ABC Wednesday – O is for Octopus

Before we moved to the Northwest Hills last October, I used this great big purple octopus as a landmark when driving through downtown. Now every day after work I ride a bus whose route goes right through the intersection of SW Washington and SW 4th Avenue. Often I wonder about the Greek Cusina, proud displayer of the octopus. You can read about the restaurant here.

I took the first photo below on Sept. 14 when I went on an ABC Wednesday trek throught parts of downtown. I took the second photo below on Oct. 30 on the way home. What can you find in both photos that you would not expect to find in photos taken six weeks apart?

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Believe me, this is the only octopus I ever want to be underneath!

I thought I saw a golden tree. Tell me, please, do you agree?

That's Madison Street, with the vehicles. When I drove through the park Sunday night, going right to left, the street lights illuminated the leaves. I could not believe what I saw--the gingkos had started to change from green to gold. I'm extremely enthusiastic about these trees, so I warn you up front--I have gone overboard posting photos today because I wish for you to feel how I felt, in perfect awe of nature's beauteous changes.



Remember the tree from Monday's post, the one with the huge burl? I took this photo standing to the east of where I stood to take the other one. Are you as shocked as I am to see that it resembles a tuning fork from this angle? That small pile of leaves makes it look like someone raked a while, got tired, and walked away.



Now you can see the Thompson Elk Fountain from a different direction. Notice the traffic? I took these photos between 5:15-5:30 p.m. There's always loads and loads of traffic which is a great big reason why I ride the bus and/or walk. In fact, I rode a Number 4 across the Willamette, over the Hawthorne Bridge, about 15 minutes prior to the one in the next photo.



I think the curve of the sidewalk looks romantic. Not that I think the street sections that encircle the elk statue look that way. Do you think it's the chain-and-post barrier that makes it appear that way to me? Afterall, the curves follow the same line which you can see even better in the photo below.





Sidewalks segment both Chapman and Lownsdale Squares. This one goes from Madison northeast to Salmon at SW 3rd, in Lownsdale Square. Later on we'll go into detail about the monument in the circle. In the photo below, you see the same sidewalk, looking southeast.





The western edge of Lownsdale Square is SW 4th Avenue. In this photo, you're looking due south. Those are the same orange cones you saw in the first sidewalk photo. A remote van for a local TV station had placed wires across the sidewalks and lawns. Can you find the van in this photo?

Think back to yesterday's photo. Remember the green trees in a row, just to the left of the chain-and-post barrier? I took these next three photos standing beneath one of them, a gingko in the early stages of going from green to gold. I love the way it looks against the orange and rust-colored leaves of the taller tree. The wind blew just enough to move the green limbs, so I put the camera setting on sport. With that help, I managed to get some photos and/or portions of photos that I think turned out pretty good.

Chapman Square, south of the Thompson elk

This is Chapman Square, the park to the south of the Thompson elk. This evening after dark I drove through the park on SW Madison Street--there in the distance, where you see the vehicles. I noticed something. Weather and the unforeseen depending, you'll see it tomorrow. Here's the photo I took on October 20.

Early Morning Singing Song

How many times have you walked into where you work and been blinded for a second by light from an entirely unknown source? My first thought Oct. 26, just before 8 a.m., "Is that the sun?" Yep. I took these photos Oct. 26, just before 8 a.m. In the forefront you see the lit silhouettes of pampas grass growing on the rooftop garden. Above the brilliant reflection you see the moon which set behind the buildings moments after I took these photos.



To paraphrase "Good Morning, Starshine" from "Hair" --

Good morning sunshine.
Portland says hello.
You shine above us.
We shine below.

Good morning moonset.
You're saying so long,
Even though you're not gone yet.
Our early morning singing song.

Elk, revisited, here and there

This is the second picture I've posted of this elk statue/fountain in the middle of Main Street in downtown Portland. You can see the photo from the September 14 post and read about it and the southernmost park, Chapman Square, here.

