country bike rides

john and i go for a lot of bike rides, we live close enough to the city but live in the country. these are some pictures from our most recent ride.

this is my favorite country house:





this is my favorite tunnel of trees, i love riding my bike here, it reminds me of the movie "my girl" that i used to watch growing up for some reason:

Astoria **very image heavy**

**note, more images available on my flickr**

so remember how i said astoria gets its own blog post? i lied. astoria gets a big part, but i loved canon beach just as much. some of you may know that astoria is home of the goonies, my all time favorite movie (tied for first with stand by me). When we got to astoria bk & i died a little inside, i felt like my life was finally complete (i'm exaggerating, i'm not that die-hard though i was really excited) we apparently missed the goonies 25 anniversary parade by 264 days exactly, bummer! astoria has this beautiful bridge that crosses the columbus river, the 4 mile bridge! named for.. well being 4 miles long. when you come from washington into astoria oregon, the bridge suddenly takes a steep incline that makes it look it's going to drop off and you're going to die ( kind of like a roller coaster ), it's just incredible:

(view from the goonies house)








The goonies house:





this wasn't on the goonie house, but a house down the street, it's amazing to see people still so excited about a movie filmed there over 26 years ago:





now for some more pictures of random places on the trip:



the dilapidated tillamook house with no floor, it had what look like pot plants growing out back:



the log that looked like a rhino:



the motel really on the edge of the water:





i miss it all so much already, i want to be there & never leave again.

oregon coast!

This passed saturday ( June 5th ) was our one year wedding anniversary. We took a trip down the oregon coast with best of friends.. amanda & bk. It was about 11 hours of driving in total (each way) but we left thursday night around 730. at 3am the boys decided they needed a nap so amanda & i fed a coyote some beef jerkey, giggled in the back seat and sat frozen scared every time we saw anything in the darkness. we went for a walk around 430-5 am when the sun started to break.. and we had no idea what was sitting a few feet from the car the whole time.. CANON BEACH! it's pretty much everything goonies! here's some pictures from the early morning walk:











we finally got to the camp ground which, we were expecting a half rocky/sick beach that we would make jokes about.. i guess we had vancouvers english bay in mind.. as you can see we were DEAD WRONG:



The town of tillamook ( where we stayed ) is incredible, the people are AMAZING! they may not know what sport the "stanley cup finals" are part of, but they sure were friendly in supporting our quest to find the game. We ate a local dennys at around 6am, and the manager was calling every owner of the pubs/lounges to find out if they even get the channel for us. We ended up finding a place, with a bit of begging they agreed to play the game. It was a bit of a whole in the wall called "the fern", the bartender was a few hours late for work but made it just in time to put our game on ( we won ). the drinks were so strong ( and cheap ) it was like drinking turpentine..needless to say we were hammered on the first drink. We ate a lot of veggie dogs/hot dogs, burned a lot of wood and drank even more booze. The last day in town we came across this little beach restaurant "the schooner".. i wish we found this sooner. we met a super nice guy named rob who had a sense of humour that deserved a canadian citizenship. the food was AMAZING, the drinks? though less like turpentine and a bit more like a real drink, we were still hammered off of the first one. I have to let you guys in on the humour of rob..

Rob: "do you guys have dollar bills up there yet?"
us: "no?"
Rob: "what do you do with strippers? do you just chuck loonies and toonies at them?"



it was amazing. i have to admit, every single person we met in oregon really changed my views of america, but then we stopped in aberdeen WA on the way home.. oops!

Aberdeen WA was the the definition of the ghetto. it was the flint of michigan, the compton of california, it was the empress of chilliwack, the east hastings of vancouver. it was sick! we saw some 17 year old kids all fucked up on drugs at 10 am.. on a monday morning. that was sad. why did we go to aberdeen? why kurt cobain of course! in the midst of googling the address he grew up at i found this lovely home:


just after i took these pictures some hick came out of the house beside it and started yelling "can i help ya'll?" i let him know we were just googling some directions, he started yelling "yeah you just tried to take a fucking picture a minute ago, you're trying to say you'z lost? yeah fucke'n ryte" at this point i was pretty nervous, who knows what kind of guns he keeps.. he ended up looking at our license plates to notice we really were from another country before sighing and going back inside.

this was just the house i liked a lot:





Kurt Cobains house ( which is for sale ):




the "come as your are" sign, i didn't take this picture (i stole it form google) but it definitely left a mark on me all day.



i'll be doing another post tomorrow strictly for astoria & the goonies. Astoria deserves it's own post, it's so beautiful!

sunday - funday!

Hey everyone! On sunday i went to my beautiful, lovely, talented, amazing friend Mirandas birthday party that she had for her just as amazing baby girl. Sadie turned 1. I can't believe she is 1 already. Miranda is currently on bed rest for her next one due in august! it's such an exciting time! it was such a cute little party, her sister aria had made caterpillar cupcakes and a caterpillar of balloons! they had mars bar chocolate dip, and the most amazing rubber ducky punch! anyways i took a few pictures there:





Sorry about the boobs aria!