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November 10, 2006

IT'S FRIDAY, MY FAVORITE DAY!!

We spent last weekend in town as the Blazers had their home opener on Saturday night. It as a great game and the home team won!! The Rose Garden was rock'n, just like the good old days. We were glad we got to the arena early. Because it was the first game of the regular season, we had a lot of wiring to change to get ready for the broadcasts. But everything went well and we were back in West Linn by midnight. Sunday we had a really nice brunch with the Kahrs who were in town to celebrate Donna's birthday. They stayed at a nice hotel downtown on the river and we had brunch at the restaurant there. Afterwards, we headed over to Stan and Terrie's to help them move into their new home that they just had built. We spent most of the day unpacking boxes, hooking up their computer and folding towels that were used in packing. They have enough stuff for two homes, because that's what they had...a condo in Hillsboro and a home in Florida. I see a major league garage sale coming up! Terrie swears this is the last home she intends to live in.

We spent Sunday night with them as we decided to stay in town one extra day. My uncle had passed away and I wanted to attend the funeral. It was a real nice service that "Uncle Red" had prepared himself as he was dying from cancer. Red had a wonderful sense of humor and there was a lot of his humor in the service. He loved to fish and hunt and all of the pallbearers wore big "fish" ties. He also was in the Army Air Corps in World War II, so as everyone was leaving the chapel, they played "Off We Go Into the Wild Blue Yonder"...again, his idea. It was really a very personal service, which you don't normally see.

We left for home after the funeral, as we wanted to get back before it got dark. There had been a lot of flooding because of all of the rain and our normal route on Highway 53 had been closed because of mudslides. So we had to drive over to Cannon Beach and then back down the coast to Wheeler. When we got to Nehalem, the streets were flooded there and most of the tidelands surrounding the area were under water. We had to take side streets to continue on into Wheeler. It rained cats and dogs all night long. In fact, we heard later that we had nearly 8 inches of rain in 48 hours! That, along with the highest tide of the year, caused all the flooding.

Dave got a phone call during the funeral. No, the phone didn't ring out loud, but he knew he got a message. When he checked it after the service, it was the SMART coordinator telling him that school was being closed because of the high water and that we wouldn't have to read that day. We breathed a sigh of relief, because we had forgotten all about it! The poor kids would have showed up to read to us and we wouldn't have been there. So the bad weather did do us a favor there!

The next morning I went to my water aerobics class and there weren't a lot of people there. On the way home, when I passed by the tidelands surrounding Nehalem, the water was just reaching the shoulder of the road and it was still hours away from high tide! I took some pictures but unfortunately, we have no way of downloading them until we get back home. So after my class, Dave and I decided that we had better scoot back into Portland before the water came over the road. All the other ways in and out of Wheeler were blocked by slides or high water and we had to be in Portland for the Blazer game on Wednesday. We could see where we might get stranded down there, so we repacked the suitcase and hit the road. We just barely made it through the flood at Nehalem. The highway was still flooded and the detour had a foot of water over it too. The police were getting ready to block the road and I'm sure we were one of the last cars to get out of town! Once we made it through the flood waters, the rest of the trip was relatively easy, but it is better to be safe than sorry. We had to be set up for a radio show by 3PM on Wednesday before the Blazer game and there would be no excuses for being late or not even showing up. Since we were in town a day early, we had no problems with the broadcasts, and it was a fun night because the Blazers beat the Lakers!

So we are in town now until either Sunday or Monday, again depending on the weather. We have games tonight and again on Sunday and they are predicting another big storm coming in over the weekend. Ordinarily, we would drive home after the game Sunday night, but I don't want to try to get home in the dark in a hurricane! We discovered during this last storm that you can come around the corner on the highway and find a big hole in the ground were the road used to be. We don't need to be doing that at 1AM. Tillamook County has been declared a disaster area and as far as we know, all the highways are still closed except for the one we came out on. We'd really like to get home because we will have been gone for 9 out of 10 days by the time we get back!