Dogg Man,
It was a KT day from the beginning. You would have been in your element. A road trip to see Mad Dogg in the borough of hills: Hillsboro. Rainy with low clouds. Cool temperature. Classic Oregon fall.
Mads is doing it. Believing and moving ahead with you at her side. Making a go of her career. Quietly establishing a life on her own. It’s what you would have wanted. What you and she did a decade ago when you struck out for Whittier. Be on your own. Go somewhere new. Why would you stick around with the familiar when so much unknown is out there? So much to figure out.
Breakfast and lunch at La Provence. And not or. Overhead, a flight show from the Hillsboro airport. Crazy, big cargo planes chomping fuel to make big bodies lumber through the air with only propellers to, well, propel. F35 fighter jets circling low with sonic booms leaving earthlings in wonder. Hundreds of mile per hour. Perhaps a coffee stop in Seattle and then on to San Diego for lunch. Dinner in Japan.
The vineyards of the northwest were on display. Small family affairs unlike Sonoma and Napa. Forested hills. Windy roads. Nestled between groves of Filberts. Hazelnuts. Hazelburts. Don’t know the difference. Nor their use. Nothing stopped you from rolling if you were stuck on something. Why should we?
Finally, the game. Not game day but another day with the Ducks on display. The northwest in conference with the usual California competition. As expected they played well with smooth runs. Fleet feet. Long yardage and small grunts of effort. Always punctuated by foibles just when…You know. The typical ducks with web feet. The kind that waddle.
The game began in your favorite brew pub in the borough: Orenco Taphouse. A New England Imperial IPA, Stickmen – Cloudy with a chance of strata. A local from Lake Oswego. Hoppy strong with fuzz. Ducks. IPA. What a roll. It was all you. With Murph on the floor, under the table, joining other dogs on the floor, under the table.
We made a great team. I want to go back and put the team together and it hurts to not have the chance. So, we’ll make it up with you in our roll.
JT Man