A New Discovery On The Oregon Trail

There are a lot of seemingly silly little things to love about America. The quality of the service (helpful but unaffected) is one I keep finding myself banging on about. But it's other stuff that makes you happy - the size of parking spaces (such that you can actually get out of your bloody car unlike your modern British multi-storey) and the general good manners on the freeway.

Go on you know it makes sense

And here's another reason to be cheerful - we've found an Oregon sauvignon blanc that stands up to the  New Zealanders. Ladies and gentleman the OG gives you - Kriselle Cellars Sauvignon Blanc 2013. Mr and Mrs OG found it on the wine list at the The Brickworks in Ashland and were so taken that they found a post-prandial offie (liquor store as the locals would have it ) for a second bottle which is being imbibed as OG himself types away in the salubrious confines of the Oak Hill B&B. It's only rock and roll but I like it, like it, yea, yea, yea.

The miracle that is the internet means that I can keep tabs on the cricket scores from home and I am slightly concerned about the triumphalist tone of the BBC coverage of the first test - clearly all has gone swimmingly thus far but please boys let's not count our chickens. I will log on tomorrow with trepidation.

The Wrong Side Of The Road

The big cities have been left behind and OG therefore trusts himself to get behind the wheel. Our transport of delight is a Ford Focus - an uninvolving vehicle if truth be told but automatic transmission is a decided benefit when you are trying your damnedest to stay on the right side of the road.

Base for the last few days has been Corvallis, Oregon, home of Oregon State University (Go Beavers!) and a delight. This town of fifty-six thousand souls has no fewer than seven artisan brew-pubs (there might be more in which case I apologise). We have drunk and eaten in three of them and would recommend all, but, drumroll, my favourite (marginally) is Flat Tail (beavers have flat tails - geddit?) Truckloads of beer to choose from plus monster portions of honest bar food. It goes without saying that service throughout the town has been uniformly excellent. Tomorrow will take us down Highway 5 to Ashland at the southernmost extreme of Oregon and the delights (hopefully) of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

To help me master this wrong side of the road stuff we took a motor tour of the Willamette National Forest yesterday. Oregon is implausibly stunning - big landscapes, big skies and big blue lakes. We hit the road again today and took in the Oregon Garden, eighty acres of flamboyant planting - the Oregon Garden .

Thus far I have bought three teeshirts. More will follow.

Jackson Pollock - Seattle Art Museum

So anxious was I to tell you how many bars I'd visited in Seattle that I omitted to mention the Seattle Art Museum. An interesting space with a growing and youthful collection. Student discount again allowed.

I think I get the point of Jackson Pollock. You have to see the paintings up close to appreciate the textures and layers. Seattle are justly proud of their freshly restored 1947 Pollock. The reproduction below does not do it justice of course.

A New Poem

Training Exercise (Amtrak Cascades 4 July 2015)

The Poem that is never read

Is locked and lost within my head

No verses that have run and fled

You'll have to have these ones instead.

I wrote it down some weeks ago

A villanelle with metric flow

There comes the pattern that you know.

I lost the pad I scrawled it in

Where I was starting to begin.

These rules are made to be broken.

. _  / . _  / . _  / . _

The Land Of The Free

We arrived in town on July 4 which meant huge crowds at Pike Street Market but lots of downtown shops closed for the celebrations. That sealed state carried over into Sunday so Seattle has been a slightly surreal city experience until today when all seems to be up and running again. Just in time - we move on tomorrow.

Home of Starbucks, Home of Microsoft, home of, well you get the picture, Seattle likes to think of itself as hip and thrusting. I think it's just about right in its self-estimation, though there are rather more down-and-outs on the sidewalks than a city should feel comfortable about.

You should see the queues to enter the original Starbucks down at Pike Street. We went elsewhere, not from any right-on animus against the coffee moguls but because there are other treats to be had - on the Starbucks thing I do have to say that I think Margaret Hodge (the cheerleader for the Starbucks lynch mob) not only looks a bit like Polly Toynbee (are they ever seen together?) but talks through much the same orifice.

