Ross Cooper's blog

The non-adventures of Ross, Sally & Boo

Mike

Sad news today as my friend Mike (the guy with the blond hair in the photos) passed away this morning after a year long fight with cancer. My heart goes out to his family. 

I first met Mike back in 1994 on about my 4th day in Portland OR, USA. He was visiting his friend Andy and we chatted for a couple of hours over a pint or two. A year later Mike decided he wanted to move to Portland, so he got my address from Andy and first shipped all his stuff to me (without actually telling me) and then a week later showed up on my door after driving half way across the USA. "I'm Mike" he said. "Aha, so this must be your box?" I replied. 2 hours later we were in a pub and settling into a friendship that basically spanned good music & terrible movies. Mike usually won out on both counts, always knowing about the new British bands before I did, and always recommending an even funnier B-movie then I could. For a while we had movie nights to see how many bad movies we could watch back to back - 3 was usually the limit. We were briefly in a band together, and I always loved the songs he wrote - 'Happy Valley" and "Metamucil Man" being two favorites that I still find myself singing 15 years later.

God bless my friend, you will be missed.

Update: Link to the slide show from Mikes Memorial Service - http://vimeo.com/23088881

Went to Portland

I went to PDX last weekend to see peoples. I went shopping all day on Friday with my friend Lisa. We found the coolest store on N Dekum and N Interstate called Alex Sandra's. It is women's vintage clothes. I got two really cool dresses. You need to check it out. The owner is a blast. We had so much fun trying on stuff.

On Friday night I met up with a bunch of folks for Happy Hour at Kell's and enjoyed yummy martinis. Saturday eve I went to the movies with Ronnie and the kids. We saw Land of the Lost. It was alright...very Will Farrel.

Sunday the neighbor had a soup night so that I could catch up with all the old neighbors. It was good to see and talk to everyone. They can not believe I actually like the hot weather here. Whatever.

On Monday, I met my newest niece, she is 8 months old and this is the first time I met her. She is such a happy baby. And so cute

Of course I had to go to Voodoo Doughnuts. I even brought one home for Ross. It was a maple bar with bacon, in case you are wondering. It was nice to see everyone and hang out, but I am happy to be home in the heat again.

Lee comes to visit

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Our friend Lee came to visit us this weekend, which was perfect timing as Sally has just started her summer vacation. We did some of the normal stuff like mooching around in Scottsdale, an early morning hike around Papago Park (which turned out to be really good as all the animals were out and about, and all the flowers are blooming right now - seeing flowers on a cactus is still trippy to me!), and heading up to the top of South Mountain to catch a sunset. We also ate some great food...

First, on Satrday night we had to head over to Trader Vics for some appetizers and drinks. Then on Sunday, Lee's friend-in-Phoenix Yvonne had suggested meeting up at South Mountain Farm for breakfast one morning, which we did willingly because we know how good the food is there! Then Sunday night we ended up at our current favorite burger place, Stax. Monday we went to the Eggery for breakfast, it seems really old school but they do great healthy food there, and then finally as the piece de resistance, we tried the Bada Boom Pasta Room but it was closed, which was lucky really as we ended up at the Italian Grotto, which was awesome. Lee grew up in new York, and loves his italian food, and the Italian Grotto passed all of his tests for good authentic east coast italian food!

Finally, not a lot of people know this, but rocker Alice Cooper lives in Phoenix - mainly I suspect because of his incongruous love of golf! Anyway he also owns a bar here called "Alice Cooperstown" and we had to go. it's a cross between a sports bar and the Hard Rock cafe. Alice wasn't there when we dropped by, but hung on the wall were guitars belonging to Paul McCartney, Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck. I worshipped at the altar for a long time...

Portland - Last Day

Monday was our last day in Portland and we had to be back at the airport around 4pm. This gave us a few hours to run around and see some more friends, so we started out with a quick breakfast back at the Doug Fir again - yes I do miss that place! Then back into downtown in search of one of Sally's best friends Nick. We knew he was working at a store called UnderU4Men which sells fun & cool underwear for men - you'll never buy your underwear in packs of 3 again after seeing this place :-) We weren't sure if he would be working a shift when we got there, but luckily he was, and even better he was busy changing one of the window displays so we crept up on him and leaped out in-front of the window. After a momentary look of "WTF?" he came running out to hug Sally so fast that they both nearly went flying out into the street :-) It was hilarious. We hung out for a while chatting to him, I checked out lots of underwear, and we all checked out the golf-ball sized hail that suddenly started falling outside. OK I exaggerate, but only a bit.

After that we headed out to visit Sally's other old friend Lisa who had just moved into a beautiful new house out in Happy Valley. My favorite thing though was the giant Van Gough mural that she had at the top of the stairs, it filled the whole wall. Check out http://www.muralsyourway.com if you ever wanted anything like this, they do amazing work. We've just got to decide which one we want ;-)

After a brief stop back at Ronnie & Heather's place to pack up our stuff and chat with Heather one last time, we were off to the airport for the journey home. We both sat on the plane, put our iPhones/iPods on shuffle and picked up some books to read. The flight passed in no time at all, and the only sucky part was that we were now flying Alaska, which landed at terminal 2, so we had to catch a bus back to terminal 4 to find our car! Grrrr.