I wanted you to see exactly what the traffic does with the statue, so after work one day the first week of October, I stopped where SW Main Street intersects SW 4th Avenue, turned facing northeast and took this photo. The David P. Thompson Memorial Fountain began as a watering trough for horses. Now every day thousands of horses slip by it on the right or the left--horse power, that is.



Also I've posted another photo of the park and the elk at Mama and Me from PDX. You'll get to see another example of Portland's beautiful autumn leaves and find out all about the northernmost park, Lownsdale Square.

Serendipity--you gotta love it.

On Oct. 14 these red trees grabbed hold of me and I had to pull the Buick off Barbur Blvd. into a Fred Meyer parking lot, and take this photo. Last night when I took a better look at it, I got plumb tickled. Look at the car. Look at the man's shirt. Look at the trees. I love it.

For fun and foliage-filled walk around our block in Portland's Northwest Hills, go to my other blog, Mama and Me from PDX.

Great Leaf Moments, A Series, III

Y'all know how fond I am of telling which direction I face when I take a picture. Can't do that this time. The minute I drove the Buick west on NW Johnson and turned right onto NW Westover Road, I soon lost track of direction.



I just kept turning onto the high road at each intersection. Looking at the Google map just now proved to be no help, either. The roads resemble curving pasta of different lengths, lying nearby and atop one another on a small dish. Suffice it to say that we went up and up, circled here and there, pulling to a stop wherever possible to take a few pictures. Mostly we went, "Look at that!" I couldn't stop because a vehicle was behind me, so I missed quite a few photo opportunities.

I managed to drive by one house three times, each time from a different direction. I recognized its almost two-stories high concrete retaining wall. Twice I drove by a nice flat concrete driveway where I could have turned around but for the fact that as I approached the driveway, all I could see underneath the concrete at is juncture with the roadway was space, empty space. The whole house, driveway, carport, everything is on stilts or pylons or whatever they call them. No was was I going to tempt fate with my toes, much less an entire automobile!





In spacious, flatter areas, streets widened but houses still sat atop steeply banked lawns, hiding behind well-kept plantings.

ABC Wednesday – N is for New

New, as in the new window display at the Funny Bone Store on SW Washington between 6th and Broadway. These labels on these new-to-me BlueQ tin banks are a hoot. My photos are not as clear as I would like--I didn't have my tripod with me, darn it. So, if you want to see the labels up close and personal, go to one of these sites. The Funny Bone Store is at www.funnybonestore.com. If you click on What's in the Window? you'll get a short slide show of most of the banks. BlueQ is at www.blueq.com where you click on Tin Banks (on the left) and see the dozen different labels.

Great Leaf Moments, A Series, II

The Buick's headed north on NW 22nd Avenue. I was NOT driving and taking a photo, I promise. I stopped in the middle of the street once I realized there was not a car in sight behind me.

And I promise, I do NOT know the owners of all of these matching street-level accessory vehicles. Chalk it up to serendipity. Or as Mama would say, "You can see more drivin' than I can just ridin' and lookin'!"

Notice how flat the street is? Once it slopes down from West Burnside, it flattens out at our street, NW Everett, and stays flat all the way to the Willamette, as far as I can tell.

Great Leaf Moments, A Series, I

You're looking west. This is the intersection of West Burnside and NW 23rd Avenue, to the right, and SW Vista to the left. To get you oriented to previous posts, I could have turned around after I took last week's photo looking east down Burnside, the one that showed you Jim Fisher Volvo and the trianglular building, and seen this intersection. I didn't take this one right after the other one, though, because the sun wasn't up enough to do the leaves justice.

On Oct. 13, after Mama, Duncan and I got into the car, this is the first photo from our tour of the neighborhood. One week later, the first tree in the row alongside Burnside, the one right above the white van, had lost every single leaf. Like I said, it's been raining and blowing a good bit. Within weeks, leaf-less limbs will branch out from trunk after trunk all over the city, so I'm embarking on a series of sorts to share this beauty with you, in a rush with nature I suppose you could say.

