Whistler/Blackcomb

For the Thanksgiving holiday, Em and I decided to head to Whistler/Blackcomb in British Columbia, Canada to do some snowboarding. I had promised her a trip for our 1 yr anniversary, but as I was busy defending my PhD thesis in early September, it had to take a raincheck. So now I made good on my promise......so Wednesday night we headed towards Canada. We stopped to crash at Jo (Em's NU roomie) and Clayton's place in Seattle (much thanks!) and then got up around 5AM to complete the drive on Thanksgiving morning. Here are some pics from the drive:

A cool bridge in the early morning hours:

As we entered into British Columbia, the scenery was absolutely picturesque. These are shots taken through the window while driving.....so you can only imagine how amazing it is in person. I must recommend this drive to anyone who appreciates the beauty of nature.

At about 11AM we finally arrived at Whistler. Here is the view of the slopes from the road.....

...and the view from atop Blackcomb mountain

....and on the lift

Em atop Blackcomb

another view atop Blackcomb

Here's a shot of our accommodations...

...with the best part being the private hot tub on the deck

Best helmet hair ever!!

Whistler Village at the base of the mountains....very quaint with a great selection of restaurants and shops.
On the third day, it was warm and the previous day's powder had turned to slush. As rain tried to drown out our fun, I was determined to salvage the day. So we decided to forego snowboarding in favor of doing a ZipLine treetop tour of the gorge between Whistler and Blackcomb mountains. This gave us our adrenaline fix for the day. There were lots of suspension bridges connecting the treetops.

We're geared up in harnesses and ready for some extreme adventure!

**Please see our videos of the ZipLine at the bottom of this blog. For some reason, blogspot won't let me embed them in the middle.....oh well.

Here's a sampling of local delicacies. No, that's not an abnormally large tongue, Em is munching on a BeaverTail. It's a Northwest invention that consists of fried dough coated in cinnamon sugar.
Another favorite that we had daily is poutine. "What is poutine?", you might ask. Well, my friends, it is amazing.....in detail, it is a Canadian appetizer consisting of fries doused in mushroom gravy and topped with cheese curds. I don't think my Wellness Coach at work would approve of this (especially the daily servings), but hey, I figure I am burning several thousand calories a day out on the slopes. :)
I quickly found out that "bear-proof" trash cans are also "Brad-proof". Seriously, I had to get Em to show me how to operate this sophisticated piece of machinery. Apparently there is a secondary latch underneath the handle that you have to flick sideways to get it to open....kinda like a hood release on a car. Grrrrr.
As our trip wound to an end, we headed back home to the good ol' US of A.....only to be stuck at the border for 2.5 hours!! No joke. Ironically, the place was called "Peace Arch", yet there was no peaceful dialogue here due to the many irate drivers who didn't like waiting. I decided to just have fun with the situation and setup an impromptu tailgate party to help pass the time.


Hey wait a minute....they look familiar! Yes, that is Kern and Kristina. (I forgot to mention that we met them in Vancouver for dim sum as they were in Vancouver visiting family for the weekend.....then they followed us to the border b/c their GPS doesn't work in Canada.) Matt chose to get caught up on some reading while waiting in the border traffic.
BTW, the dim sum in New Chinatown in (Richmond) Vancouver was awesome.....especially since Kristina's aunts frequent the restaurant so much that we got V.I.P. access. No joke, we walked right in and got a table at the hottest place for dim sum in town despite a 45 minute wait. Our bill even said V.I.P. on it and included a nice discount. It pays to have connections.

Finally, we made it to the border after waiting in line for 2.5 hrs.....I was expecting a little better sign demarcating the difference between our respective lands than this 3 foot tall disappointment (that's about 1 m for our northerly friends).

YEAH, that's more like it....at least America put a little effort into this sign. Cheesy, but if you look close, they have most of the good stuff on there.
I also promised Em a trip to her favorite store, which was founded in this area and has an outlet just south of the Canada border. Somehow, she always weasels shopping into things.....;)
Then we met up again with Jo and Clayton in Seattle for dinner on our way through. Korean BBQ at a little local place, yum!

"I have no ending for this, so I will just take a bow." -George Carlin at the end of one of his comedy acts where he just abruptly ended his set after a great joke.

**Please see the videos of our ZipLine adventure below: (the first and last videos are of Em, the middle video is me taking first-hand video as I zip across ~1000 ft)

Thanksgiving in Portland

Since we're headed to Whistler, BC for Thanksgiving weekend, we decided to do an early Thanksgiving dinner at our place. We had quite the spread - turkey, 2 different stuffings, cheesy potato casserole, green bean casserole, fresh bread, a cranberry jello mix, yams, mashed potatoes, and pumpkin pie! Yummy! We were really thankful for being able to have a Thanksgiving dinner with all our friends (old and new) in Portland. This is the first year that we haven't gotten to spend Thanksgiving with our families...so it's nice to have a great group of friends here to celebrate Thanksgiving with.


Since we will be in Canada on Thanksgiving day, we won't be having turkey....but we definitely have enough turkey leftover to keep us satisfied until Christmas. Funny story actually - Brad and I were out buying a turkey but couldn't remember the pounds/person ratio. I told him it was 2 lbs/person...so we ended up with a 15.5 lbs turkey for 7 of us. I was way off. But I guess it can't hurt to have turkey saved up in the freezer right?

