Almost the End of July

Yesterday we met John & Bonnie at the Oregon Brewer's Festival at Tom McCall Waterfront Park. That is Brewer's as in Beer, just in case you thought it was something else. This event happens the last weekend in July every year. There are dozens of Micro Brewers there with the latest offering in unique Oregon & Washington Micro-brewed beer. There is also live music and many restaurants offering local food. Some of the beers were, hmmm, not so tasty, but others were delicious! We had a great time. The format is, you buy a mug and a bunch of tokens (actually, wooden nickels). For 1 token you get a "taste" (about 1/3 of a mug) and for 4 tokens you get a full mug. So, you "taste" as many beers as you want and then, whatever you really, really like, you buy a mug. After many tastings we finally settled on a mug...mine was one called Prometheus.........and drank up. At this point, about 5pm, we decided to walk up into town and have dinner at The Rock Bottom Brewery. Of course, we had more beer. Yikes!! But we ate enough food to sop up our beer and called it a day.

What fun. There are so many neat things to do here in this area. It's sometimes hard to choose which one to take advantage of.

The next thing is the Hood to Coast Relay Race. That is only 26 days away. I have had to replace two runners this past week. Both have injuries from over-training. This is not an event that can be done with no training at all, but one of things I warn my team of from the onset is "DON'T OVER TRAIN." Of course, some folks always do that anyway. At least this year (so far) it is only two. Last year 6 folks dropped off before race day. I think I have a much more stable team this time........at least I'm hoping so right now!

My last team meeting is this coming Saturday and then the Captain's meeting is also that day at Nike Headquarters in Beaverton at the Tiger Woods room. That is when we receive our start time and our volunteer's assignments. I have three wonderful volunteers, thank goodness. I hope they have as good a time as past volunteers have. I understand that most folks find it is a lot of fun. My first year volunteers had so much fun that they formed a Portland to Coast Walk team and now have to find their own volunteers. But that's great, because now Broadway Medical Clinic supports two teams with T-shirts, banners and money. We are all very appreciative of that support and it creates a great atmosphere of teamwork and cooperation among the staff. Two of my volunteers are Medical Assistants in the clinic.

Anyway, enough of this. I will post photos of the HTC Relay when we are done and I hope Rachel will also post photos of the PTC Walk team as well.