The small brick building on the left houses a State Farm Insurance office. Across from it you can see a sign that reads Zupans--that's a nice high-end grocery store. Up the hill to the left you see a pale building with many windows and the word Envoy top center. Here's a bit from the Web: "The Historic Envoy, built in the 1920's, has been renovated to its original charm and converted to condominiums. Units feature vintage hardwood floors, paned windows and covered off-street parking. Many have city and mountain views." The few I found for sale are in the $330,000 plus range, even the one bedroom. Y'all are beginning to understand why Mama and I happily rent, right?

An hour or so later after driving the twisting and turning roads above our neighborhood to the west, we've stopped on NW 23rd Avenue, waiting to cross West Burnside, so that we can take SW Vista up into another part of the hills. Burnside divides Portland into north and south, hence the direction change for the streets. Some but not all streets also change names, like at this particular intersection. Here's the corner from another angle.



After driving up Vista and making a couple of right hand turns, plus stopping to take a few photos from a stairway hanging on the side of a steep hill--or at least that's how it seemed to me, the one with a pronounced fear of heights--we arrived at the intersection one last time.

You can see from this photo how steep Vista is as it heads south from Burnside. It gets even steeper very quickly. My goal is to be able to walk up it so that I can go to the Vista Bridge and take photos from the 120 foot tall bridge--there's no where nearby to park, so why not? Well, to tell you the truth, it will be scary as all get out, as we say in the South, but I'm going to do it because I want to take photos from it. This photo-blogging is positively changing my life.

Leaf Down, Leaves Up

A week ago Saturday, I walked to get the car so that Mama, Duncan and I could tour at leisure our neighborhood and the steep hill above it. We wanted to find more colorful autumn leaves to enjoy and to share with everyone.

I walked around to unlock the passenger door and couldn't believe this golden leaf balanced so perfectly on the door handle. Then I looked up to enjoy the leaves still on the tree.

View from Mama's windows, moments ago.

In and around Portland, it's been raining, it's been blowing ... off and on for days. That happens this time of year, with welcome sun breaks now and then.

Still and all, beautiful sights await my camera and me. I couldn't believe that at the moment I decided to push up one of the windows in Mama's bedroom and take a few photos of the trees across the street, there walked two women in perfectly colored raincoats--more street-level accessories for our autumn leaves. Oh, I didn't lean out to take the photo this time because I wanted to stay dry!

Y'all, I think this is real cool, the photo and what I've got to tell you about it. Then, there's a bunch of tag stuff.

The day I took the second photo in yesterday's post, as I lowered my camera I noticed a small white sign in the window on the red wall. I stepped closer to read it.

Now it's your turn. I hope you get the same great big grin and warm feeling that I got. Creativity does that for me.

Since I cannot read Braille, I hope the graffiti is suitable for an almost-60-year-old woman's CDPB.

First, I'm thrilled to say that I've now been tagged eight times. Eight is the number of my favorite NASCAR driver, Dale Earnhardt Jr.! Next year he'll be 88, twice a nice. Go, Junior!

Now for the cold hard truth.

I cannot figure out how to make a link appear in my posts, even with the gracious help of Marie and JB. After trying off and all all week and a steady hour and a half of trying just now, I'm going to stop.

Instead, I'm going to tell y'all who has tagged me. I hope that you'll find the link to their CDPBs in my Favorite Blogs stack on the right side of the screen. They've got great photos waiting for you--that's the earnest warm truth.

So, in tag order, here they are:

Montpellier Daily Photon (France)
PaB Daily Photo (France)
Nashville Daily Photo (Tennessee)
Mainz Daily Photo (Germany)
Fort Lauderdale Daily Photo (Florida)
Miami Every Day Photo (Florida)
Mt. Hood to Portland OR Daily Photoblog
Forks and the West End, Olympic Peninsula, Washington US

I'll go ahead and put the rules here in case someone out there wants to tag someone else. I won't be tagging anyone, though, but I will encourage you to not only look at the blogs of the eight who tagged me but also to take a look at any blog that strikes your fancy in my stack. Or go to the City Daily Photo Blog and browse to your heart's delight.

