald’s.

John Day and Prairie City (both just over 1000 people and only about 12 miles apart) are the last "major" towns before you hit Baker City. By contrast, when you roll into Baker, you hit a relative metropolis: 10,000 people and Interstate 84. (Not even Bend has an Interstate!)

We checked into our motel (by the Interstate on the east side of town) and then set off to find Paizano’s Pizza (in the northwest part of town). Turns out it was very easy to find—but then I’m guessing most places in Baker City are easy to find. Rolling up north on 10th Street, the restaurant stands out really well—bright, maroon with green trim, and a big sign with lights.

Unfortunately, I for some reason never took a picture of the building itself. Suffice to say, it looks like what an old-school pizza parlor should look like, both inside and out: lots of seating, TVs on the walls with sports on, an arcade game and a pinball machine in the corner, counter service, and people having a good time. You can get a good sense of the place from their Flickr photo stream, but here’s a picture that was too good not to take:

Yes, I took a picture of a toilet. I’m classy like that. That’s what’s staring at you in the men’s room when you walk in. Think you can use the bathroom with that guy giving you the eye?

It’s the little things like this that makes these trips worthwhile. And for the record, Kina wins. Her restaurant with its creepy toilet man restroom is awesome.

Dinner was at Paizano’s, of course. I had to take a picture of the pint glass (with beer in it, naturally) because of the logo, but what I actually ate for dinner was the barbecue chicken stromboli.

How was it? Let’s just say I would use the letters O, M, and G to describe it. Seriously, it was so good that I literally could not stop eating it. I blame the barbecue sauce. All of us had similar sentiments about our dinners.

The next day was lunch: giant slices of pizza with drink combos. Maybe a salad. But their single slices are cut from their 24-inch pizzas, so are freaking huge. One’ll do ya. I had a slice with the can of PBR (one of the lunch deals). You can’t go wrong with pizza and PBR.

Of course, when we left Sunday we bought a giant 24-inch pizza to take home for dinner:

We were eating for days.

The rest of Baker City, you ask? Oh yeah, we did do more than just eat Kina’s food…

Downtown Baker is picturesque and charming. The central feature of downtown is the historic Geiser Grand Hotel, which at one time was considered the finest hotel between Salt Lake City and Portland (back when Baker was a booming mining and agricultural center of the Pacific Northwest).

Over 100 years old, and renovated and re-opened in the mid-90s, the Geiser Grand is famously reputed to be haunted. Visitors can check out the lobby and the basement area, where they have meeting areas along with bits and pieces of Baker City history on display. We looked around but didn’t see (or hear) any ghosts.

Baker City has a microbrewery, too: Barley Brown’s Brewpub, and you just know we went there. Twice. I wrote up both visits on The Brew Site here and here, so I won’t reiterate my review here, other than to say, it was good. One of the best dining options in town (besides pizza, of course).

We wandered the downtown a bit, doing some browsing and shopping, and I have to mention Bella Main Street Market: a boutique kitchen-gift-food-wine store that is definitely one of the star attractions downtown. They have kitchen items, knick-knacks, gourmet foods, a decent wine selection, a decent beer selection, gifts of both a serious and silly nature, candy, and much more.

On Saturday we visited the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center, located 10 or so miles outside of town. Their description says they offer "living history demonstrations, interpretive programs, exhibits, multi-media presentations, special events, and more than four miles of interpretive trails." The day was chilly and windy, so we didn’t walk the trails, but the Center is still an enormously fascinating place to visit, especially if you’re a history buff or have any interest in the frontier lifestyle and/or the Oregon Trail. It’s full of exhibits like this:

There is also a bunch of hands-on activities (especially appealing for kids) and a special kids area. The people there were very helpful and gracious, and I highly recommend visiting.

But the truly amazing aspect to the Center is this:

That is a marker for the Oregon Trail. Not just your typical "Something Was Here" touristy signpost planted in a general area of interest, this is a marker for the actual Oregon Trail.

The passage of tens of thousands of wagons over many years’ time had worn near-permanent ruts into the land itself, still present over a hundred years later: hardpacked earth that leaves a clear, easily-followed path whereupon many, many people made the passage West. This portion is accessible from the highway just below the entrance to the Interpretive Center.

