September 14th, 2008 - Pendleton, OR - Part V

Lindsay and I have always had a hard time deciding on where to eat so we asked Mike where a good, non-chain place was and he recommended the Casino. I'd eaten at a few casinos before and was pretty impressed with their food, but Lindsay was kind of leery. Eventually, we decided to head there and took off East. Now, as we travel, my wife and I are notorious for getting lost. It's not that we're adverse to asking directions so much as we're really bad at following them and in a way, we kind of enjoy the adventure of it. One time we got lost for around 5 hours, ended up in a different state than we had been in previously and scared our family to death, but the gravel road I took eventually led us back to civilization. This trip was no exception and I managed to blow clean past the Casino and ended up heading back towards Idaho, weaving up a gorgeous mountainside with absolutely no way of getting to the lanes heading the other direction.

However, at the top, we did stop at a viewpoint and I snapped off a few photos in the dying light.

Farmland and desert, not something that springs to mind when people mention Oregon

Somewhere out there is Pendleton, OR....

Or maybe its out this direction....

At any rate I eventually found a way back to the interstate heading West back into Pendleton, upon which we blew clean past the Casino again, around Pendleton and ended up on the opposite end of town. We stopped in for a soda at a gas station and noticed a pizza joint across the street, so we headed there. We ordered a Greek pizza of some sort with grilled feta and chicken and some breadsticks, and decided to head back to the Rugged Country, and book a room. We paid full price and got a single in the basement and settled in to eat some pizza, which turned out to be quite excellent, and discuss our thoughts.

After a lot of talking, we decided that the RCL would not work for us. Not only was it much larger than we wanted, but there wasn't really any easy way to live there, especially with our dogs. We would have needed to commandeer a couple of rooms above the office, and to get the dogs to the backyard would have been an ordeal. We were still very confident that if we took over and converted a few of the rooms to more romantic, specialized rooms, we could attract the bored, stranded locals, and really increase our income, but we were pretty sure that it would be a LOT of work, and that we wouldn't enjoy living there much. However, it was a step that would make us enough money to move on to our dream place, so we didn't discount it completely, We decided to wait and talk to Kris at the bank the next day. The bed was pretty comfy, though I can't say I
"Dreamed Soft" like their logo wanted me to. Their shower was hot too, and while the shower head wasn't at full height, it didn't hit me in the belly button like a lot of other hotels either.

All in all, a pretty full and busy day. We really enjoyed meeting and spending it with Mike, and while we weren't utterly enchanted with Pendleton, we decided we could learn to enjoy it's unique mix of small town & wild west craziness. The Rugged Country Lodge was a great motel, well run, clean, unique in the city, and quite frankly, too good for us as a first attempt. That knowledge would make us less nervous the next morning, as we met the bank people......

September 14th, 2008 - Pendleton, OR - Part IV

The Rugged Country Lodge
With a view of the far cheaper and trashier motel across the street.

Finally, we arrived at The Rugged Country Lodge to tour the place. We met the current caretaker.... whose name I forgot.... for the purposes of this blog, we'll pretend like it was Mary. My wife will undoubtedly remind me of her name after she reads this.... Mary introduced herself and we talked for a while. She told us that the current owners of the RCL were friends of hers, and she was essentially helping them out by running the motel, though it was immediately obvious that she held a great deal of affection for the place, and ran it like a big mother hen.

The exterior of the lodge.... apparently I failed to get any full photos of the exterior of the building

We chatted in a room off of the office, kind of a small lobby area with a couch and chair. Off of it was the "commercial kitchen" featuring some nice appliances, and an ice maker. Mary talked about the cookies they bake, and how it would need to have a second sink installed soon.

The Kitchen

Off of the sitting room, there was also a small bedroom, with a country style quilt. We were sort of surprised to see it off of what was clearly used as an employee gathering area, and it turned out that the area we were in was considered the "manager's quarters".

The Manager's Quarters... such as they were....

This was a bit disappointing, as the RCL was clearly too large to run by ourselves, and if we lived there, we would have employees in and out all of the time, as the access to the kitchen, dining room, restroom and hall were all through there.

The Office. To the rear and left is the entrance to the Manager's Quarters.

Starting our tour, we passed through their small, but efficient office, and headed over to the Rooster Room, where they served breakfast.

Rise and shine in the Rooster Room!

The Rooster room was nice, Mary took a lot of pride in the country decor, and had Cowboy'd it up in honor of the Round Up, which we had just caught the tail end of.

Bandannas and Bananas for breakfast!

The RCL served a pretty nice expanded continental breakfast with waffles, biscuits, and some pretty phenomenal little yogurts.

We toured an example of each of the room types, which were all clean and nice, though a bit generic.