These are the rules.

1. Link to your tagger and post these rules.
2. List eight (8) random facts about yourself.
3. Tag eight people at the end of your post and list their names (linking to them).
4. Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving them a comment on their blogs

Since I got tagged so many times, I'm going to take the liberty of posting a plethora of random facts, arranged in several categories:

Sports

1. I went to my first NASCAR race at Talladega Superspeedway in April, 2006, where I took probably a thousand photos.
2. With one of those photos from my trip to Talladega I won the Kodak Easy Share Best Race Moment Ever photo contest and a trip to Homestead-Miami Speedway in November, 2006. It was to the last races of the season in all three divisions of NASCAR--Craftsman truck, Busch car and Nextel Cup car. I blogged from Miami at Mama and Me from PDX in November, 2006. You can read all about my reaction to winning and see the winning photo on my Sept. 5, 2006, post on that blog.
3. For the five years before September, 2001, I attended every football game, home and away, of the high school where I worked as an English teacher and/or librarian. After September 11, 2001, I just couldn't get myself to the field that Friday night, and I've regretted it ever since.
4. At that same high school, I kept score for the girls' and boys' basketball teams, at the officials' table at home games, and on the bench at away games, for over five years.
5. As a result of #3 and #4, I've ridden many a school bus full of mostly wonderful teen-agers.
6. I went in the family car to see my sons play soccer games for at least 15 years, extremely proud to be there for them.
7. When my older son Lamont was two and a half, we lived in Kansas City, Kansas. With my husband's blessing, I got two tickets right behind home plate for that little boy and me to a Kansas City Royals' game. We rode the Royals Express (I think they called the bus that, or at least something like that) from the Country Club Plaza out to Royals Stadium, along with all sorts of other baseball fans. From our seats, Lamont got to shake hands with his favorite Royal, George Brett. (Every time the Royals were on TV, he'd yell, "Hit it, George!") That night the attendance at home games reached some sort of huge number, a milestone worthy of one of the longest fireworks shows I've ever witnessed. Excited, Lamont called them firecracks. On the ride back to meet my husband, a quartet of nuns on the bus fell for my beautiful little son and his delight in the Royals and George Brett.


Travel

1. I'm lucky to be able to say that I've been to London, Windsor, Paris, Versailles, Lucerne, Zurich, Munich, Frankfurt, Venice, Florence, Pisa, Rome and Pompeii as a teacher with students and/or adults in my charge. I'm still in awe of that fact.
2. In all of that traveling between 1994 and 2001, I am proud to say that I'm the only one who got hurt. I got six stitches beneath my right eye at the hospital within walking distance of Notre Dame Cathedral, in Paris after tripping on a street barricade and landing on my face on the Rue de Rivoli, after a visit to the Louvre in June, 2001.
3. From the age of three until around the age of 10, my family and I lived in 26 states, moving every three months or less due to my Daddy's job, building cooling towers for industries that used water in their manufacturing. I have memories that I cannot quite connect with a place or how old I was, but that really doesn't bother me. Seeing the USA this way with my family made me the person I am today. During those years, we lived in three different trailers and today I have framed in two-sided glass the brochures for the second one, a Spartan, and the third one, a Pacemaker. Talk about memories! Just looking at those brochures and talking with Mama and/or my brother is a blast. (There's no brochure for the Goshen Cruiser, the trailer we left Jackson, Mississippi, with. Mama says it was really something! Before I was born, she and Daddy had built the first trailer we lived in from scratch. Daddy worked for a Chevrolet dealer then and knew all about building things; Mama says she painted and sanded and nailed and made the curtains for the windows. This trailer stayed in Mississippi when we started our trek across America.)
4. In June, 2006, my younger son Leland climbed behind the wheel of a jam-packed UHaul truck towing our 1996 Buick LeSabre and proceeded to drive me, our miniature dachshund Duncan and all of the worldly belongings of Mama and me the 2500+ miles from Jackson, Mississippi, to Portland, Oregon. The sweet guy drove every single mile all by himself, through hot, humid Mississippi and Louisiana, across hot and dry Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas, north up Colorado beside the Rockies, west across windy Wyoming, into a bit of Utah, slanting northwest across Idaho, and then into Oregon, across the state on Interstate 84 which actually ends in Portland. We left Jackson at 7 p.m. Central Daylight Time on Friday night, June 9, and arrived at our destination--his and his brother's apartment in Southeast Portland--on June 13 at 9:30 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time. Can you say determination? It's spelled L-E-L-A-N-D.
5. With the help of Dramamine which took away the queasiness of motion sickness, I've thrice been up Pike's Peak in Colorado, Mt. Pilatus in Lucerne, and the Eiffel Tower in Paris. I've been to the top of the Arch in St. Louis, on a cruise of the Inside Passage from Vancouver, BC, to Skagway, Alaska. On the rest of that trip, I rode in a narrow gauge railcar, a tour bus, a huge sort-of-yacht on the Yukon, and a regular railroad car from Fairbanks to Anchorage.
6. With the help of my motion sickness bracelets, I've flown seated backwards in business class of British Airways from Chicago to London.


