Mike Bookey, Author at The Source - Bend, Oregon

The Boswell Challenge: 3.5 pounds of burrito in 5 minutes

3.5 pounds of burrito in 5 minutes

Mike BookeyJuly 14, 2011February 11, 2024

Last summer, on a staggeringly hot day, I sat down with four young men and attempted to eat a 3.5 pound burrito in five minutes. I failed. Miserably. But three of the other competitors surrounding me finished the massive concoction of tortilla, meats, cheese, chilies, sauce, rice, beans and who knows what else before time expired.
Known as the Boswell Challenge, the event is the Taco Stand's eating challenge that fewer than 10 people have completed (one of whom is the Source's own James Williams), and takes its name from local road cyclist Ian Boswell, who first completed the feat. Since then, many have answered the challenge, only to leave the legendary Bend lunch spot defeated, bloated and swearing off Mexican food for the rest of that month.

Outside

Gimme Dingers:The Home Run Derby is like The View with more swearing

The Home Run Derby is a home run.

Mike BookeyJuly 13, 2011January 20, 2025

“Holy f***ing s*** I love hitting home runs.” – Babe Ruth, to a bedridden child. 1932.

The home run is, unequivocally, the most exciting thing in baseball. Well, next to some drunken college junior jumping down onto the field and eluding security for five minutes of excitement that eclipses anything baseball could ever offer.
The home run, however, should be awesome. It's the great equalizer. It can instantly change a game and has long been reason enough for stadiums to light off a few hundred dollars worth of fireworks, sometimes even indoors (see: Kingdome, The). It's also capable of eliciting hugs between strangers, which is otherwise awkward – trust me.

Culture

No Ascot Required: Why you're exactly classy enough to attend a polo match

Mike BookeyJuly 13, 2011August 2, 2023

Dan Harrison, the president of the Cascade Polo Club, knows what you're thinking when the name of his beloved sport is mentioned. Don't worry. He won't be offended if you, like me, thought polo – the kind played on horses and enormous fields – was a foreign activity reserved for royalty and private jet owners.

Food & Drink

Little Bites: Country Catering's Party on the Patio: They let you eat as much as you want. Seriously.

Country Catering is having a party on their patio and letting you eat as much as you want!

Mike BookeyJuly 13, 2011May 23, 2024

They call it the Party on the Patio, but the weekly all-you-can-eat feast at Country Catering could never be contained on a mere patio. More accurately, it's the Party on the Patio, Front Yard and Parking Lot.
That's because the eastside barbecue joint's delectable Friday evening pig out has become so popular that the scores of Bendites who come out on a weekly basis spread themselves out over most of Country Catering's property, making for a downhome neighborhood barbecue sort of feel. And to top it off, there's also live music.

Music

The Evolution of a Festival: Looking back at the history of 4 Peaks before its fourth installment

The 4 Peaks Musical Festival is coming back for a fourth time so take a look at the festival’s past years.

Mike BookeyJuly 13, 2011August 1, 2025

This weekend, the 4 Peaks Music Festival will take place in Tumalo for the fourth time. Since its inaugural year in 2007, 4 Peaks has gained traction in Central Oregon with its roots-oriented lineup, family-friendly attitude and intimate environment. Here's how the festival came to be – then not be – and now is beginning to regain its stature as the region's go-to music festival, according to two of its founders and Jason Beard of de facto 4 Peaks house band Poor Man's Whiskey.

Music

Of Skulls and Cellos: Billy Mickelson makes haunting magic with Third Seven

Self taught cellist brings to the stage a solo act of dark gospel.

Mike BookeyJuly 6, 2011June 21, 2024

Billy Mickelson has a cello. And that's about it. Well, at least on stage.
And if there's one thing we know about cellos, or at least we think we know about cellos is that they are absolutely, never cool – at all. But Mickelson, who has served as a member of Larry and His Flask, Mr. Potato, The Dela Project and several other acts since high school, has accomplished the impossible. With his new solo act, Third Seven, Mickelson is spending most of the summer on the road armed merely with his cello, the neck of which is topped with a skull, some loop pedals and a microphone. It's with this seemingly scant arsenal that Mickelson has created the haunting yet accessible tunes that are fueling a nationwide tour, which includes one last stop in Bend on Wednesday before he heads all the way from Portland, Oregon to Portland, Maine.