Single w/ Hide-a-bed

They all suffered from what I call PDS (Plopped Down Syndrome) where at some point in the past, they decided each room needed a fridge and microwave, so they bought a bunch and plopped them down in a corner somewhere, without making any effort to make them blend in or look good. A lot of motels suffer from PDS. The rooms did however, feature excellent artwork, prints by Albert Bierstadt, one of my personal favorites, and other western artists.

PDS in action, with added coffeemaker!

They also put a little sprig of (really dry) lavender and some bath salts on each pillow. A nice, if somewhat half hearted gesture.

I did like that the bedspreads were slightly less generic than usual.

The bathrooms were really quite nice too, with real tiles, decent towels and supplies, and pedestal sinks (which Mary and Mike kept raving about, though they seemed to leave Lindsay and I unaffected... maybe it's a Pendleton thing...)

We liked the towel rack, but got tired of seeing it after the 7th room....

They did all have the same fixtures and layouts too, in fact most of the rooms we saw were pretty indistinguishable, apart from the number of beds.



Then came the fun part for me, a tour of the guts of the operation, the stuff normal people never get to see.

A Staircase. Typically used to ascend or descend from one floor to another. Also for stumbling down while drunk.

Their laundry room was really quite nice, and very "large hotel" designed with a full industrial washer, separate folding room and a nice cleaning supply system. Frankly, this was pretty daunting for us, and one of the first signs that this place was a lot larger scale than we really wanted.

Yikes. Intimidating washing machine alert!

The backyard was pretty generic, and barely qualified as a yard at all, more just a strip behind the building, but had some potential for the dogs and a little barbecue.

Potential seen, but not too thrilling.

After touring the facility, we sat with Mary and chatted for quite a while, about her history, the RCL, hospitality in general and Pendleton. It was actually a really great talk, we learned a few things, and it was really kind of fun to watch Mary and Mike talk, as both ran very different types of hospitality businesses in town, one had been doing it for quite a while, and the other was just starting. It was cool to see the way their different outlooks affected their opinion of their jobs and the city. After a while, we decided it was time to get going. We thanked Mary, asked her about a few good places to eat, and told her we might be back for a room later that evening. We headed back to Mike's, told him we'd call the next day, and headed into Pendleton to experience the city's post-rodeo hospitality, find some grub, and discuss what we thought about the Rugged Country Lodge....

Book Review - THE WOOD NYMPH AND THE CRANKY SAINT by C. Dale Brittain

The Wood Nymph & The Cranky Saint by C. Dale Brittain
1993, 320pgs

I love the title to this book. My last review was supposed to be a brief one, and I ended up rambling, so I'll make this one short instead. The somewhat bumbling court magician of Yurt, Daimbert manages to get into all sorts of adventures in this one, with an enchanted grove, a consecrated toe, big ol' magic Jackalopes and more! It's a really fun book, moves quickly, and manages to tell a rousing and humorous story without ever resorting to slapstick.

Recommended!

8/10

Next Up: Free Fall by Robert Crais

New Logo is GO!

Ahhh.......

That's more like it!

Man, I love old motel signs, and lest someone thinks this is where we hope to be working, as my wife fears, it's not. The neon for the word "vacancy" doesn't work on the place we're looking at.

Updating... Please Stand By....

Uhh, disregard the rather crappy appearance of the blog and it's assorted colored words, I'm in the process of playing with the HTML, and got bored and went to bed.... Maybe I'll fix it tomorrow.

Book Review - HOCUS CROAKUS by Mary Daheim

Hocus Croakus by Mary Daheim
2004, 384pgs

Growing up, my family used to take a lot of Road Trips. We weren't well off, and it was the closest thing we had to a real vacation, so every once in a while, we'd take off, car loaded, and explore the mountains of southeastern Idaho. There would be rolling hills and dangerous crags, deer, elk, moose, chipmunks and Sasquatches, hairpin turns and dangerous descents.... I assume. I always had my nose buried in a book. Road trips were a time for me to block the world out, crack a library book and read to my hearts content, stopping for potty breaks (A Marley family tradition) and grub. Since I've gotten married, most of that has stopped. My wife hates to drive, and will only drive my element when forced, so all of the driving on our trips has fallen to me. I've learned to find a special enjoyment from these trips too, daydreaming about the landscape and watching the fellow vehicles, but I still miss reading in the back seat of a car as it rumbles along the road. That was why this recent trip to Bozeman was kind of exciting for me. My father in law, realizing that I owned the only safe and reliable four wheel drive vehicle for the still snowy stretches of Montana between the two of us, asked if he could drive it to the wedding, allowing me to ride in the back. I agreed, naturally. Not only would this let me relax and read, but it would give us my car while we were in Bozeman (Which turned out to be a real boon) and it would also be the first time I'd actually ridden in the back seat of my car! Honda Elements are kind of unusual beasts to that end, I discovered. Their back seats, which I usually have removed to accommodate my dogs, are kind of stadium style seats. Which was pretty cool for watching the road, as we could look right over the tops of the front seats (when my mother in law didn't have the visor down, one of my inexplicable pet peeves...) and while immobile, offered a pretty ample amount of leg and head room. I did notice pretty quickly though, that the space between the seat and the floor was smaller than usual, causing my knees to get kind of sore after a while...


