As the seasons once again change, with (albeit mild) hurricane force winds blowing the Pacific Northwest headfirst into winter, I turn back to the pages of Saturatedpratt – the silent companion to literally tens of readers throughout the dark months. Its been a rather fast four months and change since my last update, so as always, a quick re-cap should brings us up to speed.
August and September were filled with, as has become the norm for summer, work and baseball. Unlike the first half of the year, the late summer and early fall found me working fairly close to home – the longest work trip being a brief two-day jaunt to Klamath Falls. This being the case, I had to augment my relatively light work travel with a baseball-centered road trip with Miller to Vancouver, B.C. and all stops in between.
On this trip, I completed my second complete tour of a professional baseball circuit, adding the last two Northwest League parks I had yet to visit (Vancouver’s Nat Bailey Field and Everett’s Memorial Stadium) to my collection. The Northwest League now joins the Cactus as the two I have completed with no realistic successor in sight, barring a move to another geographic region. I will likely focus my efforts next year on seeing the Dodgers’ last spring training in Vero Beach, followed by hopefully being able to get some tickets to the their two-game exhibition series against the Red Sox at the L.A. Coliseum, where they played their first two seasons on the west coast. The big trip for the year will probably be New York sometime in spring or early summer to see Yankee Stadium in its final season – I think it’s a must for any true baseball fan to see the house that Ruth built before Steinbrenner knocks it down.
But wait – this update isn’t about the future, it’s about the past four months. After the September trip, the next big event was a quick weekend trip in October to Seattle to see Karen & Emily’s wedding. I don’t get to see them very often (or anyone who doesn’t live in the Portland area, for that matter) so it was great to catch up them, as it was with Brunner and Megan, and Lauren and Garth, who once again volunteered their extra bedroom for the night. I always have a great time whenever I see my friends from my Carson days, and I hope to see them a lot more often than the once every two years at someone’s wedding plan I’ve been on of late, especially with all the sports-related travel… (well, except for the Yankee Stadium trip – that is a necessity.)
The rest of the time from October until the present has been spent dividing time between work, Ducks football, Blazers basketball, and going to the gym. As always, the colder months are bringing with them a lot more work for me, so I’ve been doing more traveling of late. Last week’s work-related adventuring took me to Aberdeen, Washington, one of the last places in the state of Washington I had not seen on the company dime.
Between making visits to agents, lining up contractors, and conducting interviews, I found a little time to poke around town. My findings are as follows: it is very gray and damp, the area is in serious need of an economic kick-start if the 
vacancy rate downtown is any indication, and I can totally see how the region would rear a kid like Kurt Cobain. I wandered the downtown and snapped a few pictures, including some of what I am sure was a spectacular electric company building in it’s time – a stocky two level structure speckled with hundreds of sockets that were once filled with lights lining the windows and nearly every other architectural line on the building’s façade.
After taking in civic utility buildings of a bygone era, I went to see the historic bridge crossing the Wishkah river, the same river by which Cobain myth dictates he slept while periodically homeless in Aberdeen. After being there at high tide, I agree with Krist Novoselic’s assertion that this myth was only that – a myth.
So, that basically catches us up to the present. Next week I will be taking a week off for a random “use it or lose it” vacation – I will probably spend most of the week wandering around town taking pictures, going to the gym, and just relaxing before what is shaping up to be a very busy next couple of months at work. If I find enough time, I just may throw a couple updates online, as well as a story or two. Stay tuned.