Well, if it wasn’t enough that those of us in Portland already suffer from a superiority complex based on our early adoption of biking, going “green” in nearly every way possible, high per capita college degree holding, and abundunt strip clubs (what?) …

It turns out we also read more than everyone else in the nation. 

Multnomah County
has the highest collection turnover rate per capita — meaning its
books, CDs, DVDs and other materials are checked out at twice the rate
of the national average.

Seriously, Portland is a weirdo place. I can’t tell you how many coffee shop barristas I know who have masters degrees, but decided that they wanted a more mellow life.  One of the coffee shops I frequent regularly is owned by a guy who will sit with me and talk about Foucault, neuroscience, and Quantum game theory (my masters-degree focus).

People here are freakishly well read.  Now I know why: all that “liberal” access to libraries – Oh My!

As my friend, Tony, once said, “In every city, the strippers say
they are ‘working their way through college’.  In Portland, it’s
true.”

I’m finally getting around to writing this, a few weeks after the fact.  But, the Portland Highland Games 2010 was a success and a ton of fun.  Three of our crew competed: Myself, Chris, and Roy.  Chris and I were in the C class (Remember, a C gets a degree) and Roy was in the Novice class.

We spent a fair amount of time practicing the weight for distance and the open stone prior to going in this year.  Roy built a make-shift weight for distance out of pipes and plates.  And it served us well.  Though we did break one of them!  And he had to make a second one.

While I know my own spin technique leaves much to be desired, I did get quite a lot of complements from the more experienced competitors.  So, it turns out that practice does help … who knew?

We’re all quite new at this sport.  We assumed (wrongly) when we first started that our Olympic lifting would carry over far.  Wrong.  While we are often among the strongest guys at our level, our technique is so far behind that we can’t utilize our strength and power correctly.  We get killed by guys far less athletic than us.

This is actually good news.  Just like the Olympic lifts, once we learn the technique and get better and better at that, our power will transfer and the weights will start going a lot farther.

Here are some vids.  (The pic above is me with the 56 pound weight for distance.  Let me tell you now, 56 pounds spins you more than you spin it – see my wipe-out below.)

28 Pound Weight for Distance

56 Pound Weight for Distance

Hard, this is very hard!

Open Stone

Caber … Well, Not so much!

And here are a few pics of Roy (sadly, I ain’t got no vids):

Blazer’s Edge has a massive collection of pre-playoff Blazer links and articles and info from all around the interweb compiled into one place.  Like this gem from Henry Abbott:

But for Portland’s meaningless Travis Diener-laced special last night,
the two teams would have identical records (Suns 17-4, Blazers 16-5)
since March 1. Meanwhile, guards who muscle into the paint can cause
Steve Nash problems on defense, and Miller does that like crazy,
especially in Roy’s absence. Big men who rebound have also wreaked
havoc for the Suns, and Camby has that potential. Not to mention, the
Blazers are not the young team we know them as. They’re Miller and
Camby and veteran tricks galore, including and especially in how they
relate to referees. 

Having watched every minute of those two
teams going head-to-head all season, it’s impossible for me to see that
series as anything other than a toss-up, which is more or less how I
called it. 

Blazers kicked butt against the Thunder (previously the Seattle Super Sonics – RIP).  This was both good and bad.  The bad is simply that it nearly guarantees that we won’t be playing the Lakers in our first match up of the playoffs (we’ve got a better shot against them then a few of the other teams).  The good part is … well, we won, and we did it without Brandon Roy. 

But, the most important thing about this game is that it allowed the ever ridiculous Trail Blazzer analyst Mike Rice to get in a couple fantastic quotes.  Seriously, replay the game and look for both of these.  They’re there:

“Bayless … Penetrating … Rudy!”

and

“Oh … Oh … Backdoor!”

The man is a quotation machine, maybe only matched by Dan Rather.