I am home

Hi all, I made it back to Australia Sunday morning (lunchtime West Coast time), I had a good flight back to Sydney from Portland via San Fran., then a 3 hour Murrays bus from Sydney International Airport, I really enjoyed my trip, I will post a summary on the weekend.

Last day in the USA

Today I fly back to Aus from the USA, arriving back Sunday, I have had a quiet time in Portland, I ran in the morning yesterday and today, my fitness is starting to come back.

I wandered into the city yesterday, it rained pretty well the whole day, the city is nothing spectacular, buildings are not very tall, it is probably the size of Adelaide city area, there are trams that run thru the city. I noticed this in Seattle, I can't remember if I commented but there does seem to be a lot of homeless on the street, maybe in the north west part of the USA they are looked after better, but with the weather I wouldn't like to be outside in the rain all day, I will see you all when I get back.

Portland drizzling one day rain the next

Yesterday I had a fairly quiet day, I started with a 6km run, actually the day before I did my first run(6kms) since last Friday, I ran down to the Columbia river which runs thru Portland, I went across one of the many bridges across the river, there are a number of paths built especially for bikes & pedestrians, so I have made use of them, they are both sides of the river, today I did a circuit across one bridge then along the river and back across another bridge, got up to 7kms, so I feel like I am on the way back again.

In the afternoon I then wandered down to the Lloyd Centre, which is a big indoor mall, unlike here, there are no shops on the outside. On the bottom level they have a ice skating rink, I stayed away from that. I did a bit of shopping, I got 3 of Matthew Reilly (Aussie Author) books for $24 ($26 Aus), in Australia I would have paid $63, now you can see why Book stores in Australia don't want imported books allowed in Aus, we are getting ripped off for the price of novels. Interestingly there is no sales tax in Oregon, not sure why, I am not complaining, the price you see is the price you pay.

In the afternoon I went and saw the movie The Blind Side, it is the movie that Sandra Bullock won the Oscar for Best Actress, she was very good in the movie, it is about a black student/football player that she takes into her home and then finally adopts, he was a big dude, it is a true story, after going thru high school he goes onto the Uni of Mississippi and last year he was drafted by on the NFL teams, it is a really good feel good movie, I actually think the guy that played the football player should have been nominated for best supporting actor, he was very impressive, when the movie it comes to Australia go and see it, even if you don't like American football.

Seattle Underground and then onto Portland

I drove up to Seattle, I actually went up 5th avenue and it was very quite not much traffic, but not the famous street of NY, I found a local car park and left the car there, I was worried about getting broken into but that could happen anywhere, so I took a chance, I decided to go and do the Seattle Underground tour, back in the 1890's a big part of Seattle burnt down and because of the problem with high water levels and flooding, they rebuilt all the buildings of stone and built the footpaths below ground and this created a sort of underground, eventually this was abandoned, and they were all built over, they were rediscover in 40's and 50's and eventually a Seattle historian started taking people down there in the 60's which became the tour I went on, we went thru the underground part of 3 blocks, whereas the whole underground covered over 27 blocks., it was very impressive.

I then wandered around along the waterfront and found a bakery that sold Clam Chowder soup in a cut out sourdough bread, it was very nice and very filling, actually I couldn't finish off all the roll, so i took it with me to finish off later.
When I got back to the car park, the car was all in once piece and not broken in to, I then headed south along the I5 to Portland..

I arrived in Portland just after 5, the Trail Blazers (basketball team) were playing the Sacremento Kings tonite, the traffic was fairly busy around the Rose garden area which is where the arena is for the match and I was hoping to check into a nearby La Quinta Inn which was close by and are a bit more up market than a Motel 6, they supply a real breakfast (cereal, toast etc), on the Internet that there was a AAA (eqiv of NRMA in USA) discount of $10 a night, so I managed to get that, plus their rooms are inside and not facing out to the open, more secure.