Writing and Reading

1. For about three years, I interviewed people, wrote stories, took photos, copy edited and made corrections for the Jackson Free Press, an alternative newsweekly in Jackson, Mississippi. You can still read all sorts of articles that I wrote on any number of subjects at www.jacksonfreepress.com. I had a blast!
2. Reading is just about the best thing in the world, as far as I'm concerned. I always told my students you can go anywhere, be anything, do anything, and be home to sleep in your very own bed--no matter what happens in the book you're reading.
3. I'm proud to be a Mississippian, home state to so many fine writers. When I Googled "Mississippi writers" just now, in .15 seconds, I got 21,300 hits. That ought to tell you something right there.
4. The best independent bookstore in the USA is Lemuria Books in Jackson, Mississippi. Second best is Powells right here in Portland, Oregon. Since I'm a Southerner and Lemuria brings one great Southern writer after another to read and sign their books at their annex, I think I'm wholely justified it selecting it as the best in the USA.
5. Besides Southern writers, my other favorites are mystery/thriller writers.

Random Fun and/or Facts

1. The two songs that I've performed most at karaoke are "Eight Days a Week" by the Beatles and "Hot in Herre" by Nelly.
2. In 2004 and 2005, I marched in Mal's St. Paddy's Day Parade in jackson, Mississippi, as a Sweet Potato Queen Wannabe Wannabe, wearing a long red wig, a kelly green sequined swimsuit sort of thing, a pink satin cape, a rhinestone tiara and some black cat's eye sunglasses with rhinestones in the outer corners. You can see me in all my glory in a post at my other blog Mama and Me from PDX, in March, 2007. Thank you Jill Conner Browne, Boss Queen herownself, and Donna Ladd, SPQ Wannabe and editor of the Jackson Free Press.
3. I like to make what I call miniature art cars, using small toys and toy vehicles all glued together and brightly embellished.
4. When my sons were little boys, to nurture their creativity every year for Christmas I gave them a roll of Duct tape, a ball of twine, a flashlight and new batteries for it.
5. I absolutely love to do the Electric Slide, any where, any time, as long as the beat's right!
6. I get carried away when I'm enthusiastic about something.
7. I might be crazy--Mama says I'm a mess which means lovable and weird, but my motto is "It's better than dull and boring."

Bye. Hope your eyes quit hurting real soon.

The rest of the story about Mad Dog Garage--well, at least the rest that I could find out walking by again.

On Oct. 10 as I approached the building where I took the photo for my Oct. 5 post of the Mad Dog Garage, I thought, "Oh, so is it Allen's Radiator Shop? Or did it used to be Allen's?"



