this desert life, this high life

my aunt robin, uncle danny, and two cousins (aaron and ethan) live in bend, oregon. i'm pretty excited to be so close to family (it rarely happens these days), and a few weekends ago i made it out there to visit them.

bend is an awesome place. it's a lot like what i thought corvallis would be like - much more artsy with lots of community things going on in the summer. i realize that corvallis is very osu-centered/focused, but i don't think that's an excuse to not have art galleries, museums, summer free outdoor concerts, etc. there is so much to do in this area, and yet, you need a car to do so much of it. ahhh well.

anyways, i just loved bend. i would move there in a heartbeat if it were a wee bit closer to the ocean (details details). and i had a great time visiting the oregon clan. we went on a bit of a central oregon high desert tour so that uncle danny could sell his motorcycle and got to watch people rafting down the deschutes river ...





... which i totally want to do. what fun! it's just so beautiful, and it made me happy to be back in the desert. the coast is beautiful, but man, i miss the desert.

and while we were exploring we came across this:





a rendezvous of vw vanagons (a.k.a. rendezvovw)! oh my goodness how delightfully fun. this is a horrible photo, but it was literally just a big bunch of these vanagons in a field, people just camping, hanging out, enjoying themselves. the boys were completely uninterested while uncle danny, aunt robin, and i oohed and ahhed over how cute and fun they were.

and then we got to talking about how completely logical owning a vw vanagon would be for me at this stage of my life. you can live in it; it holds a lot of stuff; it's cute. when we returned to bend, we spent some time on ebay looking up all the wonderful ones you can buy and i e-mailed it to my dad who, when i talked to him later said, "alexis, do you know why we got rid of ours?" to which i replied no. and he said, "because it was simultaneously the most useful and most expensive car we have ever owned"

he is still hoping i will forget about this. (are you reading this dad?)

so i had a lovely time. i hope to go back again soon!

the challengers of the unknown

i've realized lately that, although i am really enjoying my time in oregon, i'm struggling with the lack of challenge and thought-provoking situations in my life. apart from friends, it may be what i miss the most about BC. and maybe part of what made BC so special ... i really miss is discussing a huge variety of things, issues, thoughts, ideas, with all sorts of people who held all sorts of different beliefs. everyone in my group of friends was well-informed and cared about the world about them and there was always something to talk about. the people i work with are wonderful, but we are all very similar in our beliefs and it makes it a little ... boring. and nothing about the job is challenging or intellectually stimulating once you learn the ropes and techniques. i do have my heaps of books, but it's just not quite the same.

i really wanted to join some sort of book group, or discussion group, or something, but haven't really found anything in the area. my lunar-based schedule doesn't make that any easier ...

and so i went to church last sunday. i was quite nervous - i haven't been to church because i decided all by myself to go in ... well, actually, i've never gone to church just for myself before. but the church my family goes to in tucson is just so wonderful and thought-provoking that i thought maybe church would work. it didn't. everyone was so friendly and nice, but the service mostly consisted of praise music and a rather dull sermon - not really what i was looking for.

so. not sure what to try next, but i'll keep searching for things. starting over in a new place is hard: hard to find friends outside of work, expand my circle, try new things ...

i'll just live on wine and water my vines

for memorial day weekend / brad's birthday, i decided to rent a car so we could tour some of the vineyards in the immediate area. first, a few things about renting a car - you can rent a compact for $40/day OR get a "memorial day weekend special" and get the car for $15/day - that means $45 for three days. guess what we did? and (perhaps more importantly) refuse to take their "upgrade" to an SUV from the compact car you wanted - that SUV is usually a piece-of-shit chevy trailblazer that costs $80 to fill with gas and then gets about 15 mpg. holy god. i'm glad i don't own a car or drive regularly or that the only time i do is when PISCO is paying for the petrol.

brad and i had a great time having a car. we basically did an "intro to the area" for the weekend. visited four vineyards on saturday - tasted lots of delicious wines, saw the beautiful countryside, joked with winemakers, and got to taste one pinto gris that was still in the ... cask (uh i have no clue what you would call the big metal container that the wine is kept in until it's "ready") and hadn't even been bottled yet. fabulous.



[benton-lane vineyards]


newport is the town straight east of here on the coast, so we drive through it all the time to get to sites during tidal series, but don't ever really stop there, so we decided to spend memorial day there wandering through shops and visiting the nearby lighthouse.

it's a pretty neat little town - cute galleries, cool bridge, and very vocal sea lions.







both brad and i commented on how touristy it is. it really surprises me how not touristy most of the coast is, and how local it still feels. no (ok, limited) million dollar homes, huge hotels, etc - i like that, for the most part, it is still very traditional. people just haven't discovered it yet. or maybe the bad weather keeps most of them away. :)

and we went out to the yaquina head lighthouse. it's on a gorgeous headland just north of newport and is really just stunningly beautiful. the rain and fog was really moving in, but we still got some good views of it.





so wonderful weekend, and i'm really happy that we got to see some more the area - it was nice to get out of corvallis for a bit. having a car certainly makes you feel less confined in an area.