Anyway, this gave me a great chance to read a few books on the 5 hour drive there and back.

The first book I chose was one I picked up at the used book store here in town, Circle C Books, while I was waiting for my wife to get her hair cut across the street the day before. I decided to buy it for a couple of reasons; there was a frog and witty title on the cover, implying magic, something I love reading about, it was labeled "A bed-and-breakfast mystery" and being interested in the career that I am, made it appealing, and I couldn't really find much of anything else, and I always feel bad wandering around in a used book store for a while without doing anything but petting the dog that lives there.

The idea of a bed and breakfast mystery series of books sounded like a GREAT hook, and I was excited to see what it was like. Unfortunately, I happened to pick one from the series that took place while the B&B was closed, and the main characters were on vacation in an Indian Reservation casino. The main character, the ridiculously named JUDITH MCMONIGLE FLYNN, is the sixty year old owner of a B&B and apparently has a knack for finding dead bodies. Essentially Jessica Fletcher of the hospitality industry. Along with her are her husband, a former detective, his annoying cousin and her OCD hubby, and their even more obnoxious mothers. Soon enough, a member of the magic act dies, and they're all trying to solve the mystery, prevent further deaths, deal with B&B repairs, and winning unrealistically often at the casino games. Honestly, I had a hard time finishing this book. I read 2 others, skimmed a non fiction book and a couple of magazines after this one in less time. While I think I'll check out some other books in the series, I found the characters really hard to enjoy, and some of the twists so contrived that at one point I found myself groaning and saying "Oh brother" loud enough to make my wife think something was wrong. Maybe it was the age of the characters, or the completely unnecessary addition of the mothers, but every time I started getting into the story, something silly would happen, and I'd get distracted and watch the scenery outside of the car instead of reading.

In my defense, the view outside the window really was quite stunning.....

At any rate, it was an okay read, but probably something I'll resell nonetheless.

3/10

Next: The Wood Nymph & The Cranky Saint by C. Dale Brittain

September 14th, 2008 - Pendleton, OR - Part III

Getting back on track here...


Before heading to the Rugged Country, Mike took us on a brief tour around the historic section of houses by his, dishing the inside dirt on what they cost, what improvements had been done, which ones were in a sad state of disrepair, before we headed to an alternate property to look at. He prefaced it by saying that it most likely wouldn't work for what we wanted, but it was an unusual structure, and he thought we might like to see it. Obviously, Mike had gotten the wholly accurate impression that we like odd things and challenges.

He brought us to this building, a somewhat unassuming office building on a corner just a few blocks from the main drag.
From the outside, it was pretty average looking, just a few offices along the street, and a couple of garage bays on the side. Where it got intriguing was from the inside. The entire ground floor, with the exception of the offices along the street was an underground style parking garage.

Over to the side there were two staircases as well, one leading into the depths of a basement area, which we didn't explore unfortunately, and one leading upwards, to an open courtyard surrounded by offices that opened into it. It was kind of a strange setup, but it had kind of a cool feel to it, like you were in some strange urban secret garden.

With a lot of work, and we mean a LOT of work, we could have possibly transformed the place into a neat little motel & wedding site, with a downstairs reception hall/dance floor, a small rooftop garden, and few rental suites. We decided it wasn't worth the effort unless we stumbled across the place for a song, and as no one seemed to be serenading us, we moved on to the Rugged Country. A fun little place nonetheless!

Home From The Frigid North

Marissa & Jason

Home again, home again, jiggity-jig. That was an interesting trip! My Sister-in-law's wedding was simply lovely, though it had it's fair share of excitement and trials. My personal trial came, as I'd feared, from the lighting of the site. I'll likely get into that fiasco later, for now, I've got a tremendous number of images to sort through and find some gems for the happy couple when they return from Cancun. (Lucky Dogs...)

Book Review - NOTES FROM A SMALL ISLAND by Bill Bryson

Notes From A Small Island by Bill Bryson
1997, 324pgs.

I love books about other places. Maybe it's just the need to get away from the city I've lived in for most of my life, or some hidden wanderlust within, but I've always loved reading books about other places, whether they were dry, travel guides, or novels with vivid descriptions of the locales, or books like this, where the author regales you with tales from their travels. I first read Bill Bryson a few years ago while I was living in Missoula, MT. I'd found one of his books, A Walk In The Woods, in an excellent used book store. Bryson has a talent for writing about the most mundane things, like changing his boot laces, and makes them seem worth reading about. His adventures are never particularly adventurous, but he seems like the kind of person you'd love to take a hike with. (If you could keep up, the fellow knows his walks!)

