A Stub Stewart Hike, 2 Jan 2023

Happy 2023, everyone! Hope that this will be a good year. (Fingers crossed.) Emee and I stayed home this year. After a decade-plus of being out of town every New Years, this is still a big deal to me. Perhaps we'll restart this tradition again. Anyways, Emee's friends decided to do a hike on Monday...

Bikes and Biking Year in Review: 2022

North Beach, Orcas Island. 5 August 2022 Looks dreamy, but this serene image was hard-earned from a challenging day biking the island. Olympus XA2/Fujicolor 100 Hello, friends. As another year comes to a close, it's customary for me to look back at the past year and reflect on what's happened, then ponder what may come...

A look back at my 2022 touring season

The Bantam at Crown Point, during the Midweek Gorge group camping trip, 15 Oct 2022. Camera: Ricohflex Dia Film: Kodak Gold 200 As the first real rains of autumn hit the Northwest, and the chances of getting "one last camping trip in" diminish, now is a good time for me to look back and reflect...

Summer 2022 Bike touring/status update

Camping at Ainsworth SP in the Gorge, 15 June 2022. Ricohflex Dia/Kodak Gold 200 We're just a couple days away from the start of July. If it's not too hot (or too smoky) July through September marks the best time to bike tour here in the Pacific Northwest--long, dry, warm days. Spring typically isn't a...

A visit to the cabins: Stub Stewart Bike Camping Trip, 5-8 February 2022

Riding through Washington County farmland between Forest Grove and Banks, 6 Feb 2022. Olympus XA2/Kodak ColorPlus 200 It's been awhile. My last bike camping/touring typed thing was the Oregon Coast Tour in August, six months ago. Despite wanting to do something in September or perhaps October, bike issues nixed that idea. Tent camping in the middle of winter is a...

Like a broken record, the bike camping/touring itch returns

Beverly Beach State Park on Emee and my Oregon Coast Tour, 14 August 2021. Camera: Olympus Pen EES-2. Film: Fuji Sensia 100 (slide film)(expired) Winter camping in Portland is a possibility: there are several all-year campgrounds nearby and we rarely see snow or temperatures below freezing. Every once in awhile the temptation to do a...

Rediscovering watercolors

I never really liked to paint. Oh sure, as a kid I did the standard tempera and watercolors during playtime, as other kids would. But while my drawing ability was going somewhere, my painting wasn't. In high-school art classes I pushed myself to "get into" oils and acrylics. I was going to be "an artist",...

The itch for bike camping returns

Bike Camping at Ainsworh SP/Columbia Gorge, 25 Aug 2020. Ricoh 35 ZF/AristaEDU 200. We're having some nice weather for the beginning of March. That snow and ice storm? So two weeks ago. How can you think about winter when the outside temp is nearing 60F? Not only do we have nicer weather, but the days...