skibowl (failed)/ozone

this past weekend, i earned lots of gold stars with the hubby. i can't say it was my favorite weekend ever, but i did a very good job of doing things HE wanted to do without complaining on my side. friday night, we watched the movie "prairie home companion" - sad, somewhat slow at times, but overall, good - after i finished teaching, and met up with some friends for a late happy hour/dinner at monteaux public house. saturday was our day to sleep in (although i woke up at 8), and we took our time getting out of the house. we had planned on going up to mt hood for some summertime fun, such as the alpine slide, but upon checking the website that morning, we found out it had been bought out for that day & was closed to the public. thus we opted for j's pick of climbing at a new climbing place. we began with the day's errands, including registering for the providence bridge pedal (the next day's activity) and finding a two piece lap-swimming suit for me. we headed all the way downtown to niketown, only to find out that they don't carry swimwear there. they pointed us toward the portland swimwear company, which didn't carry any two pieces for actual swimming. so frustrating! after that, we headed out to the washington state side of the columbia gorge, to the new, relatively unknown climbing spot called "ozone." it had bolted routes, but was new enough that the path to the routes was undeveloped, sketchy, & not fun for me to traverse. i didn't know i would be hiking down a steep, dry/dirty path, and was sliding in my old set of running shoes, so i made j hold on to me the whole way. several of his friends were there climbing already, so we met up with them. i didn't climb at all - i had brought a camping chair & several issues of the new yorker which i needed to get through, so i just relaxed & read the whole afternoon. after 4 or 5 hours, we left & headed out for a late lunch farther east to the walking man brewpub in stevenson, a little town just past the bridge to the gods. i was kind of grumpy because they had little to offer on the menu that was dairy free (the creme brulee from the previous weekend set off a bit of a sinus infection for me, which dairy often does, and i was trying to avoid dairy), but once i had some beer in me i was feeling better, & actually dared to eat a little of j's pizza. it was heavenly! high quality mozzerella with a little blue cheese & olives - perfect buttery goodness in the mouth, and a great companion to the brew. on our way back to town, we encountered bad traffic. our main highway route was actually closed, unknown to us because there had been a road rage shooting, & the highway was a crime scene. it took forever to get back home! we got to bed early, because we had an early rise the next day.