Westmoreland Asays

We departed early on Friday--I took a half-day vacation, and we rescued Aaron from his last class of the day at middle school--hoping to beat rush-hour traffic, and were able to get out of town without incident. We left a partially sunny Portland only to run into rain falling through the coast range. Driving through rain usually isn't a problem, but when your van can no longer stay in gear, it just adds fuel to the frustration fire. Meg had been complaining about the slow-driving cars in front of us, but we soon became even slower than them all--karma unveiled its ugly head. She pulled over to the side of the road, and I exited the vehicle carefully and ensured that all four tires were properly inflated and had traction. Unfortunately, the problem wasn't something that simple and observable. Meg asked that I try driving--perhaps the Michael-effect would magically fix the problem. I was able to pull back on the highway, but after accelerating to second gear, the transmission c...

Somehow Meg found a way to offload our children--on a holiday weekend even--to two different families for about 30 hours so the two of us could get away for some alone time before the stressful start of school. Although Meg had secured a room at The Resort at the Mountain with the idea that our family of five would stay there, it worked out plenty fine for just the two of us. After dropping the children off at their friends' houses, we drove the scenic route (read: through the more repressed areas of the city before making it out to the country) to Timberline Lodge on Mt. Hood. I had visited the lodge a couple of times--and I think watching The Shining a few times counts for something, too--but a visit was on Meg's virtual bucket list, and she had a gift certificate for the lodge, so she wanted to have lunch there with our friends, Susan and Chris. We drove through some rain, though not the downpours we experienced the day before, but it was dry-and-foggy-and-windy at the l...