Culture

State of Mind: Keith Scribner's The Oregon Experiment tackles the more radical elements of life in this state

The Oregon Experiment by Keith Scribner touches on political extremists and family adjustment in a fictional Oregon town called Douglas.

Mike BookeyJuly 6, 2011May 7, 2023

It's become nothing more than a blip on the historical radar, but there was a time when a sizable chunk of Oregon almost became part of a different state or perhaps a different country all together. This was back in 1941 when residents of southern Oregon and parts of Northern California, disillusioned with the what they felt was neglect from their respective state governments, formed the state of Jefferson, which included several Oregon counties and bordered up to the south of our own Deschutes County.
On November 27, 1941, a band of men stopped traffic on Highway 99, which was then the main north-south road on the West Coast, handing out flyers that announced the state of Jefferson as an independent entity in “patriotic rebellion” against both Oregon and California. The story made national headlines and the state of Jefferson became closer to a reality as the organizers named Yreka, Calif., its capital. But a little more than a week later, before the newsreel about the secessionists ran in movie houses across the country, Pearl Harbor was attacked and the U.S. entered World War II. The story of Jefferson was soon overshadowed and the secessionists eventually put their energy toward the war rather than creating the state of Jefferson.

Outside

Trouble in Hot Dog Land: In America, wasting food is a sport

The Fourth of July Hot Dog Eating Contest in New York serves as America’s favorite holiday past time of wasting food.

Mike BookeyJuly 6, 2011May 7, 2025

I began my Fourth of July morning like many other Americans. I woke up, put my Lee Greenwood mix on the stereo and red, white and blue underwear on my nether regions, fired a few bottle rockets skyward and then tuned my television to ESPN to watch some weirdos gorge themselves at Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest in New York. And not just a few hot dogs, but more than 60 of the mixed-meat wieners and their accompanying buns in 10 minutes.
Hot dogs, and the grotesque overeating thereof, are quite American, so I'm not going to say that a wiener-eating contest (oh come on, get your head out of the gutter) has no place as a Fourth of July tradition. What I'm more concerned with is that ESPN would recognize competitive eating as a “sport.” If wasting food is a sport, then so is throwing diamonds down sewer drains or showering daily with Evian. But on the other hand, what's more American than throwing away things people in other parts of the world would die for?

Music

Inde-Hemp-Dence Day: What could Toots and the Maytals possibly have to do with Oregon politics?

The Hempstead World Music Festival brings headliner Toots and the Maytals to play their famed reggae sound and bring awareness to the Oregon Cannabis Tax Act.

Mike BookeyJune 29, 2011April 5, 2023

“So give me an idea of how this thing will work. When does it start? What's the format?” I ask, partially because I'm a reporter and I'm supposed to ask things like that, but also because I've seen plenty of posters and advertisements for the touring reggae event called Hempstead World Music Festival, yet I'm still not sure exactly what this large-scale party is all about. I do, however, have some guesses.
“Well, it starts at 4:20…for obvious reasons,” says Paul Stanford, the promoter of the festival, which also makes stops in Eugene on Saturday and in Portland on Monday, with a Sunday date up at the Deschutes County Fair and Expo Center. Stanford has been advocating for the repeal of cannabis prohibition since the mid 1980s when he placed another marijuana legalization measure, albeit unsuccessfully, on the ballot and is no stranger to events like this.

Outside

Hitting the Lottery?: Congrats NBA fans, here's a bunch of draftees you've never heard of

The MBA draft turned trendy with the youngest players becoming preference along with many Europeans.

Mike BookeyJune 29, 2011January 4, 2023

Few sport-related events are as bizarre and endlessly confusing as the NBA Draft, which comes just a few weeks after the end of the nipple-twistingly long NBA season, at the precise moment when the needle on most fans' Give-a-Damn-o-Meter is fluttering between “whatever” and one of those thumbs down/fart sound combinations that was the ultimate dis of 1998.
There was a time when the NBA Draft was exciting, or at the very least, topical. It was a graduation of sorts for the best college players to cross the bridge from undergraduate poverty to instant millionaire status as fans proudly welcomed whatever All American their team of choice had selected from the pool. Then, it changed about a decade ago with the influx of straight-outta-high-school hotshots expediting the process by foregoing college all together. Also, people in countries most Americans (sadly) had never heard of started playing basketball – and getting damn good at it, too.

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