Dick Jordan

WILL THE CORONAVIRUS DOOM ONE OF OREGON’S “FOUR FOOD GROUPS” TO EXTINCTION?

By Dick Jordan | July 29, 2020

After moving to Eugene in January of 2017 I jokingly told friends from California (and elsewhere) that I had discovered that Oregon had “Four Official Food Groups”:

Beer (locally brewed and served in brewpubs and sold in bottles in stores)
Wine (a shop near my home carries 500-plus Oregon Pinot Noirs)
Coffee (no, Seattle doesn’t “own” coffee bars that serve espresso drinks)
Everything Else

But these days it has become, at least for some residents of Eugene, more difficult to get their RDA (“Recommended Daily Allowance) of lattes and mochas.

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HAWAII CANCELS ITS “ALOHA!” WELCOME

By Dick Jordan | May 21, 2020

(Updated July 13, 2020)

Follow this five-step plan and you, too can “win” a one-year stay on Hawaii with “free room and board.”

First, Pick an island, any island that normally welcomes tourists.

Second, book a flight to and a hotel room on that island.

Third, take the flight.

Fourth, check into the hotel and go to your room.

Fifth, and the most important step: Ignore the mandatory 14-day quarantine, leave your room, get arrested, get fined, go to jail (without passing “Go” and collecting $200) for an entire year.

If you think I’m joking, read on.

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THE DAY MOUNT ST. HELENS BLEW ITS TOP

By Dick Jordan | May 18, 2020

Forty years before, almost to the minute, that this article was posted on Tales Told From The Road, Mount St. Helens, a “dormant” volcano in Southwest Washington, blew its top.

If, like my best friend, Bill, I had still been residing in or around my old hometown of Seattle, perhaps I might have heard the sound as the mountain exploded 100 miles to the south.

If I had been 200 miles to the east of Mount St. Helens in Spokane, Washington, where Bill’s wife hails from, I might have seen the sky turn from day to night at midday as ash from the eruption obscured the sun.

But living 700 road miles to the south in the San Francisco Bay Area the only clue I had that the mountain had been forever altered came from news reports.

I wouldn’t see the carnage to the landscape surrounding Mount St. Helens until years later.

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