I’m A Poker Player

A few weeks ago, at the Coffee and Donuts thing at the Community Center one of the residents told me that they were starting a friendly $5 buy in poker game on Wednesdays and she asked me if I was interested. I think she was trying to mother me a bit, because not long after Donna died, she said maybe I should start a widower club and meet for coffee once a week somewhere. She even had a couple names of fellows that found themselves in my situation recently.

I said maybe I’ll try and make it to her invitation for poker. The following Wednesday I thought about and didn’t think I would be interested, so didn’t go. She asked me again at the next Friday Social and I said I had forgotten, so I asked for the details again and actually put Wednesday, 2:00 PM in my calendar in front of her. And I was going to go play, but the Amazon delivery of my laptop got shifted from Tuesday to Wednesday. It was coming via UPS and a signature was required. So, of course the time frame I got was 12:45PM to 4:45PM. If it arrived early, I’d go. At a little before 2 o’clock I walked up to the Community Center to tell them why I wouldn’t be able to play. Delivery finally happened at 5:45.

So today, I walked up and paid my $5 and spent a little over an hour playing poker. And this was actually the first time I have played. In the Navy it was always Hearts or some form of Rummy. I’m sure there was poker being played somewhere on the ship, but I never got in a game. The $5 thing is just to start you off and you get four denominations of chips, half dollar, quarter, dime and nickel, but if you feel frisky you can pull bills out of your pocket. Nobody ever threw a five spot in as a bet but, they did get used to be thrown in and then 3-4 dollars in chips taken back out. At one point I won a big pot with a portrait of Honest Abe in it, I promptly put it in my pocket.

When I did finally lose all my chips, I said I was done and left the game. So, I broke even for the day and have next week’s buy in all set.

Sport, Off-Road, Touring

Special Tuesday Edition of SORT
As of Tuesday, April 8, 2025 at 9:00 PM pacific time:

Sport Off-Road Touring
2006 BMW
M3 Coupe		 1994 Land Rover
Defender 90		 2015 Maserati GranTurismo Sport
Not really special, it is just that I totally spaced on the fact that yesterday was Monday. An after the long drive back from Klamath Falls I just wanted to go to bed. It was not any longer in distance, but I did manage to avoid traveling on any of I-5 to get home, so more time was involved. I also killed an hour or so at the High Desert Museum south of Bend.

Here is what last week’s cars sold for, or bid to (if the reserve was not met):
Sport: 2013 Chevrolet Corvette Sold for USD $61,000 on 4/4/25
Off-Road: 2019 Chevrolet Colorado Bid to USD $22,500 on 4/2/25
Touring: 2021 Chevrolet Express Sold for USD $45,000 on 04/05/25

Quest Complete

If haven’t already seen today’s Insta post, I was able to earn the coveted, Brevada Brewhouse supplied, Mixed Berry Smoothie Bowl. Damn, worth every mile. It was just as I remembered.

The first part of the journey home was all gray clouds and random sprinkles. As soon as we hit the mountains the gray clouds disappeared behind a thick mist and enough rains drops to simulate a milky shower curtain. Inexplicably, in one valley between the peaks the downpour stopped for 2 or 3 miles before coming back with a vengeance. Back at a couple hundred feet above sea level it went to broken clouds with some sprinkles.

Here are a couple of today’s Miata photos. First up, is a reminder how prevalent wildfires are in Oregon.

And secondly, a picture of how fertile the Willamette Valley is.

Back To K-Falls

I am back again for the second time in the span of a week for one thing, a Breakfast Smoothie Bowl from Brevada Brewhouse tomorrow morning. That is the reason why I came last weekend too, but Brevada is closed Sunday, so I was going get it on Monday morning, but the impending snow in the mountains made me leave early. I feel like this smoothie bowl has became a Quixotic Quest.

Because when Donna and I left Klamath Falls for Fairview, I sold the CBTNL to David, the co-owner of Brevada, he had promised me a free smoothie bowl whenever the next time I got to Klamath Falls. So, by my reckoning, this free treat will have set me back approximately $460. Three hotel rooms at $100, only 2 of which I will have used, and 4 full tanks of gas at around $40 each.

But it isn’t really about the money because I would have had to cross the Eastern Cascades a few times anyway for taking the post office photos I’ve taken while coming here twice. There were 6 last weekend and I picked up 8 on the way over today. With a chance at 5 more on the way back.

P.S. The Sisters Post Office (lower left) officially put me over the halfway point of the other Quixotic Quest I’m on, taking a picture of every Post Office in Oregon.

Pull Caffé Run

My second Run with the Mt Hood Miata Club took me into the wilds of southern Washington with a dozen or so Miatas and one Fiat 124 Spider (AKA: Fiata.) What they call a Run is what we called a Rally back in the Masters Miata Club realm.

We met in a Home Depot parking lot in Vancouver, WA and if you’ve ever been in a Home Depot parking lot on a Saturday morning you would know just how out of place our little roadsters were. Our destination today was a small specialty coffee roaster in the wilds of Clark County. Pull Caffé’s address is listed as in the town of Yacolt, but I didn’t see anything resembling a town. On a side note, Yacolt is derived from the Klickitat word “Yahkohtl,” meaning “haunted place” or “place of (evil) spirits”, so good thing it was daytime.

Pull Caffé’s opening time on Saturday is noon, but we had arranged to arrive at 11 so we could get the nickel tour before the hoi polloi. Very interesting place, they started out as a woodfired coffee roaster but branch into making woodfired pizza and in a brick oven and then added baking sourdough bread in there too. The coffee roaster they use is literally the oldest one on the planet. When the owner found the German made roaster for sale in Bulgaria he was told it was used in the 30’s. When he got it installed he discovered it might have been used then, but it was built in the 1800s!

Another reason to be there early was because the first Saturday of the month is the only time they sell the bread and it draws a crowd from around the area. I snagged a loaf and I’ve got two thirds of it in the freezer because it is going to take a while for me to devour something the size of my head.

After leaving the coffee and pizza and bread makers behind we headed back south for lunch at the Prairie Tavern with a stop at the scenic Lucia Falls for a leg stretch.

Miata Gender and Names

A week and a half ago I mentioned that I gave the both boys a bath, meaning both Miatas.

The ’01 has been christened Bucky (or Buc-ee after the Texas sized gas stations) and that is obviously a male name, at least to me. The Winter Soldier, Steve Rodgers best friend from childhood is called Bucky. Or Bucky Dent of the NY Yankees and for Red Sox fans everywhere they include his middle name F’in’.

The ’24 has yet to be named? It started gray but turned blue. How about Luminol because that is white-ish in color but when it comes in contact with blood it turns blue. That one won’t work. Marge, the Simpson’s mom has gray hair that has tuned blue? Nope, that’s a female name. Gender swap Bucky to female? When I searched for ‘can bucky be a female name’ I was told that there is a recent trend of that happening and it could be short for Buckley or such.

GT, because that is it trim level in the Miata hierarchy. Little Boy Blue, of “Come blow your horn, The sheep’s in the meadow, The cow’s in the corn.” of nursery rhyme fame. Old Gary Mare, doesn’t fit at all. Maybe just Old Gray could work?

But, for now, it’s just Blue Miata.

Austin Crawford Hunt Story Teller

I would like to tell you I had a very productive day, but I can’t because I haven’t left the building all day. Didn’t even crack the door. I’ve made three square meals for myself, I built the above puzzle and then watch a 6 part documentary on James Bond films.

I guess you could call doing a whole 1,000 piece puzzle in 6 hours productive…