Adventures: Discovering Oregon Treasures

I haven't been able to go to a ton of new places lately with volleyball and work taking most of my time, but that is part of life I suppose, but this past week I got go to a couple new places.

Columbia Employee Store
I know it doesn't sound thrilling by the title, but it is a big deal. In the Portland area there are headquarters for several big businesses such as Nike, Adidas, Columbia and several others. Every one of these places has an employee store and every once and a while friends are invited to come in with passes.

Well at our tournament in Seattle, one of the 14s team moms offered me a pass to the Columbia employee store and of course I took it. Last week on the way to practice I made a quick stop at the store. It was awesome because everything was at least 50% off of the regular price. I was able to use some restraint and keep myself from over buying. :) However, I am quite pleased with my new fleece and pants.

Funny thing happened the next day at practice, one of the 18s team dads came into practice and gave me and another coach a pass for the Columbia store...I guess I am coaching the right people!

Spruce Goose
On my day off last week, I headed to McMinnville, Ore. to visit the Evergreen Aviation museum with Kat, who holds the same job as me at Linfield College. The museum is home to the Spruce Goose, which is one of the largest planes in the world and was initially built during WWII to transport soldiers to Europe. Unfortunately, it was not done in time to actually help during the war and has been on just one flight, which it was not suppose to do. The flight came after the war and the designer took it on a small flight just to prove it worked. The movie Aviator is about the building of the Spruce Goose.

In the museum there are planes that show the history of flight, the first commercial planes and planes that were used in the WWII by several different countries including the US, Japan and Germany. We also got the pleasure of hearing stories from a war vets that now volunteer at the museum. Everyone of them had a different story on what a plane meant to them.

Winning The Tourney
One other very special adventure for me and my 14s team this weekend was winning our first tournament! This was the first tournament we had that we only had to travel about 20 minutes for as opposed to the 3 hours we have gone for all the rest. And it ended up being a great thing for us.

The 14s I have are considered the third team, because there are 2 alpha teams ahead of us, but our improvement has shocked many in the club. This weekend we won our first two matches in two sets, then lost our final match in pool play in three sets. It was a battle, but due to points we still won the pool! We headed into bracket play with the No. 1 seed and were able to take care of business and win the tournament and of course the girls got the first place prize of nalgene waterbottles (that we have been informed glow in the dark by the girls). It was the first time Alix and I were at the same tournament and we may have celebrated and screamed more than the girls when we won. We were so proud of their efforts and loved seeing the improvements they have made over the past three months, it will be excellent to see how they finish in the next two months!