Boring Snow in April

Last Tuesday I flew to Alaska. By car, that would be 2,461 miles and take 48 hours (not counting any stops). Alaska Airlines does it in about 3.5 hours (not counting the obligatory stop in Seattle). That could be why I have flown to Alaska many times but only driven once.

Now that I'm blogging I need to start taking my camera when I travel. This would have been the trip for pictures. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday it was about 60 degrees with beautiful sunshine. On Friday it started snowing in the morning and it was still snowing when I took off after midnight. Parts of Anchorage received 22 inches. On April 25.

I helped a friend shovel snow off his driveway and he remarked how unusual it is to shovel snow at 10:00 p.m. in daylight.

Driving back into Anchorage from Palmer Friday evening in a heavy snow storm, a bald eagle flew right over my car. I have never been so close to this magnificent bird and have to wonder if he was having trouble navigating in the weather.

The picture isn't Alaska. I didn't have my camera up there. This photo was taken right here in my back yard in Boring, on April 19. A corner of our garden is visible in the middle of the picture. The lighter areas are the snow-covered grass clippings I had spread there from mowing a day or two before.

I'm still waiting for a TV metereologist to make some remark about global warming in this, one of the longest, coldest, snowiest will-spring-ever-get-here years in memory.

Is it omaha?

One of the fun things about living in Boring, Oregon is ordering stuff on the phone. You know when they ask for your shipping address? The more professional telemarketers are pretty smooth about it, but sometimes I catch a suppressed chuckle when they ask "city?" and I say "Boring."

"Actually," I tell them after they stop laughing, "it's such a beautiful place we have to call it something to keep the crowds away."

(Full disclosure: The picture is actually taken about four miles up the road, in nearby Sandy, but you could get much the same picture if you chose the right spot in Boring.)

I have been asked, more than once, "Is it boring?" to which I have replied (after asking them their location), "Is it omaha?"

Valerie and I (with our two sons, Zach and Caleb) moved here in 1990, before some of my readers were born, and exactly 3.27 times longer than anywhere I have ever lived in my whole life. Now the boys are grown and we have a couple of grandsons. We have planted trees and watched them grow up. Ten, in fact. Amazing.

Life is good. God is good.