8.23.99

    The weekend is too short but we made the most of it. Saturday morning we got up somewhat early and packed our things for an overnight at Edgefield, a sprawling Bed and Breakfast out in Troutdale. There's the main lodge, a renovated 1912 Poor Farm, with three floors for sleeping quarters, a ballroom and the Black Rabbit Restaurant. All of this is owned and operated by McMenamins. (I should start charging them for every time I link to their site, especially since the sites are so poorly designed.)

    Also on the grounds is a movie theatre and a regular in the old power station. There's a "Loading Dock" outdoor grill with picnic tables. The Icehouse is a tiny, little sports bar with the only teevee on the grounds. The Distillery is the clubhouse for the 18-hole pitch-and-putt golf course. The Little Red Shed is the old incinerator house on the sixth tee. There's a small lily pond and an amphitheater for weddings and concerts. There's a basement winery, candle-lit where they give out samples of all their wines. There's also a beautiful garden area with sunflowers as big as your head. The whole grounds is meandering and grassy and pleasant — perfect for wandering around with a drunken buzz on.

    Each of the different watering holes sells just a few of their beers on draft so you have to make stops at them all if you want to try everything. There's two cigar bars, the Icehouse and the Distillery where you can also get fine whiskey, scotch and rye.

    Our room was sparse and quaint with the typical McMenamin's paintings on the walls. At nearly every McMenamin's you'll find fanciful painting murals of birds and trees and sprites and the sun, moon and stars on every type of surface. We had a sink, an armoire, a dresser and a leather couch in our room. There was a little fruit-scented, bunny-shaped soap on the sink edge. For an hour or two on Saturday afternoon I lay, wrapped in an oversized, terry-cloth bathrobe, on the leather couch, in the sun, reading the Pagan Kennedy 'Zine that my friend Erica sent me while T. went and practiced putting. Our windows overlooked a secluded courtyard and the barely audible sounds of conversation and music floated up. It felt very European somehow.

    Saturday, we mostly wandered around with various flavors of beer while sitting in the grass, people-watching, while having dinner at the Loading Dock, while sitting through Austin Powers: the Spy Who Shagged Me for the second time. I think T. enjoyed seeing the movie but I just couldn't concentrate on it.

    We crashed out, thoroughly exhausted at Midnight.

    I slept the sleep of the dead. I did wake up just once and briefly marveled at how cozy I felt and how quiet it was and then promptly fell back asleep. I awoke again at 8 and put on my bathrobe and padded down to the bathrooms and took a long, hot shower. Though the bathrooms were communal they didn't really feel like it as there were four little rooms connected to a "lounging" area, each with a toilet, sink and shower. It wasn't uncomfortable at all. Luckily, the only people I saw in the hallways were other guests in bathrobes with bed hair.

    At 9, T. and I went downstairs for thirty-minute massages. I can't even describe how good that felt. I was on another plane of existence afterwards. The masseuse told me that my back had all sorts of problems. No big surprise there.

    Then we had breakfast at the Black Rabbit restaurant which is their "fine dining" establishment. On advice from a friend, we opted out of dinner there, sticking with pub fare but I must say, the breakfast was yum. I had a plate of banana-pecan, buttermilk pancakes that were bigger than my head. They came with a coconut syrup which I thought had a funky taste to it. I ate about one and a half with just butter and was stuffed. I also had fresh-squeezed orange juice and three slices of pineapple.

    In a slight food coma, we packed up our things and decided to try the pitch-n-putt golf course. Basically, that's eighteen holes of par 3s that are not much more than 80 yards, at best. Thus, you only need a pitching wedge and a putter.

    I had, of course, several bad holes. My putting needs some work in reading the greens. I've almost got speed and targeting down but I can't seem to guess where the green is hilly or tilted. I hadn't been hitting the ball off the tee too solidly until 'round about the eighth hole when I whacked one perfectly straight, beyond the green and into the trees and brambles. T. laughed. I teed up again just to see if I could do better and hit another one perfectly straight, beyond the green and into the trees and brambles. This time we both laughed. I managed to find one of those balls but the other was lost for good. One of the ironies of this course is that I think we lost something like four balls, including one where T. landed it right in the middle of a six-foot-tall blackberry bush. A briar patch, if you will.

    I did nearly have a hole-in-one somewhere around the fourteenth hole. It was truly amazing, coming within an inch of the hole and settling only about two feet away from it. I think T. would have strangled me and left me there if I had made it.

    We drank a beer along the way and smoked a few cigarettes (bad! bad!) and got pretty sunburned. All that fresh air wiped us out so we went home, cuddled with Oz, and slept until 6 p.m.

    That's my kind of weekend.

    Happy anniversary, sweetheart.