I’m not sure it’s possible to convey how amazing it is to be able to engage such a real, visceral chunk of history without having done it in person.

That’s right: I walked the Oregon Trail. And I didn’t die from dysentery.

That largely sums up our trip to Baker City, though I will note that one drive home, we ran into snow in the Wallowa Mountains going over the pass: almost enough so that you would need chains. Not quite, but almost.

This year—and this summer in particular—we’ve done quite a fair bit of traveling, possibly more than we have in the past. I’ve chronicled some of it as it applies to beer over on The Brew Site, but have been sorely lax in documenting the various trips here.

Here’s a summary of the notable travels, with more detailed posts to follow for some of them:

• During spring break in March we visited Baker City for fabulous pizza and, well, seeing someplace new.
• In May, we spent a weekend in Portland doing some shopping and visiting friends.
• June was a big travel month: an anniversary trip spent in Lincoln City followed two days later by a longer visit to San Diego to see my brother.
• In July, we made a day trip up to Hood River, which I already chronicled here.
• Later in the same month, we made a quick day trip to Eugene. For beer.
• August saw our annual family reunion convene for a camping trip at the coast, just outside of Garibaldi.
• And, travels in August (and thus far this year) have more-or-less concluded with this past weekend, where my wife and I spent a night at Kah-Nee-Ta Resort (and Casino).

I had bookmarked this link some time back and forgotten about it: Full Moon Names for 2009. The notion that full moons by month had names had never really occurred to me before, but upon reflection makes perfect sense—as a means for keeping track of the seasons (and in light of the human penchant for naming things).

Wikipedia has a comprehensive list of full moon names too.

Interesting to note that December of this year has two full moons, one on the 2nd and the other (the Blue Moon) on the 31st—and they both have names, as well: Cold Moon (on the 2nd) and Long Night Moon (on the 31st).

Naturally one of the first thoughts that occurred to me with this list is that these names would make great (seasonal) beer names.

We’d been talking lately about taking some day trips during the summer, nothing stressful or too much driving (since we did all the driving we want just last month) but a nice getaway for a day. Sort-of spontaneous. Since we had a nice trip to Hood River last October (chronicled here) to pick apples, we figured, why not Hood River again?

Right now the fruits in season in Hood River—it’s actually near the end of the current seasonals—are cherries, blueberries, and raspberries. So, once again consulting the Hood River Fruit Loop, we picked out some likely places to visit and set off. We had to drop the dog off at the kennel, and we were on the road by roughly 8:30.

Last time, we drove up Highways 97 and 197 to The Dalles, and then followed Interstate 84 into Hood River. Going that route takes just about three hours—perhaps a bit under—but just for grins, we set the GPS to show us both the "fastest" and "shortest" routes. Turns out, coming from Bend—according to the GPS—taking Highway 26 through Warm Springs and then turning off onto Highway 35 at Mt. Hood is both the shortest and fastest route.

What’s amusing, though, is even after we were well on our way up the Highway 97 route, the GPS was adamant about directing us back to Highway 26—apparently even detouring back is shorter up to a certain point. That’s technology for you.

I like the 97/197 drive up through the middle of Oregon. Lots of rolling hills, dry Eastern Oregon, and wheat fields, a nice change from driving through the mountains or the Willamette Valley. Probably the most interesting town on the route—one of the only ones between Madras and The Dalles—is Maupin.

This tiny little town (population: 408) is nestled down against the lower Deschutes River, in the river canyon carved out by the Deschutes. It’s sole purpose seems to be to provide a tourist base for river recreation; it’s a major destination for rafters and kayakers and that seems to be the trade of half the businesses in town.

Of course, you don’t just pass on by, you have to drive through the town. What that means is you descend the river canyon, cross the old stone bridge over the river, and ascend the other side: lots hard corners and a few 15MP hairpin switchback turns. To get an idea, Google Maps actually has Street View running the route through town.

We pulled in to Hood River right about 11:30, just in time for lunch: at Double Mountain Brewery, which also opened at 11:30. We parked right in front and were the first customers of the day.

