Outside Features
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Buy This Stuff! What football fans like to buy, according to the ads I saw during the Super Bowl

Here's what I learned about myself – as a football fan – by the products that were sold to me on Sunday.
Mike Bookey

So, yeah. My prediction that the Steelers would win the Super Bowl by way of a vast, mind-boggling conspiracy didn't exactly pan out. Whatever, who cares? I'm onto more important things now – like going out and purchasing all the items the Super Bowl advertisements told me I, as a football fan, should want. People, if you don't support the companies that pay in unicorn blood (the most valuable of all blood) for a 30-second spot during the Super Bowl, there won't be a Super Bowl next year. Seriously.
So, here's what I learned about myself – as a football fan – by the products that were sold to me on Sunday.

Posted inOutside

A Super Bowl Conspiracy Theory: Pittsburgh Steelers? More like Stealers of Super Bowls

Friends, why don't I let you in on a little secret, all right? The Pittsburgh Steelers will win the Super Bowl on Sunday.
Mike Bookey

Come join me over at my chalkboard, would you? Let me spike my hair up and gain 125 pounds and somehow get a nightly FOX News program on which I'm liable to cry at any moment. OK. Good. I am now in full conspiracy theorist mode.
Friends, why don't I let you in on a little secret, all right? The Pittsburgh Steelers will win the Super Bowl on Sunday. They might not win big or even have more points on the board when the clock runs out, but the Steelers will be named champions of the Super Bowl. Why? Um, I think it's pretty obvious. There exists a vast conspiracy to ensure that the Steelers win Super Bowls. Everybody is in on it, especially the referees. This thing goes all the way to the top baby, and you've got blinders on if you can't see it.

Posted inOutside

Take a Knee: Learn to telemark ski at Mt. Bachelor

Laurel Brauns

I've been skiing since I was two. I had those little Traks you could attach to your snow boots with floppy straps, so it was a combination of Nordic and Alpine at the same time. My parents had the brilliant idea to just let me go at the top of our “wicked” steep driveway in New Hampshire and see how I fared on the way down. They were proponents of the “learn by doing” philosophy. We lived in North Conway, N.H., and with at least five ski areas in a 30-mile radius, this was serious business, even for toddlers.

Posted inOutside

There's Football This Weekend! But it's the Pro Bowl… Yeah, bummer

Does anyone care about the Pro Bowl? Nope.
Mike Bookey

The NFL Playoffs (can anyone still say “playoffs” without employing Jim Mora's wild-ass inflection? I can't) have produced the two teams that will play in the Super Bowl down in Dallas. Remember back in the day when we'd power through the conference championships and the following weekend head full-steam into the Super Bowl?

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The Glory of Newberry: A new look at the biggest volcano in Oregon

No matter how many times you visit the Newberry National Monument, south of Bend, you’ll see something new every time, and probably something you wonder about, muttering to yourself, as I do so often, Now, how did that happen?
Jim Anderson

No matter how many times you visit the Newberry National Monument, south of Bend, you’ll see something new every time, and probably something you wonder about, muttering to yourself, as I do so often, “Now, how did that happen?”
I’ve been cross country skiing, hiking, logging – and now that I’m older – driving through, around and to the top of Newberry for more than 50 years, and it’s the same each trip: “Now how did that happen, and how did I miss it before?”

Posted inOutside

Find a Race That Fits: There are plenty of chances for the casual skier to compete in Central Oregon

Laurel Brauns

Just because they may be your neighbors, Olympians in bright-colored lycra racing around on the snow are an intimidating bunch. The skate ski crowd is almost neck and neck with the road bikers for having the most homogenous matching outfits and questionable-sponsorship wear. So, it's no wonder that here in Central Oregon especially, Nordic racing has a larger-than-life aurora surrounding it that may be off-putting to the “citizen skiers” who are considering getting out there just for the fun of it.

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Sorry, Ducks: But if it's any comfort, I'm pretty sure Cam Newton is a cyborg

Auburn beat Oregon in the BCS National Championship game because Cam Newton is a Cyborg.
Mike Bookey

You feel that? It's not a winter chill. That's the sensation of disappointment – deep, burning, painful disappointment – flooding through the fields, mountains, rivers and city streets of Oregon. The Ducks didn't win the BCS Championship and thus the vast conspiracy to keep the Coaches Trophy in the hands of SEC teams and their swollen-bellied boosters remains intact. But barely.

Posted inOutside

All Good Things: Wasting another perfectly good New Year's Eve on the river

A New Year’s Eve on the Deschutes River.
Eric Flowers

Under the best of conditions, steelhead fishing in Central Oregon, or anywhere for that matter, is an endurance test in which an angler pursues for days, weeks and even months at a time, a creature that is blissfully unaware of its pursuers existence – that is until that one fleeting and magical second when a fish moves invisibly from its holding lie, driven by some instinct that even the most dedicated angler can only begin to understand, and grabs your fly with a take that can be as sudden and violent as a slap on the face or as a subtle as a whisper in your ear.

Posted inOutside

A Celebration of Sub-Mediocrity: The Seahawks are proudly the worst team ever to make the NFL playoffs

The Seahawks are in the NFL playoffs, even though they’re pretty awful.
Mike Bookey

If you're a football fan from Seattle, Tacoma, Spokane, Sedro Wooley or, actually, anywhere in the states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho or Alaska that constitute the Seahawk Nation*, you stood in front of your television on Sunday night and realized that the miserable season you'd endured with your Seattle Seahawks wasn't over. In fact, you celebrated the team's NFC West championship. Which means they're in the playoffs. And get to play a home game. With a 7-9 record.

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