In Notes From A Small Island, Bryson takes one last trip around Britain before moving back to the United States. He travels in a pretty large loop, taking some crazy side trips, lots of long walks, and drinks more than a few beers as well. He has a talent for finding bad restaurants worse hotels, and constantly gets caught in the rain. I really enjoyed Notes, it gave a great picture of the strange little world across the sea, their traditions, how some are fading, and how some will survive regardless of time. It's a quick read, and while some people will likely come away from it wanting to avoid Britain and it's dreary little villages, lonely pubs, erratic transportation, and quiant outlook on things, I loved the fact that he avoided most of the touristy things in the country, and focused on the little out of the way places. Sometimes I think trips would all be better if we avoided the given attractions and found our own magic.

8/10

Next - The Wood Nymph & The Cranky Saint by C. Dale Brittain

Road To Bozeman

Our bags are packed, my brother has the ominous duty of staying with our pouty dogs, and we leave tomorrow for Bozeman, and the wedding of Marissa, Lindsay's sister! It should be an interesting experience. She is getting married in a small office building, with some unusual angles and lighting, and as photographer, it should be a fun challenge.

Some of my photography supplies for the trip

September 14th, 2008 - Pendleton, OR - Part II

Arriving in the neighborhood a bit early, we drove around the Riverwalk area, admiring all of the old homes. Nearly every building in the neighborhood had a lot of character, we wanted to barge in and tour all of them. Luckily, a few minutes later, at Mike's, we got to do just that.
Mike's house was amazing. Situated on the corner, the B&B has a great view of the downtown, and a spacious wrap around porch. We did run into a bit of consternation at his door however, unsure of the typical procedure when visiting a bed and breakfast. It's someones house, but also a business. Do you waltz on in, or ring the doorbell? After a bit of discussion, we decided to ring. We also made a note that if we ever have a B&B, to have some sort of sign or plaque on the door informing guests of our preferences, maybe a nice plaque with "Come on in!" on one side and "Please Ring" on the other, or something. At any rate, Mike met us at the door, and introduced us to his wife, their adorable dog Charlie, and himself.

It's interesting how many people we've met online or over the phone since we started this quest, and how most of them differ in person from their online and phone personas. As I'm sure it's a shock to people meeting us for the first time in person. I'm 30, but look closer to 25 or 26, and my wife looks significantly younger than that. I'm also very wordy when I "talk" online, but after years of running phone surveys during high school, I despise the phone, and I'm typically quite reserved on the phone unless I know the person well. However, Mike was pretty much exactly how we'd pictured him, very friendly and smart. He looked like a Math Teacher/Realtor/B&B Owner would look, if you can believe it.

After introductions and some dog cuddles, he gave us a tour of his excellent home. Built in 1912 by Gustav Stickley, Mike has spent a lot of time slowly renovating and renewing the place. He tore literally tons of old shingles off of the roof, exposing cool old tin signs and shingles from the original construction, and is slowly working to restore all of the old woodwork and decor from the era. He essentially runs the B&B "As an excuse for living in an amazing home" and when he's done working on it, he'll certainly have it! The upper floor boasts 4 bedrooms, 2 baths and a couple of older nooks and crannies, like a linen closet. Each of his rooms are named after Oregon rivers, and following suit, he cheekily named the bathrooms after rivers too, calling them the "Powder River" and the "John Day River" I think this is hilarious. His wife and he sleep in the master bed on the main floor, and he proudly showed off the perfect hardwoods in the floor and the great decor, followed by his misadventures installing the bath next to the bedroom. He gave us a tour of the dining room and kitchen, their next major project, outlining his plans to gut it of the flowery 60's details and adding some sleek new appliances. He seemed pretty excited about the B&B, having just experienced his first Round-Up as proprietors, and he told us some great stories about his guests. We really enjoyed his tour, and loved his attitude about his business, and his dedication to restoring the great old house he lives in.

After jabbering for a while and admiring the leaded windows that looked out over the porch (which I was quite jealous of) we realized the time and left for the motel, along with a couple of other places he wanted to show us.

Book Review - EXTREME ODDS by Rick Hanson

Extreme Odds by Rick Hanson
1998, 256pgs

Rick Hanson's Adam McCleet Mysteries, of which this is the fifth, are an interesting little series. Adam McCleet is a retired police detective in his late forties working at his second career as a semi-famous sculptor, primarily of women riding on sea life. He's dating the gorgeous gallery owner, has a huge number of eccentric friends and the worst sister in the world, Margot. Adam also has a talent for getting into wacky, danger-ridden capers. Extreme Odds is the story of the nation of Bob, formerly an Indian sovereign nation in Oregon, where Adam's friend has created what he thinks will become a moneymaking, free love, free world oasis. Naturally, his friend has started to create it by inviting in a polygamist cult, a paramilitary group, a nympho pot grower, and started building a casino. After a series of "accidents" Adam finds himself stuck in the middle as unofficial Sheriff of Bob, and trying to solve a murder while dealing with encroaching feds, baby births, mystery men, bombs, funny money and everything else Hanson can throw at his poor hero. Naturally, just as things couldn't get worse Margot shows up!

