Our region has been bombarded by sun recently. Unfortunately sun in January usually means ice, and this is no exception.
January Sun
Posted inFood & Drink
Micro Cosmos: Skookum Creek Strong Ale
When the guys over at Cascade Lakes Brewing dropped Mirco Cosmos a line about their new winter ale with an offer to send by a sample we didn't hesitate to take them up for, ah, research purposes. And we're glad we did.
Posted inFood & Drink
Micro Cosmos: Skookum Creek Strong Ale
When the guys over at Cascade Lakes Brewing dropped Mirco Cosmos a line about their new winter ale with an offer to send by a sample we didn’t hesitate to take them up for, ah, research purposes. And we’re glad we did.
Posted inOutside
Owl Quiz II: Another test of your owl knowledge
Give a hoot.If you are wondering what happened to the second part of our "little"
Owl Quiz, the answer is it got too big. So, if you still want to have a
good time with the quiz, you'll have to wait until my website,
www.northwestnaturalist is up and running, which should be in about a
week.
In the meantime, let's discuss six of the remaining eight,
one of them a newcomer, the barred owl. This pugnacious alien wandered
into the Northwest from eastern areas of Canada and the U.S. It's one
of the owls I grew up with, the other being the great horned – which I
had to eat when my grandfather said, "Whatever you shoot, Jimmy, you
eat."
Barred owls, as far as I know, are the only owl in North
America with an eight-note call. The northern spotted owl comes close,
because they are genetically and physically very similar, but once
you've heard them both, there is no question whooo-is-whooo-t-whooo.
Posted inNews
Could iNews Save the Newspaper Business?
Everybody else is getting a bailout, so why not the newspaper industry?
Posted inOutside
Winter Tidbits: A Tri, Give it a Try, Hoodoo and Roos
WINTER TRI
Iced up at Bachelor.Some people just don't learn. Which is why it looked like
a reunion of Masochists Anonymous when I showed up at the start line
for the 2009 USAT Winter Triathlon National Championship last Sunday at
the Mt. Bachelor Nordic Center. Most of the faces were familiar from
last year's event, also held at Mt. Bachelor, with competitors flying
in from places like Colorado and Alaska to vie for berths for the World
Championships in Gaishorn, Austria coming up in February. One new face
in the crowd was Ned Overend, the first ever world mountain biking
champion, which was pretty cool.
Conditions were much better this
year for the run/bike/ski event, with a bike course that was firmer and
more rideable. Brian Smith from Gunnison, Colo. finally dethroned
perennial champion Mike Kloser from Vail. Local professional bike racer
Carl Decker, who had been sighted actually running in a velour warm-up
suit earlier in the week, took third place. In the women's race,
Olympic Nordic ski racer Rebecca Dussault, also from Gunnison, won
handily. Sarah Max was the top Bend finisher in fifth place. I got
passed by Kloser's 15-year-old son Christian during the bike leg. Nice
genes.
Posted inCulture
Purple Dragons, Oh My!: Spyro Dawn of the Dragon
Puff on this dragon.Ever since Mario took the game scene by storm there have been many
attempts to steal the limelight from the-little-plumber-that-could,
with little success. One exception is Spyro the Dragon.
The first
Spyro game was released in 1998 on the original Playstation. The game
was a straightforward platform game with Spyro freeing fellow dragons
from their crystal prisons. The game won praise from gamers and spawned
several sequels.
Now comes the latest Spyro adventure, which is
really more of a remake. The game uses an all-star cast of actors
playing the main characters, including Spyro and sidekick Cynder. The
game concludes much like the original game wherein Spyro must defeat
his archenemy Malefor, the Dark Master.
Posted inOpinion
Stick That List
In keeping with our newly minted tradition of highlighting the best (and worst) reader call outs for the Letter of the Week, we're spotlighting this nuclear missive from Jennifer Garcia who lambastes assistant editor Ric E. James' "east side garage" rundown from our Top 10 issue. Thanks for the letter Jennifer, you can pick up your prize, an Old Mill Pint glass and a Busch Light to fill it at our offices, 704 NW Georgia.
Stick That List
Dear Source Weekly and Ric E. James,
Yesterday I opened a copy of The Source, and I found a feature composed entirely of lists. One of those lists was titled "Top 10 Things You'll Find In An Eastside Garage." Now, I understand that you, Ric and company, think this is a very clever concept, but as a resident of east Bend, and a person with generally good taste, I do not think it's funny. I'm not writing this letter to criticize the lack of humorous material in your "article" because I think it does a pretty good job of demonstrating that on its own, but I do want to address the rather rude nature of the above mentioned piece.
Posted inOpinion
So Long, Farewell…
Hi, I want to thank Bend for giving me an opportunity to explore the countless mountain biking trails in and around Bend.
As a biking commuter I will be relocating to California since I can bike commute 12 months out of the year without the worry of iced up bike lanes.
Posted inCulture
Stillborn: Bonehead evil lurks behind blue eyes
Do you find me creepy?The Unborn is not scary enough to be good and too serious to be "so bad
it's good." The flick is a gab-fest generic possession story that goes
beyond absurd and way beyond caring if it makes sense or not.
The
convoluted mess of a plot doesn't even try to win you over; it just
employs one sad old trick after another; a crumbling insane asylum,
tricky mirrors and doorways-there's even the medicine cabinet mirror
trick that I have complained about so often. The newest twists thrown
in are some hints of Jewish folklore, the Kabbalah and crickets from
Jerusalem. The snappy and clearly intended-to-be-witty dialogue tries
to distract, but it's so off the hook that you'll want to run out and
rent your favorite horror movie to wash the memory out of your eyes.