Last Day of 2014

Its the end of another year. My first full year in Portland has been eventful, except when it comes to geocaching. We lost a good old time geocacher in Rooster, and while I had the same amount of finds as last year there were a lack of memorable ones. Some of the highlights for the year include.

• Saw every Trail Blazer home game (including playoffs)
• Ate at nearly 50 food carts
• Completed the 7 Souvenirs of August
• Attended my first geocaching event in 2 years

Some of my favorite caches for 2014 include:

• Top Score 
• EJ's Cache
• Wenaha 
• Hanging Around the Summit 
• Tomanowos and the Great Missoula Floods 

With so many things to do in the Portland area I just didn't make many finds. Way too many micros and nanos for me. Hopefully 2015 will find me taking some trips outside the city to find better caches. I've also been looking at some DrDan caches around and on top of Grayback Mt that might be on my list this summer. Maybe I can even convince him to hike with me up there. Thank you to those who hid the caches I found in 2014, and I hope to see you all on the trail in the new year!

A few caches

Today I found 2 caches while I was at the new Tualatin Cabelas store

Mammut
Foremost!!

About a month ago I found

Healthy Kids, Healthy Kidneys

And in honor of Rooster I made a find the day I learned he passed away.

Hope is Vital

None of these caches were much to talk about. Its been a pretty disappointing year geocaching wise.

Rooster, thanks for the good times

Yesterday we lost a great old time geocacher, Nick Carr aka Rooster.

I once called him the incredible shrinking Rooster because he was a little lighter every time you'd see him. Here is a story about how he lost 180 pounds.

One time back in 2004 when I was visiting Klamath Falls he took me around to 53 caches. This was in the days before power trails. We really cleaned up the town. I didn't need a GPS because Rooster remembered where all the caches were.

He gave up geocaching a few years ago, but he had a lot of hobbies like fishing and falconry. He was a great person to hang out with and will definitely be missed.

One year ago today

I have now lived in Portland for a whole year. It seems like I just got here. Other times it seems like I have lived here for longer.

In my one year I've managed to 

• attend an entire season of blazer home games
• eat at over 40 food carts
• gain 10 pounds

Not too shabby. Here's to another year, and I already have the tickets.

I'm an Achiever!

Today I finished up the last caches I needed to get the 7 Souvenirs of August. These are the caches I've logged in the last couple of weeks.

Fallout Shelter
Holy Swiss Cheese Batman!!
Sugar Rush
State Symbols
nessker is nearly older~40-30-5 Celebration #4
Tomanowos and the Great Missoula Floods
Ice Age Floods Institute - CCHS GEO-Heritage Tour

Today I attended my first event since 2012. Was fun to talk to a few new geocachers.

August Caches

This month geocaching.com is running a 7 Souvenirs of August promotion. You get a souvenir for finding a traditional, mystery, multi, CITO/Earthcache, event, and virtual or other odd type. Plus one for getting all six of these types. So far I have one for this cache.

Oakridge GeoTour #31 - Shadow Bay

Found this one on my usual camping trip to Waldo Lake. I went to this cache in the evening when things calmed down at the lake, and while I was signing the log another set of geocachers showed up. Always fun to run into other geocachers.

Anyway I think I might try and get the other cache types I need this month to get the other 6 souvenirs. We'll see if I find time this weekend.

In the meantime here are some pictures of food carts

This one is Eurodish. Obviously they serve traditional polish food, and its pretty good.

The Midwest Pizza Co is a pretty damn good pizza cart. Deep dish style, and hot dogs. Its probably my favorite cart in the Mississippi Marketplace now.

The Sausage Shack has all sorts of bacon wrapped items. I had a bacon wrapped corn dog which looked better then it tasted. This cart is hardly ever open it seems.

And last is Potato Potato. It was ok, but not really my thing. My pal Frank loved the place though, and he's sad that its moving to another pod outside of our "lunch zone"

Vacation

I was gone for a few days and ended up with 32 caches, and I've found one since I got back. Not bad considering I only had 4 finds for the year before that.

