Timely

I know I'm not the first one to think of the timeliness of this poem by Yeats, but I've always loved this poem. Religious sub-text aside, the imagery is so great! "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold", "The falcon cannot hear the falconer", "What rough beast slouches towards Bethlehem", etc. with all the crap going on in the world right now, it seems particularly apt.

THE SECOND COMING

by: W. B. Yeats (1865-1939)

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Animal Musician

They're here!

From Oregon trip

Planes, Trains & Automobiles

Or more aptly… Automobiles, Light-Rails, Shuttles, Planes, & Buses.

Our journey from Baker City to London has been undertaken with an array of vehicles and has taken us over two days to complete. We drove for about 5 hours from Baker City to Portland on Friday. Checked into our Super 8 Motel near the airport and then returned our rental car to Thrifty down the block, after which we hopped back on the shuttle so we could take the Portland MAX light-rail from the airport to go into town to meet K’s sister for dinner. It was too short a visit, but we had a nice time and had some fantastic Thai food at Typhoon (highly recommended!), but back to the travel story. We took MAX back to the airport and waited for a Super 8 shuttle that never arrived. So we got on the Thrifty shuttle under false pretenses, then we walked from Thrifty to our motel to try to get about 5 hours of sleep.

Next “day”, we got up at 4am (West coast time) and took a 5 o’clock shuttle to the airport. Then it was a two-engine prop plane to SeaTac airport (Seattle-Tacoma) followed by a 30-second tram ride to another terminal where we boarded a “big plane” to Boston (a 5-hour journey). When we arrived in Boston, we disembarked in a domestic terminal which had no direct connection to the international terminal, so we had to exit and take a Logan airport shuttle. After sitting around for a few hours (and having piss-poor salads at Houlihan’s), we boarded the flight to London. A fairly smooth flight with a few hair-raising encounters with abrupt turbulence over London. We arrived near terminal 4 and were herded into shuttle buses to take us to the gate...

...but it seems as soon as we got to England, things went to shit.

There was a little over an hour to catch our National Express coach to Bournemouth, we just needed to get our luggage. We waited for an hour, watching the conveyor belts extrude bags painfully slowly in a piece-meal fashion. Ours never arrived – most probably due to negligence since it was all four bags missing and I know they made it to Boston because I happened to glance out the window and see a couple of them coming out on the conveyor. So we had to go through the rigmarole of reporting our missing bags, during which we missed our coach to Bournemouth. We tried for it anyway, just in case the coach was late, but forgot that we had to take a subway train to the main terminal where the bus station is and then walk about a mile in underground passageways before reaching our destination. The bus had long gone, so we had our ticket changed to another bus leaving an hour later.

It was a tough two hours on that bus, spent wishing that time would speed up just for a little while. I kept nodding off and then get startled awake everytime the bus hit a bump and thinking I was in an airplane that just landed on the runway. But we're home now. A couple of our plants on the balcony are dead. It must not have rained at all while we were gone. Oh, and there's a 6-7 foot massive fissure in one of our bedroom walls. Was there an earthquake while we were gone? Surely not in Bournemouth!

We watered everything and opened some windows to air the place out and then headed to the supermarket to get some basic provisions (plus bathroom essentials for K, since everything was in the suitcases). Now we've taken showers with our ridiculous water pressure and are looking for things to keep us busy and awake until it's at least dark.

The lukewarm welcome from England aside, the weather is absolutely gorgeous today! Just perfect!

Our Penultimate Day in Oregon

We've been having a great time in Oregon, but we're coming up to our last day. It's been an eventful trip so far and we're not quite ready to go back to England. Since it is now a bit late to do a play-by-play of our trip, here are some various events that have taken place since we flew out of Boston:

*Spent the 8th through 13th in the Willamette Valley, most of the time in Eugene, but we did meet up with K's sister at a McMenamin's near the Portland airport after we picked up our rental car. We stayed at K's grandmother's house during our time in Eugene. Went out to eat frequently with various sections of K's family.

*K's grandmother let us move all of our stuff out of our storage room in Hubbard and into her garage in Eugene. We rented a van and did the move in one day. It was great to visit our stuff, but seeing my massive collection of homebrewing equipment made me REALLY miss brewing!

