Soccer, Forestry, and Whales: A Final Week at the Coast

 

Cy is playing on a men’s league soccer team in Newport, so after the Kerbys left on Sunday to return to Salem, we got a few things accomplished around the house, then in the early evening we went down to the middle school to watch his game. They played against a team of kids who are on the high school soccer team, and as kids they can play like nothing will hurt the next day. The older guys on Cy’s team are a bit more cautious, but it was still fun to watch, and Cy scored his team’s only goal, heading it in for a score.

We went to his game the following Sunday, too, and wound up shagging balls when they were kicked way out of the pitch. And I learned some new words in Spanish from the referee, who made all the calls in Spanish. Cambio! Portero! Tarjeta Amarilla!

Sunday evening soccer

Back at the ranch, it was time to take down a tree that was leaning precariously behind the house. This is a task Cy was trained for, so it went quickly and well. Cy tied off ropes to the top of the tree, set the rest of us back a ways holding the other ends of the ropes to pull, and then started sawing through the trunk of the tree. When he gave the word, we all pulled, and my rope immediately pulled loose. But Amanda and Mike both had secure ropes and their tugs and Cy’s well-placed cuts caused the tree to come down right where we wanted it, away from the house and the deck. A satisfying chore accomplished!

Victory proclaimed in the
battle of tree vs. us

One Monday evening, we went to the Trivia Night at Fishing Rock restaurant, just north of Depoe Bay. We came in second, I blame myself. I also spilled a beer all over the table, so not my finest moment. But it was a pretty evening (we had several days in a row of sunshine and fairly warm temperatures) so on the way home, we stopped at the bayfront, wandered into one store that was still open (the Oregon coast closes at 8:00 pm every day of the week), and then crossed over to the seawall to watch a nice sunset. Lo and behold, we finally saw a whale! It was hanging out close to the rocky shore, so Cy suspected it was a resident whale, not one migrating along the coast. It appeared several times but never breached, much as we hoped it might.

Thar she blows! A resident whale at Depoe Bay

There is a nice work shed toward the side of the house that faces the street, which Cy fixed up for a workshop, which I have mentioned previously. But to give them room to work, they needed another sort of garden shed to store yard tools and fishing and crabbing equipment. They found an “assembly required” shed for a good price online and ordered it, but Cy kept looking and found a nice looking garden shed for $100 in Keiser, which is just north of Salem.

So off we went for a quick trip to Keiser, where we picked up the shed from a fellow who lived on Trevino Drive in a subdivision where all the streets were named for golfers. Weird. Cy had a couple of straps to throw over it in his trusty (?) trailer, but it was heavy so we weren’t too worried about it.

We should have been. Just a couple of miles past West Salem, on the highway, at rush hour, the shed was hit by a gust of wind and flew out. Panic ensued. Cy found a place to turn around, parked in the middle turn lane (at least it wasn’t an interstate), and we all hefted it out of the fast lane and back into the trailer. It only took a few minutes, but a state trooper showed up while we were doing a quick tie-down. Fortunately, no one hit the shed, it didn’t cause any accidents, and the state trooper was satisfied we’d dealt with the situation and drove off. We drove to a gas station and did our best to REALLY tie down the Shed That Flew with what ropes and straps we had. Cy drove back to Depoe Bay very carefully, and the next morning he had the thing pretty much put back together after its flight, and filled it with crab nets and fishing tackle.

The shed that flew--and lived to store crab nets, too

But now it seemed like a good idea to keep the shed they had ordered as well, since they still had stuff that needed to be undercover in the yard. So when it showed up, in two big boxes, we got to work on the assembly. It took a bit longer than your average Ikea bookcase to assemble—in fact, it took a whole day with a break for a ride down into town for 101 Burgers for dinner. Then we came back and assembled the door, only putting one of them together upside down. But we fixed that, and the Shed That Didn’t Fly gives them more space for their various outdoor equipment.

The other shed; some
assembly required . . .

We decided to give Trivia Night another chance, and Amanda invited two of her friends who work with her at Pelican Brewing, Cory and Laura. Wombats (our team name) had found our missing mojo! With six of us, we seemed unstoppable—and we came in first in the first round, so were feeling pretty good. We continued our knowledge streak until we came to the dreaded category “Law and Order.” Not general law and order knowledge, but trivia about the long-running television show. Cy answered one question about the ancestry of one of the actors, but otherwise we all drew a blank. So, alas, we came in second to the wily Quizzards in the second round, but we were first overall. Vindication!

We were due to leave Depoe Bay on Wednesday, heading to the desert on the other side of the Cascades to visit Amanda’s parents, but there had been developments—a repair job after a flood at their house in Redmond was found to have been botched by an inspector for the people who had arranged to buy the property from them. So we left them to talk to insurance companies and realtors while we stayed on the coast a few more days. Amanda had been talking up a Biergarten with German food that was attached to Pelican Brewing, where she works, so we went there to check out the offerings. Mike and I both had good sausages, potato salad, and red cabbage, while Amanda and Cy got more prosaic meals from Pelican and brought them over to the Biergarten.

The Biergarten at Pelican’s Lincoln City brewery

We were still at the Depoe Bay house on Friday when we heard that Amanda’s sister Kendra, their friend Jasmine, and nephew Noah were coming from Redmond for a visit. Amanda and I got busy making a recipe she had for pork enchilada filling in the crockpot, and we actually had seating for six people so we could all eat at the table. Amanda’s nephew is 9, and there was also a dog with them, Marlowe the Very Large Black and White Dog, so it was a rambunctious visit. Amanda was at work, but Cy accompanied the visitors to the beach after dinner, and when they came back it was time for the nightly movie, so things calmed down.

The next morning we really did leave the coast, after a lovely six-week working vacation with them. Our next stop was Salem, where we planned to spend the night with the Simon-Kerby clan.