They Don't Call Us the Rose City for Nothing...

This weekend started the Rose Festival in Portland. Lots of goings-on including parades, races, dispays, and port visits by the US and Canadian Navies and the US Coast Guard. Floats decorated with lots of beautiful flowers, however, a lot of roses in the parade came from growers in South America. Harumph!

We met up with our friend Anne and toured the waterfront, although we didn't wait in line to see the US or Canadian Navy--actually, the Canadian Navy wasn't accepting visitors. The US Navy was, if you submitted to a search. Lots of security around our Navy--none around the Canadians or the Coast Guard. Big displays from the Army trying to enlist people--$40,000 cash to enlist and $70,000 in college benefits. The price of a life, I guess.

We did see the only remaining functional PT boat, although, as you can see in the picture, it's not actually in the water, but on a barge. That's OK by me as the only functional PT sailors are about 85-90 years old and it's pretty amazing that their props are still spinning...




We also saw a T Rex on a float. It doesn't make it into Ronna's BIG Things class, in my opinion, and it had only a half-hearted effort at being anatomically correct...






And we saw Limey's --a British food booth at the Saturday/Sunday Market--the only food booth with no line. The Banger Rolls were, well, hot.

I Love a Parade!

And Portland seems to have plenty. Last week it was the St. John's Parade that was quite formal featuring several marching bands, political candidates, Rodeo Queens, Vespa clubs, the Broke Bike Mounties, and lots of old cars. And lots of things with motors: Model T clubs, muscle cars, motorcycles, ATVs, minibikes and so on. The parade was judged and all entrants sported Official Numbers and many already had their ribbons signifying their success at the judging stand. 2 hours of parade.





It was a cool day, but each band seemed to have parents equipped with spray bottles to spray water in the mouths of the marchers--what is with parents today?





Today was the Alberta Art Hop. Nancy worked as a volunteer, helping close Alberta to traffic, removing a road-kill squirrel from the street, and, at the appointed hour, preparing the route for the parade. Today's was a half hour, and featured many bikes, lots of people on stilts including some dancing, and a few political candidates.

Neither Hillary nor Barack made a showing even though both are in Oregon. Bill and Chelsea didn't make it either. Nor did Michele Obama or her brother, the new basketball coach at Oregon State (I think the Beavers figured that if Obama could come from nothing to become the nominee, maybe his brother-in-law could win a few games...). There were a number of elderly there--one of them may have been John McCain, but I wouldn't recognize him unless he was hugging George W. Bush. An aside, last night while walking from the Heathman Hotel Happy Hour to Mio Gelato, Hillary's motorcade passed us on Broadway. We spied her in the SUV, but she was reading her Blackberry (no doubt a note from Bill) and didn't wave.


For my money, the Alberta Hop was more fun, but then the day was warm and sunny, and I'd been by the Mash Tun to check out their supply of IPA. It's a little less than it was before...