Mile 1331 - Portland, OR

Friends, Food and Fishing…could life get any better?  Not for us! And so Portland held us for a whole week in it’s tasty clutches, which will leave you with a few posts.

First stop on our trip was to our friends Dustin and Kristin. The Bailey’s are so great to relax with. When Sarah was in her third year of residency and things were especially crazy, we had a two-day stay-cation with them in Emeryville. It was a perfect day and a half of laughing, gaming, and unwind from the grind. Now they live in Portland, which most of the time is bitter because they’re far away, but for our trip it’s sweet because they make a great destination.

We were expecting hours of hearty conversations sitting by their comfy fireplace, but they had devised a real taste of Portland for us: Flyfishing! While they may have been married in Boring, OR, they are anything but. Dustin, Kristin, and of course Oscar took us out through the hills to his folks’ place and his Dad lent us his gear. This was really nice because he was set up.

Once we found our spot on a pretty little creek, the ladies read and took pictures while Dustin taught Aaron the finesse of the fly. Finesse and Aaron haven’t always gotten along, but Dustin is a really good teacher. There’s dry flies, wet flies, lead line, 10 and 2, but when it comes down to it, you want your hook to fly aroud so the fish thinks its an insect, and you want to land it in the water so that the fish sees your fly and not the line. It was so fun, addictively fun.

At the end of the day, Sarah bagged four chapters of her book, Kristin caught about 100 pictures, and the boys, well, they hooked 5 fish! And let me tell ya, these fish were SO BIG they decided it’d be awfully difficult to bring them home, so back into the water they went. See for yourself:

The Bailey’s place was also where we got a bunch of work taken care of. We finalized getting our health insurance, changed car insurance stuff and spent a whole day and a half trying to figure out XHTML and style sheets for this whole blog thing. While we felt anxious to get out, it was nice to have Oscar and Kristin as our constant companions. We'll miss you guys until next time!