Pig 'n Pancake and Treasure in Lincoln City

Friday morning the spouse and I had breakfast at The Pig 'n Pancake in Lincoln City.  I eat at the P 'n P every time I go to the coast; it's a tradition.  For years I attended the COSA (Confederation of Oregon School Administrators) Conference in Seaside, Oregon every June.  The Pig 'n Pancake was the breakfast meeting place of choice for eastern Oregon administrators.  I always order the same thing, strawberry crepes.

So, I was pleasantly surprised to see a Pig 'n Pancake in Lincoln City.  I ordered my usual, the spouse had his eggs and pancakes, and we fired up the computer to take advantage of their WiFi to find coordinates to local geocache sites.  Then I took a look around the dining room.  We were in a corner booth.  At the table across from us was a family with four boys.  The mother had to be over 300 pounds.  Her thighs were hanging over the chair seat. I watched as the waitress delivered their full breakfast meals, hers  with a side of sausage.  At the table behind us was a couple whose combined weight was close to half a ton.  His enormous Humpty Dumpty stomach rested on his lap.  Everywhere I looked were overweight diners.  I started to feel guilty about those strawberry pancakes with whipped cream...but only for a minute.  They are delicious!

Before heading back to Portland we went in search of our second geocache.  Geocaching is a great way to see a new location.  We followed the coordinates of the cache south of Lincoln City on highway 101 and then east on a small road.  We drove up a hill until we  came close to the east/west coordinates on the GPS and found a safe place to pull over.  We walked a few yards off the road until the GPS indicated we were in the correct location...and then it's like an Easter egg hunt. 

We found the container hidden in a log.  We signed the log inside the box and looked over the list of people who had been there before us.  One couple had left a card that said:

We use million dollar satellites to find Tupperware hidden in the woods.

In the picture above you can see Siletz Bay in the distance.  The treasure we found was really the view!

Sheep and Whales and Lead, Oh My

The spouse and I left Hermiston early this morning to drive to the coast. Our objective was not only to enjoy the beautiful summer weather and ocean breezes, but to....wait for it....buy a half a ton of lead!  We are now driving the pickup around the coast with a load of lead secured in the back.  For the record, the spouse did not find any coolers during the 300 mile journey to the sea.  He did point out one cooler lid, but since we were in a construction zone with only one lane of traffic on the freeway, he was (thankfully) unable to stop.  He did point out numerous hubcaps to me.  There was one stretch of road in Portland that had hubcaps every 500 yards.  Urban freeway recovery is much more complicated than in eastern Oregon.  Since we are maximizing our load limits with the lead, the hubcaps are still up for grabs.

We've had a very relaxing day.  It's like rehearsing for retirement.  In the Columbia River Gorge we spotted the big horn sheep and stopped to watch them.  The herd has grown considerably since they were first reintroduced to the gorge several years ago.

Once we got to Lincoln City, the spouse dropped me off at the Outlet Mall while he went to get the lead.  Anytime I can buy shoes at 50% off it's a good day!

We took a drive up the coast to a viewpoint by Depot Bay.  We walked out to the edge of the cliff and were watching the ocean when a gray whale surfaced and blew right in front of us.  He rolled over and resurfaced several times while we watched.  Such an impressive sight.

We had dinner at an Oregon coast institution, Mo's.  While we were waiting in line for a table, I realized that the couple in front of us were also from Hermiston.  Small world!  After dinner we returned to the hotel.  I was asking a question at the front desk when a man came in to register.  He mentioned that he was tired from a long drive and I asked him where he was from....wait for it...Hermiston!  It really is a small world, or we're being followed.

Tomorrow we're heading back to Portland.  Our daughter has been in Japan for the past few weeks for her job.  She is flying home to Austin via Portland.  We'll pick  her up and take her to visit her grandparents during her six hour layover.  Then we'll drop her back at the airport and take our load of lead back to Hermiston.

Are you asking yourself "What the hell is he doing with a half a ton of lead?"  Trust me, I had the same question.  Apparently the price of lead has skyrocketed.  My spouse, who likes a bargain almost as much as me, found a source of lead that was considerably cheaper than what he could get locally.  He uses the lead to reload shotgun shells for trap shooting.  So if you're going to drive 300 miles to buy lead, you certainly want to make the trip worthwhile, so you buy a half a ton!  And, no, I'm not helping to load or unload it!