Thanks to all who came out to see us, or invited us over, and thanks to Kat for getting married - we wouldn't have been back if it wasn't for you! Next time you can all come visit us out here where it's warm and sunny! I'll take our 88º over your 44º any time ;-D

Portland - Shoes & Friends

Sunday we majorly learned our lesson from yesterday and crammed as many different friends in as possible :-) We started out by going to the Doug Fir for breakfast with my friends Amanda & Jim. Amanda was in Phoenix visiting us last weekend, but Jim had ripped the tendons in his legs and couldn't come. Sure enough Jim came hopping in on crutches and painkillers, but it was great to see that he's still his usual funny self. They also had a gift for us, a beautiful Vargas print in a delightfully tacky plastic frame that Jim had found at an auction or something. It's one of the nicest gifts I've ever been given ;-)

After breakfast, it was all about Sally for the next hour! Her favorite shoe store is PDXshoes and we'd dropped by there within hours of arriving in Portland but they had nothing she liked and she was devastated! Our friend Lisa who lives over in Multnomah Village suggested she check out a new store there called Switch. We did, and Sally nearly bought everything in the store!

After heading back to Ronnie & Heathers for a couple of hours, we drove out to Tannesbourne to visit our friends Lee & Anicia. Lee has just bought a condo out there in the burbs after being a committed city guy (N.Y./Portland) all his life. It's a tough adjustment but his new place is great. There's lots of shopping nearby, MAX is close, and his windows look out onto a beautiful piece of... well, marsh land, but it was much nicer then that sounds :-) We'd intended to drop by for an hour tops as we had other stuff to get done, but after lots of chatting and a little bit of Crowded House, 2pm had turned into 4.30pm without us even noticing and we had to race back to Ronnie & Heathers for a dinner party that we were about to be late for.

Sally's other brother Jeff came over for dinner with his new-to-us girlfriend Nicole. We all sat around eating & chatting for ages; Jeff and I wasted way too much time comparing what albums we had on our iPhones, which left me wondering why my iPhone's speaker was so much quieter then his; and we all ended the night playing some board game whose name I've forgotten :-) I won a round or two though which wasn't bad for my first time playing!

Portland - Tiki Style

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Saturday ended up being our most depressing day of the whole trip, but we realized in retrospect that it was because it included the least friends spread out through the day. It started out great as Heather cooked us a great breakfast, just ham & eggs, but soooo yummy. It ended good too, but we'll get to that later...

After breakfast we headed downtown. It was still freezing cold and oscillating between rain and hail. I used to love Portland's downtown, but now it seems like half the shops have closed and with the miserable weather everything just looked grey and yucky. We cheered ourselves up with lunch at Rock Bottom before heading up to the 21st/23rd shopping areas. We were going to walk around but we were so cold by now that we just drove down the streets until I saw a cool new store called eccodoma. We checked it out and they had some amazing furniture in there. We ended up buying a chinese painting that we liked, then driving to the nearest UPS store to ship it home to Phoenix. Painting: $80, shipping: $80.56, loathing UPS: priceless ;-)

We headed back to Ronnie & Heather's for a bit and it really started to hit home why we left Portland in the first place. It is beautiful in the summer, but if you don't like the cold and rain it gets depressing fast in the long winters. We decided to cheer ourselves up with pie, so it was off to Perry's on Freemont which does amazing desserts. Sally was all excited to have her favorite old dessert again that she hadn't had in 2 years... but they'd taken it off the menu :-( Curse you again Portland!

Some things however never change, and one of them was our final destination for the night - The Alibi. It's an old (50's? 60's?) tiki bar that hasn't changed a day since they built it. The drinks are bad, but lethal. The food is bad, but lethal. They have karaoke. It's just about my favorite 'escape from the winter weather' dive in Portland. A huge bunch of friends showed up, some who had been out the night before at Kat's wedding, and some who I hadn't seen in years (like Ange and Desi). It was great to see you all and totally rescued an otherwise crappy day. I don't miss Portland anymore, but I do miss all of you.

Portland - Kat & David's Wedding

We flew back to Portland today for our friends Kat & David's wedding. The trip didn't start well. First we had to be up at 5am to get to the airport in time for our early morning flight, then as we pull into the terminal we realize that our tickets say the flight is run by Alaska and United, but Alaska is at terminal 2 and united is at Terminal 4. So we go to terminal 2, park up, try & check in, but there's no record of us! After lots of looking at the computers, this eventually means we should be at terminal 4! Oops.

We arrive in Portland about 10.30am, go pick up the rental car and head towards town. Phoenix was 88 and sunny when we left, Portland is alternatively snowing, hailing, raining or nice but freezing cold. It seems to rotate between any one of these weather settings about every 10 minutes. It kinda makes Phoenix's endless "sunny, hot" seem quite boring by comparison - yay for boring! ;-)

We were staying at Sally's brother Ronnie's house, and after a quick detour to check out Sally's old house (completely unchanged after 3 years!) we picked up Ronnie and the kids and head downtown to Kell's Irish Pub for our first taste of Portland. For me it was the meal I've been missing - Curry & Chips - yum!