The Adam McCleet series has always been a fun, lighthearted series. They're pretty short, and have enough twists and turns to keep you entertained for a while. I found myself rolling my eyes at some of the characters in this book a little more than in previous, but it was still a fun installment. They're very much along the lines of a Tim Dorsey or Dave Barry novel, which isn't a bad thing. Hanson's stories are based in Oregon too, which is a very welcome change from most of the other wacky crime novelists out there, who usually base their books in Florida, or California. It's good to know there's crazies everywhere!

6/10

Now Reading - Notes from a small island by Bill Bryson

September 14th, 2008 - Pendleton, OR

Pendleton, OR

As one drives to Pendleton, OR. you can't help wonder at the work it took for people to travel here and establish cities. The sheer distance between places has always been pretty awe inspiring to me, and between Pocatello and Pendleton, there's a lot of nothing punctuated by the rare scrub brush or farm. (Including a huge tree farm, that has always intrigued Lindsay and I, both what the trees are used for, and how hypnotic they are to drive past, all the same sized trees in perfect rows...) There's one section of the road, just before you reach the Indian reservation outside of Pendleton where the road circles up and down a mountain, and at the top, there's a little lookout station, that gives you a view of the valley below. I always get nostalgic there, wondering what it was like before "civilization" came to the west.


Pendleton is a very charming little western city. The downtown area in particular is quite nice, with gorgeous old houses and big brick buildings along the main street. One of the things we really like about Pendleton is the way they celebrate their history. Their underground tours, something I'll have to do a separate post on sometime is a singular pleasure, and something I wish Pocatello, with similar tunnels and history would have embraced.

As we arrived in Pendleton, we decided to cruise past it, and check out the Rodeo City Motel, one of the places for sale that we considered looking at.

The Rodeo City Motel

To put it mildly, The Rodeo City was a dump. Apart from it's name, which I found clever, there were no redeeming qualities about the place whatsoever. Broken down cars, beer bottles, and a clientele that quite frankly, were creepy! Our first sign that Mike was looking out for our best interests here in Pendleton.

A Bed & Breakfast/Catering service (whose name I've forgotten...)

After we fled in terror from the Rodeo City, we spent a very pleasant morning just driving casually around Pendleton.

One thing we love about Pendleton is the abundant old churches. While my wife and I aren't big church goers, we love old buildings, and between the houses by the river and the churches scattered across the area, we had plenty to enjoy.

We arrived after the last day of the Round-Up, and Pendleton was just starting to slowly empty out, and everywhere we looked there were signs of the population-tripling crowd they get everywhere. It was interesting to see that while some businesses obviously capitalized on the rodeo, some took that opportunity to flee the town, closing up shop and going fishing for the week rather than deal with the insanity.

Pendleton's Charming downtown.


Their faux wooden sidewalks

Around 1, we headed to Mike's house, and Bed & Breakfast, to meet him before visiting the locations he'd chosen. While we weren't overly optimistic about Pendleton, and our chances there, we were looking forward to looking at the Rugged Country, and chatting with Mike, who
seemed like a very friendly and enjoyable person.

If you look closely, you can see Mike's B&B just to the left of the pink house, another B&B in Pendleton.

Our plans for the Rugged Country Part 2

After evaluating the other hotels and motels in Pendleton, we decided one way for us to stand out, was to remodel a few of the rooms, adding some luxurious and romantic touches, like jacuzzi tubs, king sized beds, and offering gift baskets and deals for honeymoons and anniversaries. We also planned to theme the rooms, keeping with the western decor already in the rooms, but making the romantic rooms more immersive and fun. We really wanted to get the locals in. There isn't much else to do in Pendleton, and we knew that if we could get the locals to consider us a vacation type of escape, that our numbers would be helped dramatically.

We also redesigned the logo dramatically, from this:
To something simpler, looking to evoke the bed and breakfast feel they were aiming for, as well as the classier inns of Europe with the simple silhouette.
We drew up the entire business plan and logo in three days, printing it the evening before we left for Pendleton. It was pretty brief, but after speaking with Kris one last time, we felt it was sufficient, she mostly wanted to get an idea of what we were hoping to do with the place, and how enthusiastic we were. After the last trip, we went into this one with a bit more trepidation, looking at the drive as more of a vacation, and planning to enjoy the city more. We also brought a pile of printouts of other potential places in Oregon and Washington to thumb through. We left for Pendleton OR, on September 14th, just over a month after our breakdown of talks in Grayland.

