Hood to Coast

Here's a tradition I've not been involved with: teams of 12 gather at Timberline Lodge, mountainside, and begin their long relay race to the Oregon Coast, along a twisted back route. This happens every year around here, and is called Hood to Coast.

This time, the back route included my Hawthorne Boulevard. Derek and I sat in darkness, past midnight, sipping HammerHeads. Runners'd breeze past, to applause and encouragement (one guy streaked through dressed as SpiderMan -- I kinda worried about him). In the meantime, vans, two per team, a veritable parade of Over the Hedge assets (now playing at the Bagdad, so why not throw that in) rolled down the to-Portland lane.

Derek used to participate in this, on one of the faster teams (he was a serious college athelete) and he regaled me with stories (as Dawn likes to say) of his advantures. Dear Dawn: Gayle drove her out to Menucha today, where women are having a theological conference. She found a seven circuit laybrinth and was pleased as punch about walking it at sunset. So little makes Dawn so happy. I love her more than words can say.

Anyway, since Dawn was away, Tara and I saw this as an opening to watch Titanic (Dawn has been vetoing showing it), the Cameron version. Dawn returned in time for the wall-projected sinking and raised no objections to watching it with us. Tara pronounced it "depressing but well done" which is my verdict as well. Not that my judgment is so important -- I don't always care that much about my opinions, if ya know what I mean.

Derek and I also reviewed the Linux distros we might try on his new tower with swap-outable hard drives. We're thinking Ubuntu, Suse and Fedora to start. I helped explain the namespace around KDE and GNOME (Derek is somewhat new to Linux, has eclectic interests).