I went to the game and got a good seat behind the goals but on a angle, better view than last time, I find that ticket prices for these sort seats are very good value.
Portland won 88-81, I didn't put my hex on them but they did try to loose it, very ordinary in parts, early on they led 14-5 and I thought this is going to be lopsided but then the Kings went on a 16-2 run, and that happened a few times by both teams during the game, Patty Mills (ex Canberra lad) was listed as a reserve, but I didn't see him warm up so I don't know where he was.

Drove up to Mt Baker and then on towards Seattle

I left Hope in Canada about 9am, it took me just over an hour to get to the border, just before I crossed over, I had my last fix of Tim Hortons coffee & muffin, I then decided to head up to the Mt Baker Ski area, this ski area had the world record snow depth back in 1999, it had over 10 metres of snow, I thought up here there would be plenty of good scenery, as I was driving up I gave a lift to a couple of snow boarders that were looking for a ride up to the snow, they looked pretty harmless, plus in the north west part of the USA most people are very friendly, its the close influence of Canada. I had a quick look around when I got up there, very impressive sights as you can see from the pics, I nearly could have done an afternoon of skiing, it would only cost me about $70 for 3 hours, but i thought I am not taking a risk in hurting myself.

I then headed south towards Seattle, I have stopped in Lynwood which is about 20kms north of Seattle, I am hoping to do the Seattle underground tour, and then drive onto Portland and spend 3 days there and have a look around before flying out Friday, if you want to say hello email me @ rpilk58@hotmail.com

Snow & on the road again

Our last morning in Kamloops, we packed up and checked out, Rad had a late flight out of Kamloops to Vancouver and then flying back to Aus, so we decided to drive up to the Sun Peaks ski resort that is 50 odd ks north of Kamloops, the road was very good to drive on, similar to the one up to Perisher but the difference here is that there are farms all the way up to the resort and the trees were Fir and not Gum, plus there were a few frozen lakes which was confusing because the temp was about 6-7C.

We just parked the car in one of the lots, we then wandered around the resort, checked all the Ski gear shops, we even ran into Bob Pierce from Adelaide who was up skiing for the day with his wife/partner, I can remember seeing Bob run at Christmas in the Bay Sheffield events at Glenelg. The resort it is probably similar to Thredbo with lost of places close to the bottom of lifts, you can see in the picture that some can park there cars close to the lifts.

We headed back to Kamloops and I dropped Rad at the Airport, he had a quite a few hours to wait for his plane, but I am sure he will have plenty of people to chat to because there will heaps of people flying out in the afternoon/night.

I then headed South for USA, I went via highway 1 which was different from my trip where I went via highway 5, I was following Fraser Canyon, I had a few tunnels to drive thru, there was a quite a bit of rain in the last couple of hours driving, it was getting close to sunset, so I stopped at the town of Hope, I think I still have a bout 100 odd ks to go to the border.

The Farewell Dinner

Tonite we had a farewell dinner for about 25 of the 36 Australians that had competed at Kamloops at the Lynx Grill, we seem to be lacking the male sprinters, they probably go to bed earlier, it was a great night, telling war stories and how we could have done this or that, the week had been great, the support for the relays today show the camaraderie that Australians show as a group and one of the people said that we punch above our weight with 30 of the 36 people attending getting medals shows the standard, but I am hoping that more people will go along to World Championships, they are not just for elite, I am a perfect example of it, I will be looking to next time to improve on my times here (which won't be difficult).

The Restaurant was great, we had an area to ourselves with about 4-5 tables, I had a full rack of pork ribs, the meat was just falling off the bone, it seemed to be the popular choice, we finished up about 10pm, I gave Steve from Darwin a lift to where he was staying, talking to Steve who I thought was familiar said he had been involved with basketball for a number of years, so I am sure we had crossed paths in the past. Everybody on the team was friendly, everybody had a chat, there was good friendship, it shows the mateship of the Australian character.