Once I crossed the street, I stopped right by that blue Park sign and took this photo so that you could see how the door, the wooden gear Mad Dog Garage sign, and the painted Entrance sign work together.

Oh, and I looked on the Web later that day--both businesses have phone numbers listed, not that I've called either one.

By the way, I took these photos six days before Tuesday's post of Jim Fisher Volvo, right about the same time in the morning--7:15 a.m. It's amazing to me how fast the days get shorter and shorter. Every once in a while the TV weatherman tells us how many minutes of sunlight we're giving up every day, but I can't remember hearing the number lately.

ABC Wednesday – M is for M & Ms

Make Merry and Make Music with the Man in the Mickey Mouse hat!



Meet Working Kirk Reeves, who according to his business card is a TV Producer and a Trumpet Player. The card says he appears on a local access station Thursday nights, with a program called "Low Comedy TV Show." While I've yet to tune in, I've seen Working Kirk, purveyor of Low Comedy in the Land of the Trumpet, many afternoons at this entrance ramp to the Hawthorne Bridge.

He gave me his card and said to take all of the pictures I wanted to take for my blog, then he started pulling entertaining stuff out of his bag. Drivers waiting to merge onto the bridge handed him paper money from their car windows as he kept up a steady change of pace, from music to puppets to juggling, smiling all the while. Today after work I noticed that he was wearing an umbrella hat instead of his Mickey Mouse hat--intermittent showers filled the forecast but not the skies, at that moment anyway.

Volvo Deja Vu and a Windshield View

Feeling at home with this particular block on Burnside yet?

I took this photo Monday morning about 7:15 a.m. I'm facing south, standing in the parking lot in front of Walgreens (drugstore) and Wells Fargo (bank). The sliver of a building that you can see on the right is a Subway sandwich shop. And just to the right of the word Volvo, you see TriMet stop # 749 with its curved roof.

As I put away the camera, the 20 bus stopped, then drove away without noticing a young woman frantically running down the sidewalk, trying to catch it. I knew the 15 bus would arrive soon, so I crossed the street, got out my camera and took two more photos, snapping the last one as the bus pulled to a stop.

As I boarded and showed the driver my bus pass, he said, "That makes for a vivid picture, doesn't it?"

"Yes, it does," I answered and took my seat, making sure I could look out the windshield of the bus as we rolled down Burnside, until we turned right in front of The Civic.

Here's what disappeared from view but not from memory.

Looking east down West Burnside, from NW 22nd Avenue

Remember the "Shades of Blue" post from Sept. 6? Here's another view of Jim Fisher Volvo, looking east down West Burnside. The car dealership fills this entire building--new cars on the first floor behind showroom windows, cars being worked on by mechanics on some of the upper floors, and used cars in a small lot beneath the bright lights and the dark blue Certified Pre-Owned Cars sign. In addition to this building on the corner, there are several other smaller buildings attached to it that are a part of the dealership. Some mornings when I don't walk but four or five blocks, I catch a bus at the TriMet shelter near the traffic signal.

Did you notice the shiny spot at the top of the building? I don't know what the light source is, but I do know that the gray-looking portion of the walls is actually a sort of sea foam green ceramic tile--at least that's what I think it is. It's a classy, soothing color that serves Jim Fisher Volvo well.

Remember the Sept. 29th post, ""For you, a part of what I see walking to work"? That same triangular-shaped building is visible just down the hill from Jim Fisher, at the intersection of SW 20th Place, SW Morrison, and West Burnside. The lights that go around the corner of the building look neat to me--I have a thing for strings of lights.