*We spent two days with K's dad and step-mom. And also had lunch with her grandmother (on her dad's side) at Papa's Pizza along with her dad and grandmother-on-her-mother's-side. [It so much easier in Danish or Swedish: Farmor (FatherMother) = grandmother-on-dad's-side and Mormor (MotherMother) = grandmother-on-mom's side and then there's Farfar (FatherFather) and Morfar (MotherFather)]. Got it?

*Wednesday last week, we got a great deal on a massage at K's step-mom's salon: two sessions for the price of one. So K and I both had a fabulous full-body massage (my first professional massage ever). I can see why people don't mind shelling out $50 or so for something like that. If you're ever near Coburg, OR, be sure to pop in to Coburg Hair Studio for a massage from Laurie!

*On Friday the 13th, we left Eugene at about 10am to drive to Baker City with a stop-over in Sisters to have lunch at Black Butte Ranch with K's aunt (on her mother's side). After that, we drove to her ranch to see her new flock (gaggle? herd?) of alpacas. They are somethin' else! I've seen them singly, but never in a herd of 30. They group together like birds and seem just as skittish as birds.

*The drive out to Baker City was gorgeous! Just the perfect American open road with drastically changing scenery. We were virtually the only ones on the road, sort of surreal. We spotted a couple of trees with hundreds of shoes hanging in them. Lots of cows and horses. But my favorite animal sighting was an American Bald Eagle circling down out of the clouds to land in a tree by a lake. Beautiful.

*We got to Baker City around 7:15 on the 13th and after a tour of J-Mom and J-Dad's house, we sat down for a home-cooked meal.

*Since then, we've been partaking in Baker City life: going to some of their great, little independent shops (like Mad Matilda's and Bella's); driving around to look at houses; having lunch and/or dinner at some of their fine eating establishments; and so on. On Saturday, we had dinner at Haines Steakhouse, a classic American restaurant with kitchy decor and servers dressed like they were about to head to the rodeo. Other than that, we've been doing quite a bit of relaxing (much needed relaxation!).

*Went to the Geiser Grand Hotel for the Baker City Rotary Club lunch meeting with J-Dad last Monday, which was a great "small town" experience. Sat next to the town's chiropractor. The meeting was regarding the upcoming Hell's Canyon Motorcycle Rally which rolls into town in June. The Rotary Club will be acting as Baker City's hospitality department.

*On Tuesday, I ended up being invited to the local homebrewing club's monthly meeting. They're called "Good Libations". The meeting was held at one of the members' house, a state trooper who specializes in catching poachers. He also happens to brew some great beer! There were 5 of us at the meeting. We talked about how to clarify beer using finings, then tasted some homebrews that people had brought along (I even brought some of mine which I had rescued from the storage room), and then did a tasting of six or seven different West Coast stouts. Oh, and we voted on who's homebrew was the best. My barleywine won! So they had me select a prize from the prize box.

*On Wednesday, we drove up to La Grande to see the Eastern Oregon University campus and then took the scenic route home, stopping in Union to have lunch at the Union Hotel Fireside Cafe.

*I've been drinking a lot of American craftbrews, particularly beers from the Northwest. K has been accommodating enough to go to restaurants that serve good beer, so I've been quaffing some great suds and reviewing a few of them on BeerAdvocate. Tonight we're going to Barley Brown's, Baker City's only brewpub, to have dinner.

*Today is a take-her-easy/last minute tasks day. We have to pack because we're heading out tomorrow. Our flight is at 7am on Saturday morning, so we're driving to Portland (5-6 hours away) in the morning, checking in to a hotel, returning the rental car, and taking the Max into Portland to have dinner with K's sister. Then comes one hell of a return journey:

7am - Portland to Seattle
8.45am - Seattle to Boston (arriving at 5:30pm)
9:30pm - Boston to London Heathrow (arriving at 8:35am on Sunday)
10:45am - National Express bus to Bournemouth (2 hours)

Needless to say, we will be thoroughly jet-lagged. And I have to work the next day!

[Click on the title of this post to go to our picture gallery featuring pics of this trip]