We are finally getting to put our wedding gifts to good use! Above is a picture of our dining table before we filled our plates full of food!


Everyone at the table before digging in. It was a great meal - and there was definitely some recipe exchanging going on afterwards.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Gobble Gobble!

Em

Snowboarding on Mt. Hood, part I.

After Em's previous post showing Mt. Hood from a distance, I have decided to give you some better pics. Coincidently, we just bought our season passes to Timberline yesterday. This prompted me to get a set of tire chains for the car and a roof mounted snowboard rack. It was sunny and 53 degrees F today so we loaded up the car and drove to Mt Hood today. Here is the view of the peak from the mid-mountain parking lot.

Matt and Kristina Kern joined us for the trip.....Kristina got a little too comfortable on the drive.

It was so warm out that we could snowboard in a sweatshirt. Here's Em on the Palmer snowfields (which are snow covered and open year round)....

...and on the lift.

It was so warm that I got too hot in my gloves!! Conditions were a little wet, but there was still lots of snow to kick around; it was very comparable to "spring skiing" conditions.

Afterwards, we stopped by a little hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurant that got good reviews online. It was Szechuan style, which basically means "more spicy than anything you have ever had". We had a little trouble finding the pieces of chicken amongst all the hot peppers in this dish. Instant heartburn, but worth it. We literally went through 2 pitchers of water to cool our mouths down during the meal. My forehead was sweating and my sinuses are now very clear. :)

Afterwards, we drove by an old fashioned diner restaurant. I knew just by looking at it that they would have amazing milkshakes.....and I was right. What better way to cool off after a Szechuan meal? We opted for the large eggnog shake which turned out to be truly colossal.

And Kristina once again had trouble staying awake during the ride home. Is our conversation really that boring??

Only in Oregon...

I went out for a quick jog this afternoon because we finally got a break from the rainy weather the last week and a half. It was a really clear day in the mid 50's - perfect for running. While I was running across a bridge over the highway, I caught Mt. Hood out of the corner of my eye. I just had to stop and grab some pics with my iPhone. The pictures don't really capture the beauty of it in person...but at least you get the gist (click on the pictures to get a larger version). And it was a beautiful sunset tonight too.

Much Love,

Em

The Market

Saturday morning, we went to a local farmer's market near Portland State University. It was much bigger than we expected and had a great selection of fruits, veggies, fish, cheese, flowers, etc. It even had live music. The best part is that you get to try everything before you buy (read: free breakfast).

Amongst the tents were a few food carts. This one is particular has got to be the smallest restaurant in the world.

Em is showing off our best value purchase....giant leek for only $1. With these, we made a chinese fish and leek dish that Em's mom taught us.

We also scored some amazing Asian pears and some homemade sauces and jams. Some of the items were a bit pricey, but the money goes directly to the farmers so ya gotta support local!! Kudos to the farmers who provided their produce in 100% biodegradable "plastic" bags. Wow, we are slowly becoming hippies. "....when in Rome"

Below, Em is showing off the bouquet I got her at the market. :)

3-D Blacklight Mini-golf....only in PDX

OK, any place of business with a pirate out front gets my attention and is worth my time. And when it is a SKELETON pirate, well, my friends, it is irresistable!

Along for this Scooby Doo adventure is our good friend Joanna. Jo was Em's roommate at NU and currently lives in Seattle. She's down for the weekend and down for some adventure. Kern and Kristina (not pictured) are in too.

Stepping inside reveals a basement setup with 3-D blacklight minigolf. Does it get any better than this? (I apologize for the poor pic quality....they were taken on my iPhone, which does not have a flash.) I was grossly unprepared for this adventure, but sometimes in life you gotta roll with the punches! So down the stairs we go...

I am not sure what inspired this place.....but it is AWESOME. The pirate theme permeates the place. They even have fluorescent balls.

Splurging the extra $1.00 for the 3D glasses is probably the best investment one can make these days. They actually did a good job of putting 3D stuff everywhere on the walls. After the first hole we all decided that the 3D effects definitely hinder gameplay (totally messes with your depth perception when hitting the ball) so we immediately mandated that everyone wear them for the remainder of our excursion to the links.

Kern, can you tally up the scores so we can report them? I think I won.

Celebrating Obama - Portland style!

"Yes we can"
After having sushi at our favorite local spot, we went for a walk around the city. Everyone was celebrating the Obama victory and a small mass of people began to gather. There was a group of people drumming, so naturally we were having a good time groovin' to the beat. We decided to join the newly formed parade. It quickly grew into several thousand as we marched around downtown Portland. I gotta say this is the first time I truly felt "American" and it gave me a sense of pride on so many levels. There were all walks of life in the parade: all races, all ages, and all economic levels. It was a great example of the cross-section of America. And everyone was dancing in the streets to the beat of the drums. The only thing that would have been better is if we were still back in Chicago celebrating with our new president firsthand in Grant Park.

Rally at Pioneer Square

The view as we marched down Broadway.

The drummers that led the rally.