(As a side note, Hood River downtown streets all have parking meters. Seems odd to me for a town of only 6500 or so to have parking meters—but then, Bend as a city of 80,000 has none, so that’s what I’m used to.)

After a nice lunch and a taster tray of good beer later (I’ll review Double Mountain in more detail over on The Brew Site), we were off in search of fruit. Our first stop was Wilinda Blueberry Patch: an acre or so of blueberry picking (only several rows of which were ripe for picking—the different varieties apparently ripen at different times). The day was already hot, but we managed to pick something like three pounds of berries.

Our next stop (after picking up ice and Gatorade) was a winery (actually, we visited two): Hood River Vineyards, followed by Marchesi Vineyards. Hood River produces some fantastic and delicious ports and dessert wines—both with grapes and other seasonal fruits—and Marchesi specializes in Italian varietals.

The hostesses at both tasting rooms were very friendly and knowledgeable, and we left with a couple of bottles of wine from each.

Our next stop was Lavender Valley Lavender Farm. Most types of lavender products you can images, and immense fields of "U-cut" lavender that we were interested in. Like the fruit, different varieties of lavender bloom and can be cut at different times; we were directed to specific rows and cut ourselves three nice bunches of lavender. The kids stayed back, out of the field directly: too many honey bees (no kidding, there were hundreds) were making them nervous.

After cutting lavender, we had an ice cream break before visiting Alice’s Orchard. We visited this orchard last October with good results, and had good luck again this time around. Cherries were available here for picking, and were practically falling off the trees. In no time at all we had filled two small buckets for about 12 pounds worth of cherries. We could have easily doubled that amount with little effort.

I have to say, as someone raised in Central Oregon on the edge of a desert, I’m always amazed at the sheer amount of fruit these orchards and berry patches produce. It’s almost appalling, really, and it’s really easy to get greedy: I could have kept right on picking and filling buckets just because there’s so much fruit.

After a couple more stops, we found ourselves on the road to Parkdale, heading more-or-less for home (along the Highway 35 Mt. Hood route), and stopping at the Draper Girls Country Farm, only because they advertised U-pick raspberries—the other berry we were keeping an eye out for that nobody else seemed to have.

It’s the very tail end of raspberry season, though, so we only managed to pick a pint of raspberries. The Farm itself is also a fruit stand, and they offered a number of other seasonal produce: apricots, cucumbers, more cherries, beans, and I think I saw an eggplant or two. There are also a number of antiques and rustic knick-knacks for sale, if you’re into that sort of thing.

Thus ended our fruit picking excursion to Hood River, except for a quick stop at the Mt. Hood Country Store in Parkdale. I wouldn’t even mention this except for the fact that they have an amazingly well-stocked cooler full of craft beer—many of which you won’t find in Bend—and had six beers on tap—also well-chosen craft beer that you won’t likely find in Bend. Literally, a country store and deli where you’d expect to find a jar full of pickled eggs and a cooler full of Bud and Coors Light and maybe an ancient six-pack of Lucky Lager, instead is a damn impressive beer oasis. That’s Oregon for you.

Final tally from the trip: three pounds of blueberries, 12 pounds of cherries, three nice bundles of fresh lavender, four bottles of wine, and a pint of raspberries.

We pulled back into the garage around 7:45 in the evening, and I do indeed think the Mt. Hood route along Highway 35 is a bit quicker.

A few weeks ago we had a free preview weekend of HBO and Cinemax from our cable company, and while I was flipping around to see what was on (probably Saturday afternoon), I caught the end of Star Trek: Generations. (Actually, probably the last quarter of the movie or so.) And of course, being the Star Trek nerd that I am, I watched the rest of it.

And, well, I had to write about it too. Feel free to completely skip this post if you have no interest in Star Trek whatsoever. Yeah, it’s like that.

Now, Generations is problematic, there’s no doubt. While I was watching, I was mentally tallying up the various problems and hence, this post.

Their intentions were in the right place: it was the first Star Trek movie featuring the cast from The Next Generation, whose series had just wrapped, so they wanted to go big. How big? Well let’s see… they gave Data emotions, explained the origin of Guinan, destroyed the Enterprise, and oh yeah, had Captain Picard meet Captain Kirk. And killed Kirk.