Book Review - A BAD SPELL IN YURT by C. Dale Brittain

A Bad Spell In Yurt by C. Dale Brittain
1991, 314 pgs

When I was younger, I read voraciously. I still read a lot, and quite quickly, but when I was a kid, I'd tear through stacks of books at a time. I'd either have a dozen books checked out of the library, or a huge fine from forgetting to take 'em back, and I read almost exclusively fantasy novels. The very rare sci-fi would slip in, and I read a lot of non-fiction about places I wanted to visit, but typically, unless it had a wizard or dragon on the cover, it never touched my pile. More recently, I've branched out a lot, reading a lot of detective novels, some horror, fiction, pretty much anything I can get my hands on is fair game now. All the same, I still have a great deal of fondness for light fantasy novels. One of the first "Grown-up" books I read was the Spell Of The Chameleon, by Piers Anthony, and while I quickly soured on his Xanth novels, I found two light fantasy authors I really liked, Lawrence Watt-Evans (My favorite author to this day) and C Dale. Brittain. Both of them wrote light hearted fantasy romps, usually with a mildly incompetent main character, and a bright view on the world. You always had a pretty good idea that they'd win the day, find their fortune, meet a few misfit friends and get the girl. I still have a soft spot for that. With that in mind, I snagged a couple of my light fantasy novels and added them to my reading pile that is primarily horror and detective novels to revisit.

I'm glad I did. A Bad Spell In Yurt tells the tale of Daimbert, a recent graduate from the wizard's school, and one who barely graduated by the hem of his robe. He managed to stumble into a position of Royal Wizard in the tiny kingdom of Yurt, where he hopes to lay low, make some friends, practice as little magic as needed and eat some mighty fine crullers. As luck would have it, there's some dark stuff going on in the kingdom and the surprisingly resourceful wizard is soon contending with dragons, illusions, love potions, demons, youth spells and telephones! Obviously, this isn't life altering reading, but it's an incredible amount of fun, and I really like the dynamic Brittain creates between the wizard and the chaplain of the kingdom, it's not something you often see in fantasy novels. Yurt is also written to sound an awful lot like a kingdom I'd like to be Royal Wizard for. I could think of worse jobs!

8/10

Now Reading - Extreme Odds by Rick Hanson

UPDATE! - A Bad Spell In Yurt is now available free from C. Dale Brittain's home page Here. Check it out!

Our plans for the Rugged Country Part 1

Wanting to do this up right, we began researching the history of the Rugged Country Lodge, its history as a business and its place in Pendleton as a hospitality business. In the 50's, when the building was erected, it was known as the Pioneer Motel, and later as the Budget Inn. As of the late nineties, the building was badly run down, and even worse run, soon to be repossessed. After holding on to the distressed motel for a while, the Pendleton Community Bank eventually gave the property to the current owners, who then set about transforming it into what is now known as the Rugged Country. Their vision was to create a "Motel that thinks like a bed & breakfast" with a combination of B&B style amenities and attitude and motel prices and rooms.

After discussing it a bit with Mike, we decided to contact the Community Bank, the very same that owned the property until 2003, and ask about the likelihood of financing. I spoke with an extremely friendly woman there named (Ironically,) Kris, and after a few conversations during which we described ourselves and our vision for the motel, she was very positive about our chances of securing financing. We were extremely up front with her, letting her know that we had virtually nothing but our experience and enthusiasm to offer, but she still seemed quite confident. She did request a full business plan, something we could bring to show the financial aid people that she was pulling in to help. We thought this was a great idea. We'd already done pretty elaborate plans for our own benefit before, but never in a formal capacity, and while we didn't have a lot of time, we were excited about the idea of our plans out on paper for the financial people to see, but to also use as a guide for ourselves.

The first thing we did was evaluate the business, and where it sat in the food chain in Pendleton. Pendleton is an interesting town, essentially a dusty valley in the middle of nowhere, with a freeway cutting through it. However, it does have a lot of interesting benefits too. There is a prison there, which, while some may consider a real negative, motels see a pretty steady stream of visitors from it. There's also an Indian casino just out of town, a few tourist style attractions, and the yearly Round-Up Rodeo, a huge rompin' stompin' blowout, that fills the city to 3 times the capacity every year for a week. It also seems to be just the right amount of distance from a lot of bigger cities to be a great place to stop for the night. For a city of 16,000, they have a lot of lodging establishments, close to 20, and that's discounting the RV parks, campgrounds, and the fact that during Round-Up, people rent vacant lots, parking lots, schoolyards, and the legit hotels raise prices up to 150%. The Rugged Country sat at a pretty good place, just below the bigger chains, but more respected than any of the seedier motels in the city.

Naturally, we didn't want to walk into something that was perfect, and there were some definite places to improve. While the B&B shtick was great, and some of it seemed genuine and lovely, some of the aspects of it were a little over the top to the point of being almost creepy, primarily the large amounts of rambling personal accounts from the owner, and the odd Country Chic signs in the hallways. We also disliked the clip art style logo of a cowboy on a horse in the air in front of some trees in front of a mountain. Personally, I thought it looked too busy, and from a distance was really hard to identify. We also needed to find a way to make some money when there wasn't a huge rodeo in town.