After dropping Ronnie & the kids off, we headed back into downtown to meet up with some old friends. First we stopped by the new offices of the company I used to work for. Their new offices are beautiful (congrats guys!) and it was great to see so many of the old faces there and catch up on what's been going on. Thanks to all who gave us a tour or stopped and chatted for a few minutes.

Next we headed over to visit my friend Jim who works for KGW - channel 8 in Portland. He gave us a quick tour round the building, showing us the studios where they film the local news, and many other cool rooms full of all kinds of audio/video technology that I can only dream about owning. I loved it, but I think Sally got a little bored of us geeking out over all the gear :-)

Next we swung by my old place where I used to live, which really hasn't changed much, although the area around it had, lots more high-rise buildings - condos, offices etc then there used to be. Then it was down into Johns Landing to see another place where Sally & I first lived together, and on to the cemetery where Sally's mom is buried.

Then it was back to Ronnie & Heather's place to relax for an hour before heading out to the Arcadia Ballroom for Kat & David's wedding. The wedding was cool, with some great vows and really funny speeches. The best bit for me though was catching up with lots of our old friends who we hadn't seen in a couple of years... and the cake ;-)

Amanda visit

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My old friend Amanda came to visit this weekend - yay! She was supposed to have her husband Jim with her, but unfortunately earlier in the week Jim had decided that running a 5k marathon, followed by playing a game of soccer, would be a good idea. His legs didn't agree however, and he managed to completely rip the tendons off the bone on one of them - ouch! First Sally's brother Ronnie on crutches, now Jim? What do you Portlanders get up to all winter?

Anyway Amanda arrived safely friday morning so we took her out to the South Mountain Farm for breakfast and a walk around, and then out to Kierland Commons for a bit of shopping, people watching, but mostly a drink & a slice of unbelievably delicious cake at Tommy Bahamas hawaiian restaurant. After a couple of hours at home to unwind, we headed to our favorite gourmet burger joint, Stax :-)

Saturday we hung out at home for the morning before Amanda headed off to meet up with some friends in Peoria to watch a spring training Baseball game. She came home a few hours later dehydrated and obviously mentally insane as she decided to go jump in the pool to cool off. We tried explaining that although it was 88º outside, the pool was still freezing but there was no deterring her. Still when you just came from a cold (44º) and rainy Portland, I guess our pool wasn't so bad after all, and she actually looked like she was enjoying it despite the goosebumps - brrrr!

After that we headed out first to Ariba for some great mexican food, and then on to Trader Vics to meet up with Amanda's friends from law school Eva & Che. Trader Vics is such a cool place to hang out and people watch, and we stayed there for hours swapping funny stories. Eva & Che were great, I hope we get to see them again sometime soon. 

Sunday, Amanda was heading off to meet Eva again for a day at Camelback Spa, which as you can see from the picture below looks pretty relaxing. Hope you had a great day there, and a fun trip, and hope Jim gets better soon!

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Lane visit - Greasewood Flat

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After the hike, Tawni took us all to a great burger joint that we'd never seen before - Greasewood Flat. It's up in North Scottsdale, and while it sounds like the name of an old blues singer, it's actually housed in a 120 year old bunkhouse & stagecoach stop that was on the route between Fort McDowell and Phoenix - now that's some history!

It's been a burger joint for 30 years, and you could tell it was good from the clientele. Half the people there were 70 year old cowboys that could quite possibly have been Sam Elliot, they certainly had the mustaches for it. The other half were 50 year old bikers. Different decades, different dreams, but any one of them could have still kicked my ass even at that age. Luckily they were all having way too much fun to bother. One of the old cowboys was in the food line in-front of us, and he told us that he'd been coming here since it opened in the 70's, and he & his wife still show up most friday nights for the dancing! I think Sally & I need to retire out to this area...

And so with aching legs from hiking, and a belly full of a burger that despite biting & chewing, had somehow re-formed into the whole original burger again, now weighing 1 ton, we decided to head home for a nap. I crashed for 2 hours straight, which has got to the the sign of a good hearty meal.

Lane visit - Sears Kay Ruin

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Our old friend Lane, and our new friends Julie, Gary & Tawni were all in town this weekend. We love seeing them as they are all a lot of fun to hang out with. Friday night we headed over to Tawni's place and hung out with them all evening. I mainly geeked out with Gary over his new iPhone :-) Note to Lane and all others who still haven't made the leap yet - stop worrying about the money, you CAN put a price on happiness and it starts at $399! Ha ha.

Anyway, Saturday we all met up again and went for a hike up at Sears Kay Ruin, in the Cave Creek area (north of Scottsdale). It was a long drive up to a 3,000ft summit (brrrr, cold!), then we hiked up about a mile to the top to find some old Indian ruins! Basically they were lots of small stones laid on top of each other in the basic square shapes of small rooms, with a mystery round room at the top. In the picture above you can see Sally & Tawni in the foreground checking out some ruins, and Lane & Gary in the background taking pictures. And below is a great one of Lane leaping to his doom over a rock ;-)

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