No grand adventure caches on this trip however, most were pretty ordinary. Here are the finds for the week

STOP! light
Foremost Outfitter
Ginger Love
Klickitat Prairie
Crystal Palisades
Paris
I-84 East Rest Area (west end)
I-84 East Rest Area (east end)
Minam Pit Stop
EJ's Cache
Oregon History: Nez Perce
WC Bank Robbery
Chief Joseph
Tracker
A Penny Saved...
This Ain't Trash!
Sled spring's
Don't Overlook Me!
WCRIP: A Floral Acknowledgement
Wenaha
Two States At The Same Time
Hanging Around the Summit
Just Hangin Around
AwgReunion 3
Birthday Bash Cache
R.I.P.
Potato Bridge
Beautiful View! 
Starkey Experimental Station
Snow Park Cache
Carter Park
Switchback
Work Commenced (Stealth Required)

Update

No geocaches

Blazers lead in the first round playoff series with Houston 3-2

I've ate at many food carts

A night of caching

Daveydude and Biggieet_al were in town today. I met them downtown. We tried an Egyptian food cart for dinner and then went and found a few geocaches and a munzee.

Here is Kelly waiting for his Gyro at the Gyro House. I enjoyed my food. Kelly found a piece of plastic in his... like from a produce bag. That was after they forgot his order so Dave and I were left waiting for him. It was a busy place since they were one of the only carts open at the time. I'd try it again.

After that we found

Grab a Cache, Grab Some Lunch, Part Deux
Grimm Season 2 5 The Good Shepherd
Top Score

The last one was a really old Virtual in a cool retro arcade/bar. Played a game of Frogger and called it a night.

6 Months... of food carts

Tonight marks 6 months since I moved to Portland. I haven't done much geocaching, but I have ate at a lot of food carts. Maybe I should just make this a food cart blog... here are a few of the most recent

Kargi Gogo is a Georgian food cart. That's Georgia as in a country between Russia and Turkey that was part of the former Soviet Union. I had the khinkali which are dumplings full of beef and pork. You can't really go wrong with that... and they were pretty good. I think I'd like to try the cheese bread as well.

This is Portland Masala which is an Indian food cart. SallyC actually introduced me to Indian food and I have been a fan ever since. This place sells packaged Indian food in super markets... then they decided to open a cart. I had the chicken curry and the lamb curry. It is a good amount of food for the money and it was pretty tasty as well.

I tried Island Grill Hawaiian Barbeque just today. This is a Hawaiian food cart. I had BBQ chicken with macaroni salad and rice. It was good, next time I'll probably try the teriyaki chicken as just the BBQ was kind of plain even for me... and I like stuff plain. I'm still looking for a Hawaiian place with Korean chicken as good at North Shore Hawaiian Plate in Klamath Falls.

A cache for 2014

I found my first cache of 2014

By The Content Of Their Character

Of course that was on Friday. Its nice to have a  little daylight after work. I tried to find this cache last year 3 or 4 times and it turns out it was missing.

fun with Ice

Had a little snow and freezing rain. I took a few picture of my car which was covered with a good quarter inch sheet of ice

Go Seahawks!

The Seahawks won the Super Bowl. They didn't just win, they clobbered Denver. It was actually kind of a sad game to watch in a way.

While not a super fan of the Seahawks like I am the trail blazers I am a fan for a few reasons.

• Paul Allen owns both the Blazers and Seahawks
• My brother is a big seahawk fan
• The Seahawks are the closest team to me
• I've attended two games in Seattle which were my only live NFL games.

Comic Con

Comic Con was in town today. I have never been to such a thing and never really thought about going to one. When I saw that it was happening though I thought it would be fun to check out all the people dressed up, see some of the celebrities even if at a distance, and see what was for sale.

As far as what was for sale. Comic books obviously, lots of toys and some expensive artwork. I didn't see much I couldn't live without.

The people dressed up were kind of fascinating. Some people seem to be there just to be seen in their costumes. I'm proud to say that I must not be much of a geek because I didn't know who half the costumed people were supposed to be.

And last the celebrities. I saw Adam West, and Burt Ward. Then there was Elvira. I never did see William Shatner. Peter Meyhew who played Chewbacca in Star Wars, and Billy Dee Williams (Lando Calrissian) were there.

I've long been a Star Wars fan so when the line died down I went up, picked out and 8x10 photo and got an autograph from Billy Dee Williams. He seemed nice enough. I was going to get Peter Meyhew's autograph but he had left for a while and didn't come back before I decided to leave.

Another Celebrity was Sara Jean Underwood. She is a fellow Oregon State alumni, and was the 2007 Playmate of the Year. I couldn't resist meeting her.

Sara was super nice and even talked a little Trail Blazers.

After I left the convention I went downtown for lunch. I tried a grilled pizza at Pulehu Pizza.  I think I have found a new favorite cart. This is a must try in my book

And then the Blazers won tonight... overall it was a really good day.