Looking Towards Pendleton

Knowing the problems we'd experienced with the Realtor in Grayland, Jared took a little bit of time before deciding on our contact in Pendleton, finally deciding on a gentleman named Matt.

Mike is a great guy, who not only works a Realtor, but also teaches math and runs his own Bed & Breakfast in Pendleton At first this worried us, wondering whether it would be a good idea to go with someone that would essentially be our competition if we got a place there. Turns out the opposite was true, and having someone like him as our guide was spectacular. Of the three properties available that we were interested in, Matt helped us eliminate 2 offhand. One was pretty far out of town, and while on paper it l0ooked like it might have possibilities, he assured us that once we drove past it, we'd see why we didn't want it. The other we vetoed to an extent, partially because it had too many rooms, but also because it had a pool, something neither of is wanted to deal with.

The other property, The Rugged Country Inn, looked great though, and we started working on seeing the property. Curiously, my wife and I had stayed there the year before, on a trip down highway 101 with my family. The most vivid thing we remember about the Rugged Country was that it had a folder in the room that in addition to outlining the city and food, also had a bit of "homestyle" history of the place, and we remember at the time that it seemed to be a little too detailed and kind of close to the edge of creepy. Apart from that, we remembered the Rugged Country as being a nice place, and according to the listing, it was about the right size, and had an owner's quarters on the property. We asked Matt to look into viewing it, while we looked a little into financing, this time deciding to play it smart, and have some assurances of a real thing before diving in. We hoped....

Book Review - FEAR NOTHING by Dean Koontz

Fear Nothing by Dean Koontz
1998, 432 pgs

I've only read two previous Koontz books, and after both, I came away wondering, as I do so many other mainstream popular authors, what the big to-do was. The writing seemed pretty generic and sometimes drowned in its own sense of self importance, and the stories were pretty bad, full of gross out moments for no reason, and unlikeable characters. Luckily, Fear Nothing was much, much better. It tells the story of Christopher Snow, a 20 something man living in the city of Moonlight Bay, California. Snow has a disease called xeroderma pigmentosum, which makes him hyper sensitive to light, even something like a bright light bulb potentially causing cancer in his easily susceptible body. As a result, he lives in the dark, leaving the house only at night, and even then bundling up in long sleeves, sunglasses and sunscreen. Chris' father has just passed away, and as he leaves the hospital, things begin to go hinky. His father's body is switched by mysterious individuals in the hospital basement, trading it for that of a transient, one that was killed violently, it's eyes ripped from their sockets. Accidentally seeing this switch, Snow begins on a dangerous and bizarre journey, his formerly safe and comfortable life crumbling around him in the darkness of the night.

To say more of the plot would give things away, but there are shades of Stephen King's "The Fog" Michael Crichton's "Congo," Lawrence Watt-Evans' "The Nightmare People," and Invasion Of The Body Snatchers throughout the book. I enjoyed it. It was spooky and kind of crazy, with a great sense of paranoia. Koontz still writes with some of the self importance that bugged me about his previous books I've read, and where this book is supposed to be written by the protagonist makes him seem kind of pretentious, but it didn't bother me as much here. This would be a great book to read at 3am with the doors locked and a storm rattling the windows outside.

7/10

Now Reading - A Bad Spell In Yurt by C. Dale Brittain

New Accesories

With my sister-in-law Marissa's upcoming nuptials as an excuse, I managed to convince myself that I needed to buy a decent tripod for taking the photos. While I didn't get anything top of the line, I did find a nice, full sized one with an extra camera mount and a quick change, so it should be pretty useful on the 31st.

Also, after our recent trip to Washington, I managed to temporarily (I hope...) misplace the charger to my camera battery. So far semi-panicked searching hasn't turned it up, so I had to buy a new one of those too. Luckily, I found a company online selling a compatible charger that has a car adapter in addition to the wall plugs, which will come in quite handy! I also picked up 2 extra batteries for my Digital.

These should serve me well, provided I don't forget them and my cameras at home!

Forging Ahead

Somewhat despondent about the failure of the Sea Spray attempt, we licked our wounds for a few days, then jumped back on the horse. On the way to the coast, we'd already compiled a list of a few other motels and hotels that looked promising, most along the coast of WA and OR, as well as a few on the border between the two.

In Pendleton, OR, there were three motels for sale. We'd been to Pendleton before, and stayed the night there a couple of times, it was about as far off from a beach related area as it gets, being far more mountainous and dry. In fact, the more we looked into Pendleton, the more it began looking similar to our hometown, Pocatello. Situated in the valley, famous for it's yearly rodeo, small population, a nearby Indian reservation and casino, interstate running through it... Really the major initial difference we saw was the smaller number of churches, and rather than hiding away and denying their western past to an extent, Pendleton embraced it; running an amazing underground tour, paving the sidewalks to look like slatted boards, they even run a slogan in the city stating "Welcome to where the real west lives!" Certainly not what we were initially envisioning when we started this, but we thought it would be worth a look!