Treading Water

I've been thinking about treading water all day.  Earlier I left a comment, in my arrogant, self-assured way, on another blogger's post asking her if she felt she was treading water.  When I read her post I felt strongly that, although she was writing about being dissatisfied with her life,  she was refusing to take any action to change anything.  Kinda like treading water.  Why is it that it is easy to see patterns of behavior in other people, but so darn hard to figure out your own?

So instead of working on the grant I'm supposed to be writing for a local school, here I am reflecting on treading water.  Retirement has been a little like floating down a gentle river.  I bob along, quite enjoying the ride, going wherever the river takes me.  I don't know where the current is taking me; I'm just treading water.  I have done nothing to guide my passage on the journey.

When I was working it was important to have goals.  I was always reaching for the next thing.  I was always taking a class or completing some certification and building my resume.  It was important to move forward. 

In retirement I haven't had external pressure to move forward.  Today I asked myself if, just perhaps, it was okay to not move forward but to just bob along and tread water.  Would I be happy with no goals, no direction?  Is it enough just to enjoy?  Is an occasional dynamite blog post or witty comment in the forum enough? Perhaps reading, writing, and building my extensive knowledge of television is enough?  Mixed in between vacations to tropical beaches, cruises and trips to see the grandchildren of course.   Or, maybe the bigger question is, can I enjoy retirement without a sense of accomplishment? 

Okay, I need one of you self-assured and arrogant readers out there to give me the obvious insight I can't see from my perspective.

Nana Organizes a Writing Group

Earlier this year I facilitated a writing class through Blue Mountain Community College. The class didn't enroll enough people for the class to "make", but we decided to go ahead and meet anyway. Four of us met every Wednesday morning to read our writing, give feedback to each other, and to revel in our enjoyment of writing. Four middle-aged women who were both alike and different. Although we shared a love of writing, our styles and content each had a distinct voice . We all wrote about our families, children and grandchildren. Our life paths, however, had been very different.


None of us were experts, but by trial and error, or hit and miss, or just plain luck we each managed to produce pieces that were funny, or touching, or shocking or just plain entertaining. Because we met weekly, we all felt the pressure to produce something to share. We learned from each other and were inspired by each other.

One participant was writing a series that told the stories of significant possessions. She wanted a record of their histories to pass on to her family. Another participant told the story of giving a daughter up for adoption and then reuniting with her years later. The third participant wrote about her life growing up in a rural area. We learned about each other and shared our intimate thoughts through our writing.

…and then the semester ended. We all wanted to continue our writing group. Several locations were suggested including the local library and a new used bookstore in downtown Hermiston. I had several trips scheduled but promised that I would reconvene the group when I got back to town.

But, I haven’t and that has been the challenge of retirement. I have no external accountability so I put everything off for tomorrow…and tomorrow hasn’t come around yet! There are trips to visit my grandchildren, and then the Umatilla County Fair where I‘m scheduled to cook the French fries in the Lion’s Club booth, and then we’re going on our cruise to Alaska. It seems like I’ve got plenty of excuses to put off organizing our group meeting.

I think I have settled into retirement and quite enjoy not having responsibilities. Next week I have two appointments on my calendar and I’m stressing about if I can possibly fit in another activity. I used to cram multiple activities into my day. I don’t think I’ve lost the skill, just the will.

Next week, if I can fit it in between lunch with my friend Tiah and writing a grant for the high school, I’ll definitely get the writing group going again.

Survivor Nicaragua

The new season of Survivor is being filmed in Nicaragua. I survived two years in Nicaragua in the Peace Corps, 1976-1978. I was there during the revolution until we were evacuated by the US embassy in September of 1978. I was 9 months pregnant and we left our little house in El Jicaro in northern Nicaragua with nothing more than our passports and backpacks. Our daughter was born a few weeks later in Honduras. We never returned to Nicaragua.


For two years we had lived in a concrete block house a few blocks from the center of town. There was an outhouse and a concrete sink and shower with cold running water in the backyard, and electricity most of the time. The house was square with one corner partitioned off for a bedroom. When it rained the tin roof was so loud that we couldn’t hear each other talk. There was a gap where the exterior walls met the roof and air circulated freely. It also created a runway for the small lizards that also called our house home.

I had decorated the outhouse with pictures cut from the international edition of Time, our major source of news. I couldn’t figure out why the pictures kept falling off the walls until I took a flashlight to visit the outhouse late one night. As the interior was illuminated, a score of huge cockroaches ran for the cover of darkness. Mystery solved. The cockroaches had been eating the paste off the back of the pictures!