In order to do this latter bit, the writers contrived a thin plot around a supposed "Nexus" in Time that looked like a big sparkling ribbon flying through space. People can enter this Nexus where Time stands still and they are granted whatever they wish (while inside of it). Kind of like the ultimate virtual reality where you never age and you can have anything you want.

The token villain (played by Malcolm McDowell) was in the Nexus once before and wants to go back. So he’s blowing up stars to change the gravitational influence on the Nexus as it travels through space, just so he can direct it to a planet that he’ll be standing on at a pre-arranged time—all so the Nexus will suck him back into it when it gets to the planet.

While the movie had some good bits, there are so many things wrong with this plot, it’s embarrassing. And then, they went and got the science behind it utterly wrong.

Point: Soran (the villain) didn’t need to blow up stars or anything remotely cosmic to re-enter the Nexus. He could have just flown a shuttlecraft into it. Or barring that, open the airlock and launch himself physically into it from the back of said shuttlecraft—he could survive the vacuum of space for the three seconds it would take to accomplish this. Kirk did, after all.

In other words, shitty plotting and unimaginative writing.

Point: During the battle between the Enterprise and the Klingon ship that results in the Enterprise‘s destruction, we see that the Klingons are spying on the ship’s shield frequency modulation via LaForge’s visor—thus enabling them to shoot photon torpedoes that pass through the shields as if they weren’t there.

However, the Enterprise crew makes no effort to alter the shield modulation—something they did repeatedly during the TV series (especially versus the Borg)! How could something so fundamental get by them?

It would have been an easy fix, too: just show the Klingons (who were spying on them, remember) getting the new shield frequency every time it was changed. Would it really have cost that much more to film?

Point: When the Enterprise finally is able to fire back, Riker tells Worf to have a "full spread" of torpedoes ready to fire. When they get their moment, only one torpedo launches.

What the hell?

Point: In what is probably the worst production/science gaffe they could possibly make, Soran launches his missile from the planet towards the sun (to blow it up, remember) just as the Nexus is nearing. Immediately the sun darkens and explodes. Do you see what’s wrong with this picture?

The sun should not have appeared to change for at least 8 full minutes. Not even counting the time it would take for the missile to reach the sun—let’s suppose it has warp capabilities, to get around that issue—the light (and gravity) from the sun can only travel at the speed of light. And since they were on an Earth-looking planet, which is 8 light-minutes away from the sun, then that means there’s no possible way the sun would appear to darken immediately—and the gravitational effect on the Nexus would be similarly delayed.

Huge, huge blunder. Somebody (preferably the writers) should have been fired for that one.

Point: Picard is now in the Nexus. The planet (and the remains of the Enterprise and its crew) all blew up. Picard (with the help of Kirk) escapes the Nexus, jumps back in time to just before the missile is launched (the Nexus can let you go to any place and time, apparently), and saves the day, altering the events that already transpired. Time travel.

Thus, an alternate timeline was created, in which Soran succeeds and the Enterprise is lost with all hands.

(For that matter, why didn’t Picard return hours earlier and destroy Soran’s base and missile before any of that happened? Or any other convenient time to stop Soran?)

Point: Picard is now in the Nexus. He has been told (as have we, the viewers) that the Nexus grants your fondest desire; it gives you whatever you want. The ultimate virtual reality, remember. Well, once Picard figured out what was going on, his fondest desire was to leave the Nexus. But wouldn’t the Nexus grant that desire and give Picard a (virtual) reality where he left the Nexus and stopped Soran?

In other words, Picard never left the Nexus—he just thinks he did, the Nexus granted that wish inside its virtual reality. If he never left, then that alternate timeline I mentioned is in fact the "correct" and current timeline—and all the subsequent Next Generation movies never "happened." (Maybe a bunch of the subsequent TV series, either.)

Actually this last point isn’t really so much of a problem, more of an observation. But it makes for an interesting plot device… once that actually forms the basis for the on-again, off-again dabbling I’ve been doing in Star Trek fan fiction over the years.

(My fan fiction "series" is set in the future—yet another generation—and in the "alternate" timeline in which Picard is still in the Nexus.)