As appearing on a teeshirt near you

So should you be in town don't miss the Pike Street Pub and Brewery - Where everybody knows your name . Now you can if you wish read the predictably faint praise reviews from beer nerds or you can take this experienced drinker's word for it - the place is fun. It is also commercial (I've bought the teeshirt) but, hell they're entitled to make a living. They also serve passable wine by the glass should you want to take the darling heart for a tipple and the food is on the money, especially the salmon sandwich. Actually 'sandwich' is a misnomer, it's more of a slab of good fresh fish in a bun. With fries of course.

In a bizarre game of football last night USA beat Japan 5-2 in the final of the FIFA Women's World Cup. Sharon and I watched this whilst gorging on oysters and garlic fries in the J & M Bar in Pioneer Square - Seattle's oldest bar - I was drinking the local Mac and Jack which carries a kick. Service absolutely top drawer. That overreaching toss bag Sepp Blatter did not lower the tone by daring to turn up. Which was nice.

A long way up but there is
 a very fast elevator

Today we walked down to the Space Needle at the vibrant Seattle Center (that's how they spell it and it is their city after all) but did not go up because we had already taken in the much higher and much less hyped tallest building in town (indeed loftiest publicly accessible observatory on the West coast) the Columbia Center. So vertiginous that not only is there a Starbucks on the ground floor but another one for good measure at the half-way point on the fortieth floor.

Finally there has to a word for the Pike Street Market - all sorts from tat to tasteful and fish stalls the match of anything anywhere. If you were massively disciplined you could just cruise the crowded halls and sate yourself on the free samples. But if you are human you will crack and buy something - anyone for Aged Raspberry Balsamic Vinegar?

By the way and apropos of nothing at all, Brad Freidel walked into the Vancouver Starbucks from which I blogged at the weekend. In town for the women's final perhaps?

This is BFP signing off on behalf of The Overgraduate from the Polar Bar at the Arctic Explorer's Club in Seattle, where he has just finished the first bottle of a very presentable Washington State sauvignon blanc. God Bless America.

More Dining

Tucked just off the main drag of Vancouver's Gastown we (or more accurately Sharon) found another little gem for an early dinner (earliness explained below) - see Alporto

A nice prosecco was taken. We both settled on a pizza. These were delayed because the perfectionist chef was not satisfied with the first ones out of the oven. We were kept informed of progress and given complimentary starters to keep us occupied - a subtly spiced gazpacho. At the end of the meal we also got free, but wholly unneeded, liqueurs to compensate for what had been only a slight interruption. The pizzas were properly Italian in type and on the correct side of superb. Change from $100 (before the richly deserved tip). A great discovery - 7.5/10.

We dined early because we have had a pre-dawn start today and this missive therefore comes to you from the Amtrak Cascades train from Vancouver to Seattle. We've just crossed the border and they haven't got me yet. The cinnamon rolls from the buffet car are sodding enormous and reasonably priced. It's a beautiful day and the views are stunning. Sorry in a way to have left Vancouver but there are new discoveries awaiting us.

Last but not unimportantly I have bought myself a Vancouver souvenir teeshirt to augment my collection of snappy casual gear. Girls go crazy for a sharp dressed man.

Fine Art, Food And Drink

It would be difficult to overpraise Vancouver, surely one of the most liveable cities in the world.

Yesterday started with a visit to the Vancouver Art Gallery, a grand but apparently inadequate space - they are at the start of a project to move to new premises. Exhibits of varying quality but the star turn undoubtedly Of Heaven and Earth: Five Hundred Years of Italian Art, a visiting show of paintings from the Glasgow Municipal Galleries' Mclellan Collection. To cap the experience they gave me student discount.

Mucky Italian picture

We exited the gallery to midday heat and had what I (after due deliberation) have to say was the best street food I have ever eaten. Stand up and take a bow Mr Shawarma halal chicken purveyor of Robson Square. Nothing short of superb.

Devour some art and then some chicken

Onward thereafter (after detour due to the map being upside down) to Gastown, the oldest part of town where we sat outside at the Chill Winston and enjoyed just enough (never too much, Heaven forfend) sauvignon blanc and predictably charming Canadian service.

Mellow out man

All in all a great day but journalistic ethics do mean that I have to disclose that it was Sharon's fault that we got lost. Not perfect after all.

Today has dawned sunny and we will do some more urban wandering before we move on to Seattle tomorrow