Special Delivery for Greg Oden

I've just been reading some of the comments at the Trail Blazer Facebook page--some of those people are way too mean, others are thankfully very supportive.

Greg, I want you to know something that is very important to me. My almost 85-year-old mother and I moved here to Portland from Jackson, Mississippi, the summer of 2006. My two wonderful sons had already moved here and welcomed us with open arms. When you were drafted by Portland in 2007, my Mama perked up at all the news stories and became a basketball fan--she'll even miss "Wheel of Fortune" to watch the Trail Blazers. This is a cutie-pie little ol' lady who merely tolerated all sorts of sports during her 57 and one half year marriage to my Daddy who always had the TV on some sort of sporting event, but never basketball. I myself have been a basketball fan since the 1960s watching my brother play in school, and I kept score for the high school teams where I was a librarian for six years, home and away games. I adore the squeak of sneakers on the gym floor.

Anyway, I want to say a great big THANK YOU for the part your smile and your desire to do your best for Portland had in turning my mother into a basketball fan because we now have one more thing we can share as a couple of widows living together. She sits in her recliner, pulling for the Trail Blazers, pleased as punch when things go right, uttering a four-letter word that starts with an S, which she turns into two syllables, when things go bad. She's asked me to explain all sorts of terms--pick and roll, in the paint, setting a pick, and from the bench, to name a few. I've had to look some of them up on the Internet, rely on my ol' lady memory, and/or call my brother in Mississippi to get some help with the definitions. He's in the wrong time zone to be much help. Beside Mama on the table, she's got the schedule I printed from the Internet so that she won't forget about an upcoming game--she's keeping up with the wins and losses.

I sit in my chair watching the games, too, but some of the time I'm watching my Mama, the basketball fan. Thanks, Greg. Mama and I wish you the best with your surgery and recovery. We know you will rise again. We know it.

My first visit to the Rose Garden Arena, and the Trail Blazers win!

All of a sudden I had the chance to go to the Rose Garden Arena Wednesday night to see the Portland Trail Blazers play their opening pre-season National Basketball Association game against the Los Angeles Clippers. Yippee!

Since I wasn't sure if I would be allowed to take photos inside the arena, I took this one outside about an hour before the game began. You can see a small portion of the crowd that streamed into the arena. While every seat wasn't occupied, it was still a huge crowd, all excited as the Blazers won the game 111-102.

The gigantic red basketball jersey on the wall represents Portland's #1 draft pick, the top draft pick for the entire NBA, Greg Oden. Oden will not be able to play a single game this season; he's recovering from microfracture surgery on his right knee. He was at the game, sitting on the bench. Well, really the bench is a row of nicely padded metal folding chairs.

I ended up taking some photos during the game, surprise, surprise, surprise! If any of them are any good, you'll get to see them soon!

Portland's Urban Iditarod, seen from the Buick, Leland at the wheel

Grinning, running. Looks like fun. If you look carefully through the blur that is the windshield wiper, you can see that a couple of those guys have red straps in their hands. That means they're the dog team. I guess the guy in the purple shirt is the musher. What role does the inflatable person play? Your guess is as good as mine.


All for one, one for all, get it on down the road. We're on East Burnside, heading west towards the Burnside Bridge, eventually.


Oops! Must have hit a pothole! See the red strap in the hand of the man wearing the red shorts, The man with the red hair appears to have a strap, too.


Now they've made it six blocks--perseverance personified.

I'll post some more soon.

From the Oregonian's Web site:
Metro Portland Running »
Portland Urban Iditarod: 2010 recap
By Kelly Johnson, community blogger
March 13, 2010, 5:34PM

Hundreds of runners and probably quite a few "non-runners" showed up for the 2010 Portland Urban Iditarod. For the third year in a row, I was on a team with a group of friends that I've all met, surprisingly enough, through running.

Because the event starts under the east end of the Hawthorne Bridge, active folks that were out for an actual training run or ride stopped and asked the costumed teams what was going. "It's the Urban Iditarod," people would say, providing basically no useful information to the curious passers-by.

So, here's what it is. Take the Alaskan Iditarod, but replace the sled with a shopping cart and the dogs with runners. Add crazy costumes, turn the "aid stations" into popular bars and clubs, and a lot of people with a sense of humor.

At 11a sharp, the Lead Dog sent participants a text message reading "Grand Cafe," and the masses stampeded up the street, stopping traffic on Grand Avenue and MLK. Drivers snapped photos from their cars as they waited, and soon the party was started in a large parking lot across the street from the Grand Cafe.

Salsa dancers and karoke-ing mushers performed for the crowd as people wandered around to check out the other "sleds." Before long, another text message sent the teams to Grand Central Bowl, just a few blocks away. The next stop was the Doug Fir and Jupiter Hotel, but I made a side trip to Voodoo Doughnuts only a few blocks away at NE 14th and Sandy before rejoining the part.

Each aid station layover was about an hour long, which was a change from previous years. It was really nice to be able to wander around, catch up with friends on other teams, dance a little, order food if you wanted to, and of course, sample the variety of adult beverages. I was a little surprised to see quite a few of the participants smoking ... but then again, I saw someone smoking last year that was running the Prelay ...

Some of the best costumes that I saw included The Last Supper, The Simpsons, Gilligan and the S.S. Minnow, and a variety of underwater themes including mermaids and a man whose whole head was a shark. As usual, there were also a number that were "ripped from the headlines," including the team of UO football players wearing inmate stripes and the Greg Oden cell phone photo team.

And as usual, there were no winners and there were no losers - "just a whole lot of belligerant people," as said by KATU news a few years ago.