Overall, Generations wasn’t a bad movie, just flawed (severely flawed in some cases) and the weakest of the Next Generation movies.

But then again, I only caught the last half or third of it, after having not seen it for a long time… maybe I’d find a lot more to rant about if I saw it from the beginning…

Last week, we went down to San Diego for a quick(ish) trip to visit my brother and his wife. We left Tuesday afternoon after I was off work, drove all day Wednesday, and then returned on Monday—doing the full San Diego to Bend drive in one day. I won’t recount the full blow-by-blow here (and I’m blogging my beer notes of the trip on The Brew Site, of course), but just a series of notes, observations, and tidbits.

(A big reason for the visit was because my brother and sister-in-law are expecting their first child this August, and the baby shower was on Saturday. So we couldn’t pass up the opportunity.)

At about three and a half hours from Bend, Weed is a town you can’t ignore: it’s the junction of Highway 97 and Interstate 5, and is the first "real" town you hit in California when traveling down 97. (I’d count Dorris, but that seems more like a truck stop/border crossing than a town.) I find the town fascinating: its population is exactly 3000, it sits in the shadow of Mt. Shasta, and in many ways it’s the gateway to Northern California.

And it’s like Bend in several ways: it had its start as a lumber town, has a similar climate and the same elevation, and now derives a good portion of its economy from (mountain) tourism. What little I’ve seen of it—besides the fast food restaurants and gas stations marking it as an Interstate connector—seems charming and picturesque.

Tuesday night we stayed in Anderson, California (just south of Redding) at the Gaia Anderson hotel. Even though it was just a waypoint on the trip, it was actually quite a nice place for a really good price. It’s new and built to "green" specs—energy efficient, with water conservation in mind, and organic and health-conscious. And it’s just off the freeway, which was convenient.

The drive that first afternoon—Bend to Anderson/Redding—took us about 4 hours and 45 minutes. The next day, we drove about 11 hours through to San Diego, hitting rush hour Los Angeles traffic and losing about an hour and half to it.

I completely hate Los Angeles traffic. And that pretty much mars the whole city for me.

Driving through central California, south of Sacramento on that long, lonely stretch of I-5, is long, tedious, and a bit depressing. Desert and failed agriculture, with communities that only seem to have sprung up to service the Interstate. How people can live there is beyond me.

And it’s crazy hot, from Redding on down; on our return trip, it was 105 degrees in Redding! At one point the kids wanted to open the windows so I let them briefly. It was like opening an oven door.

After Wednesday, we were in San Diego four full days before returning on Monday. It was a great trip, and the weather—which had been forecasted to be 70 and overcast the entire time—actually turned out sunny, clear, and nicely hot (but not too hot).

Which was a good thing, because Friday we hit the beach and had a great day—the water is cool but much warmer than the Oregon Coast, so we were able to actually, you know, go in it. My brother and I spent most of the time out in the surf, while I kept an eye on the kids and the women stayed on the beach. At one point I was far enough out so that when a wave crashed over me—intentionally—I couldn’t touch bottom. That was a bit spooky.

Sunday we all went to the San Diego Zoo. Something like 16 of us total. It was a bit chaotic, but a good day. And it was hot—the hottest day in San Diego since we arrived. There were several sunburned people to show for it.

Interesting fact I learned (but didn’t personally verify): apparently the Howard Johnson on Hotel Circle has a lifesize Hulk Hogan statue in the lobby.

As much as I dislike Los Angeles, I like San Diego. The big negatives are (obviously) the traffic and the urban sprawl; everything is very spread out, along freeways, and tuned to the stripmall. Something might be "just across the freeway" but to cross it you might have to jump on, exit a mile down the road, loop around and cross another exchange just to get there. But for that, it’s appealing and likable. And of course, it’s a great beer town.

Not much to say about the Monday drive home except that we went straight through (stopping only for gas, bathroom breaks, and fast food), and made it in 14.5 hours. We left at about 7:30 in the morning and were home by about 10 that night. The kids held up remarkably well, better than I hoped. So it’s doable—but I’m not sure I’d want to do it again.

Although you do save money if you don’t stay overnight…