Beginning

Hello, my name is Howard and I'm a train fan.

I live in Beaverton, OR; but grew up in Palmdale, California (Southern Pacific went right through town) and I'd go to La Posada in Winslow, Arizona to watch the Santa Fe railroad in action.

Every few months I go out and take train pictures. I've tried to post them to train picture sites, but never get them accepted. So, I figured, what the heck, I'll make my own blog and post my own pictures!

Other blogs I maintain are

• 4forbreakfast.blogspot.com: A blog of 4 empty nesters who go around eating breakfast in the Portland area


• 2for66.blogspot.com: A blog of my trip with my wife along Route 66 from Santa Monica to Gallup, New Mexico

Earlier this month my wife and I went to Tucson, Arizona to visit our son who is a middle school band director. The occasion was his first ever band concert as a director. While he was working one day, I went out and grabbed some pictures of the Union Pacific. Here is one picture

No group breakfast October 13/20

We didn't go out with Herb and Dianne on either October 13 or 20.

October 13

Carla and I were in Tucson on October 13 visiting our son, Andrew who is a middle school band director at a middle school there. He had his first ever band concert as a director and it was smash hit! We also got to see him perform in the salsa band Descarga at John Jacob's El Parador. We did have some nice breakfasts with Andrew, our niece Annie who is doing an Optometric clinical rotation, and Andrew's girlfriend Sally.

If you are in Tucson we highly recommend Ghini's for their Eggs Provencal with roasted tomatoes and thyme. We also like the cafe in the Congress Hotel across from the train depot.


I totally messed up and didn't get any pictures of Sally; but here is a nice picture of Andrew and Annie taken at the Pima Air Museum southeast of Tucson.

I do have a raft of pictures of trains in Tucson taken Friday morning while we were waiting for Andrew to finish work. ;)

October 20
Herb and Dianne were visiting relatives up on Mt. Hood last weekend so Carla and I were on our own. We went back to Nancy's Kitchen and had another helping of corned beef hash. Yum again.

Broder Scandanavian Restaurant - October 27, 2007

Very good!

Herb picked a good one this week (as usual). This is a small Swedish/Scandanavian restaurant on Clinton around 25th Street. (2508 SE Clinton St.). We ate here a few years ago when it was Henry's; I rated that as 3 stars but have no date or comment on the place. But the new tenant serves a wonderful breakfast.

A lot of traditional (I guess) Scandanavian items were on the menu. There were 3 or 4 things I wanted to try, but decided to go with the Swidish Breakfast Bord. It consisted of a board with lots of tasty bits:

• Rye crisp
• Walnut toasts
• Salami
• Smoked trout
• Grapefruit
• Yogurt and honey
• Lingonberry jam
• Hard cheese

I liked EVERYTHING on the plate. The smoked trout was definitely the winner. The grapefruit was pink and sweet, Herb didn't like it though as I squirted him in the eye at least twice as I was eating. The cheese was hard and a little salty. All in all this was an excellent breakfast. It was nice to eat a breakfast like this and not come away all full and lethargic.

Herb had the hash and I don't think he was as happy with it, he said it tasted like burnt popcorn (ugh). His rating will probably be less than mine.

The only dings are that the coffee was not hot; so if you didn't drink it quickly then you'd have 1/2 a cup of cold coffee. And service was a little slow; although our waiter was very nice and helpful.

I recommend this as a good place to go for a break from the traditional eggs and spuds.

I keep forgetting to get pictures; this picture is of Dianne and Carla as we left. I'm trying to remember to get more pictures.

Overlook Restaurant

The Overlook is the workhorse of breakfast places. There's nothing trendy about it; but it is no greasy spoon either. It's a good place to go when you want eggs, your favorite breakfast meat, shredded hash browns and toast or pancakes, waffles, etc. I had eggs and German sausage and it was fine. The eggs were the way I ordered them. The sausage was sliced and grilled and tasty.

The restaurant was clean and the wait staff was friendly. They had several big screen TVs up and running the news on Saturday, which distracted me a little bit; but if you're just in there for a quick bite, you might enjoy it.

They have a lunch and dinner menu, as well, and their dessert case was the first thing I noticed when we came in the door. The last thing I noticed on our way out the door was a GIANT cinnamon roll in the case. It was reminiscent of the rolls that the old Rose's used to offer in NW Portland. The Overlook also offers Cinnamon French Toast, and I was thinking that maybe I should have ordered that.

Overlook Restaurant - October 6, 2007

I changed my mind about going to The Roxy; just couldn't face the thought of surly waitstaff this morning. Instead, we went to The Overlook Restaurant at 1332 N Skidmore Street in North Portland just west of I5 and just north of the Fremont Bridge. Portland Citysearch has it listed as a Greek restaurant; but it didn't seem like it to me. It is pretty much a basic diner and deserves maybe 2 1/2 stars. The waitstaff were very pleasant (a big plus), but we didn't get any more coffee once they figured we had finished breakfast.

I had a waffle and bacon; pretty basic stuff. All-in-all not a special restaurant for comemerating (sp?) the first posting in over a year and a half.

We have gone past this place a few times in our jaunts to North Portland and St. Johns. Carla and I saw it again last weekend when we were headed to the Polish Festival which is held next to Kaiser hospital the last weekend of September.

I got a little micro SD card for my phone and spent most of the time at breakfast trying to figure out how to get my pictures to the card so I could then get them to my computer and post to the blog. Finally, I got a picture of the restaurant sign, which is what originally interested me and made me move it to the top of my list.

And a picture of Dianne:

Hopefully Dianne, Herb, and Carla will reactivate their accounts and post their thoughts.

Start it up (Again)

Changes

We've been going to breakfast; we just haven't been blogging. I'm going to try to keep this up again and see how it goes.

One change is, that I don't think people can track us very well from our aliases, so we (at least Carla and I) are going to go by our real names.

I (Howard) originally started posting as "Bake" - from my mother's side of the family (Baker). Carla went as "Carlita".
So, Bake ==> Howard
Carlita ==> Carla

We'll let Rick and A.H. decide how they want to be identified. I know who they are :)

Preview of this week

It's my turn to pick this week and I'm starting to feel like the cupboard is getting bare. But I've felt like that before and we haven't run out of places yet.

I've been considering "The Roxy" on Stark, but it sounds like the wait staff are brutal. It reminds me of a place (forget the name) we went a while back that had a sandwich advertising board outside that said "You eat here because we let you". I just don't need that; wait staff aren't slaves, but if we are going out for a nice time, I just don't want to have to cut through a fog of bad attitude to get there.

Anyway, I think I found a place for Saturday; if I keep my energy up, I'll post an entry!