The high-rise in the distance is The Civic. At their Web site, they report: "The Civic is a sixteen story condo tower situated next to PGE park and the MAX station. It features approx 261 units configured as 196 one bedroom lofts, 56 two bedroom homes and 9 penthouses. This is a highly energy efficient building that LEED certifed Gold. The Civic features a public plaza, a very nice lobby, secured entry and underground parking." I found condos in the building listed from $225,000-$700,000 on another Web site. I guess someone has bought one of the units as an investment. Here's part of an ad I found on Craigslist--I did not edit or make any grammatical corrections in the ad: "$2995 / 2br - New Urban Condo with deck and views Amazing loft has never been lived! 2 large bedrooms, 2 baths, dining area, Living area, Deck, Laundry closet, and 2 Car Parking. Cherry Hardwoods, Stainless Steel countertops, Stainless Appliances, Gas Cooking, Expansive views of Downtown, and the Pearl . Lease terms are flexible."

I took this photo about 5:45 p.m., just after getting off the bus in front of the Goodwill Store which is at NW 22nd Avenue and West Burnside. You get a really good idea of how quickly Burnside gets steeper and steeper since it left the Willamette River behind, at least 22 blocks to the east. As it heads west, on up the hill behind me as I stood there taking this photo, Burnside rises to 900 feet or so rather quickly.

That person you can barely make out in the center front of the photo is jay-walking, which is always dangerous but even more so during the morning and evening drive time.

P.S. If you want to see the rest of the photos from the Blazers' game, please click on the link to my other blog, Mama and Me from PDX. Thanks!

Our view from the living room windows, these autumn days

Merry Autumn Days

By Charles Dickens

‘Tis pleasant on a fine spring morn
To see the buds expand,.
‘Tis pleasant in the summer time
To see the fruitful land;
‘Tis pleasant on a winter’s night
To sit around the blaze,
But what are joys like these, my boys,
To merry autumn days!

We hail the merry Autumn days,
When leaves are turning red;
Because they’re far more beautiful
Than anyone has said,
We hail the merry harvest time,
The gayest of the year;
The time of rich and bounteous crops,
Rejoicing and good cheer.

Blue skies, peakin' at me, nothin' but blue skies do I see.

I lucked out and saw this hole in the clouds in time to grab my camera and take this photo through the tinted window at work, not an optimum photo-taking circumstance, but I'm happy with how it turned out. Before I forget to tell you, my Nikon D50 is home! Hip, hip, hooray! That's Marquam Hill in the foreground; it's just southwest of downtown Portland.

P.S. Tomorrow I'll finish up Blazer Hoop-de-doo! at http://mamamepdx.blogspot.com/
Come take a look at more stunts (one involves pizza), a hovering inflatable car, the outta sight scoreboard, Blaze (the team's mascot), the Blazer Dancers and a fast little girl on a tricycle. You'll be glad you did.

Blazer Hoop-de-do!

You know some people say, "Let's go shoot some hoops!" when they really mean, "Let's go play basketball!" And you know that some people call a whole-lot-of-fun-goin'-on by the name hoop-de-do. That's exactly what I witnessed Wednesday night at the Rose Garden.

Mesmirized and hypnotized by the sights and sounds, I quickly fell under the spell of what I'm calling Blazer Hoop-de-do! This is how far gone I was--I didn't even think about getting my camera out of my tote bag!

When the Blazer Stunt Team came to sit down right in front of me, it finally hit me that I ought to be taking pictures. Off and on until I left the arena, I took a picture every now and then, some of which are OK, some of which are crooked, but I'm going to share some of them with you anyhow.



After one of the teams called for a time out, the stunt team rose to their feet and did, well, stunts. Here's part of one that happened right in front of me. I wonder if, at the second I got this shot, both are them were holding their breath? Pretty neat stunt to see up close and personal.

The Blazers wear their white home uniforms, while the Los Angeles Clippers are in their red away, or visiting team, uniforms. Blazers' No. 12, LaMarcus Aldridge shoots the second of two free throws; a Clipper had fouled him. I know it's the second free throw shot attempt, not the first one, because of way the guys are standing on each side of him, poised to jump into the air in case the ball doesn't go through the hoop. It did. Aldridge had a great night, scoring 21 points and making six rebounds.