We had a parrot that spent most of his time on the wall that separated our back patio from the street. I spent hours trying to get him to talk. The only words he ever uttered were from the buses that circled through the dirt roads in town looking for riders. Our parrot learned to shout out the bus destinations randomly when he heard a car chug down our street.

“Octotal…Ocotal…Ocotal”

“Esteli…Esteli…Esteli”

It was a small town. Everyone knew us because, aside from a Catholic priest, we were the only gringos for miles. Campesinos from the surrounding area came to El Jicaro for supplies and entertainment. There were very few cars. Most people rode the buses, which were vans or small pickups with benches in the back, to get to Ocotal or Esteli or El Jicaro. In rural Nicaragua in 1978 campesinos were still using horses for transportation. On Sundays everyone, dressed in their best, walked around and around the park in front of the church in the center of town. That was the social event in El Jicaro. Horses were tied up in front of the houses and stores.

As small as El Jicaro was, we did have a movie theater. They showed old American movies with subtitles in Spanish. Every afternoon a truck with a loudspeaker would circle the community and announce the movie.

“Tonight, at eight o’clock in the evening in your Theater Jomari a spectacular movie …”

The first evening we heard the announcement for a film featuring “Charlie Bronson” we rushed down the two blocks to the theater so as not to be late for the 8:00 start. We should have known that the movie would begin on Nicaraguan time…at least a half an hour late!

I have very fond memories of my time in Nicaragua…after all, my daughter was almost born there. (We used to say that she was made in Nicaragua, but born in Honduras.) I hope this season’s Survivor cast members will have similar memories of honest and giving people and unspoiled country.

Nana Tries Out A New Hobby

Retirement can't be all reading, writing and sleeping in between vacations.  Apparently I'm supposed to do other fun things.  Cleaning the house and doing yard work don't count as fun.  Not that I do a whole lot of either of those activities!

Today the spouse and I tried out a new activity, geocaching.  The official geocaching site defines it as:

"Geocaching is a high-tech treasure hunting game played throughout the world by adventure seekers equipped with GPS devices. The basic idea is to locate hidden containers, called geocaches, outdoors and then share your experiences online."

When we looked online, there were lots of caches hidden all around Hermiston.  We've not been motivated to ride our bikes.  We thought that this would be a fun way to get some exercise .  We could ride our bikes to a location and search for the treasure!

This afternoon we downloaded the coordinates of a cache that is close to our home.  The website allows you to search for locations by zip code.  There was a long list of locations in Hermiston...one of which is the park across the river from our backyard. 

We rode our bikes to the park and then checked the GPS.  We had to walk a little bit further north and west.  The GPS is very sensitive.  We arrived at the exact coordinates and started searching.  The cache can be hidden under rocks, but not buried.  We could see where others had walked in the brush before us.  Paul finally found the tiny plastic container attached by a magnet to the underside of a park bench.

Inside the container was a log and a pink plastic ring.  I entered my information on the log sheet (Nana was already taken when I registered on the geocache site, so I had to go with MissNana as my log in) and I exchanged an Oregon pin for the pink plastic ring.  I wanted a souvenir from our first cache.

I think we'll keep doing this. It gives us a purpose to ride bikes and it was fun to find the treasure.  I've already checked out what sites are available in Austin...I think the granddaughters would like to go treasure hunting with Nana!

Fire Update

This morning we noticed that the crime scene tape was finally down from around our neighbor Jerry's burned out house.  Jerry and his wife are living in their fifth wheel trailer behind the house.  The house is a total loss.  There are very few items that they have been able to salvage.  It is a blessing that they and their animals are all safe.  The house was insured and they are starting to make plans to have it bulldozed and start rebuilding.

The frightening part of this story is that the fire marshal determined that the fire was definitely arson.  The fire was started at the back of the house with an accelerant, probably starter fluid.

The illusive neighbor, Phyllis, has not yet been interviewed by the authorities.  (She's the one who is feuding with Jerry and other neighbors and who didn't answer the door when I tried to alert her to the fire and then came to the door saying she was in the shower, but the lights were all off in the house...and then she never came outside during the fire until an ambulance arrived an hour later and hauled her out on a stretcher.)    Anyway, the authorities have been unable to contact her.  According to Jerry she was home briefly this morning but while Jerry's wife was on the phone with the authorities, Phyllis drove off quickly down the road.  "I've never seen her drive so fast." Jerry said.

So, there is an arsonist in our neighborhood...what does that do to property values?