The next day, we contacted our trusty Realtor Jared and asked him to find us a Realtor in Pendleton.

The Return Home, The Bid, and Lessons Learned.

Soon after returning home, we called our Realtor to let her know how excited about the place we were. We'd spent a large portion of the return trip discussing the potential and our plans for the Sea Spray, and we were anxious to get the wheels turning. However, before we could even begin with that, we still needed that ROUS, the financials. Mabel said she was on it, and would get back with us soon. A few days later, after no word, we called her again. She told us that she was leaving on vacation in couple of days, but should have something before then. Finally, one day before she left, we received an email of sorts, containing some fairly hard to decipher tax forms from the last few years, along with an explanation that it was all they could find, and was likely all that we would ever find. Without any occupancy data, and with just the tax forms, it was worse than we'd feared. We had pretty firm assurances that they were making significantly more than filed for, and in fact, from what I could figure, the only income reported was what had been run on credit cards, no cash or check income. Either way, it did us no good. If we were going to be able to get a loan for the place, it would have to be for a good chunk less than they were asking. We still thought it was a possibility though, as we were pretty naive about certain things then, and called her to tell her we wanted to bid. Mabel convinced us to wait until she returned from her vacation; the place had been on the market for over a year, and no one was buying now anyway. We (somewhat grudgingly) agreed to wait.

In the meantime, I was selected for a hard fought promotion at work, and left for a training weekend and classes in Salt Lake City, UT. The whole time I was there, my mornings were spent in conferences and classes, and my evenings were spent obsessing over our bid and our future.

A week later, when Mabel returned from her vacation, we placed a bid, at a significantly lower price than they were asking, but one that we felt was fair based off of the income that had been provided. We heard nothing back from our Realtor, and when we called to check up on it a couple of days later, she said that she still hadn't written the bid up and delivered it, she needed to talk to the listing Realtor and get some forms, but she'd get on it that night. By this point we were pretty fed up with delays, but we sat waiting, hoping desperately that she would get back to us.

The next day, we got a call from Mabel. That morning, when she was calling the listing agent to ask her what other papers were needed, the listing agent informed her that the Sea Spray Motel had received a bid, and the owners accepted. Our bid had never even been written up or presented. We were utterly crushed.

We had spent months at this point working towards the Sea Spray, fighting with Realtors and curmudgeonly caretakers, our hopes always lifted by the vision we were creating for the future,and that short phone conversation undid all of it.




This was our first real brush with finding a motel, and we learned a LOT from it, all of which has left us in good stead, but they were lessons that hit below the belt a lot of the time.

What we learned from the Sea Spray Motel Attempt:

1 - You must always be happy with your Realtor, and always be 100% honest with them, as they should be with you. Our current Realtor here in Pocatello, Jared Wilks (one of the few people I'll use the real name for here, and solely because he's been such a true help that he deserves to be recognised) told us that when we first contacted him about our worries with Mabel. He explained that his company prided themselves on being the easiest to fire Realtors around, because they plan to be so good that you wont need to, but also because you should do it if needed. We didn't, and we regret that more than anything. From the first contact with Mabel, we sensed that she wasn't thrilled about working with us, and that she may not know everything she needed for a commercial transaction like the motel. That should have been enough of a sign.

2. Getting answers and responses should be easy and prompt. It sometimes took us days to get an answer to a simple question, if we ever had it answered. We should have immediately smelled ROUS in the room when they said they couldn't find the occupancy data. Mabel was also notoriously hard to get ahold of in fact, there were times we had to actually contact the owners and the listing agents instead. That shouldn't have ever happened.

3. Never dive without all of the answers. We should never have visited the property without the numbers. That was a big, dumb mistake, and should have been obvious.

4. Use your resources. Here in Pocatello, we have a few select individuals who are smart, successful, friendly, and willing to help, amongst them, Jared, and we underutilized them all.

5. Be cautious and certain, but jump as soon as you are certain. We had been told by Mabel that someone else was looking at the property too, but she followed it with a disclaimer that the listing agent claimed that all of the time, so we kind of ignored the possibility. We'll kick ourselves for not being pushy in regards to the bid and the time frame of it for the rest of our lives. Would it have made a difference? Probably not, but who knows?

6. Don't assume that you can create something from nothing. For every ROUS we saw in the motel, we quickly rationalized it away with a brilliant plan for overcoming it. I think that if we'd really sat down and written out all of the things we would have needed to do to make it what we were picturing, we would have quickly become overwhelmed.

7. Never EVER fall in love with a place before the last paper is signed and it's official. Nearly all of these problems we hit could have been avoided or easily overcome if we'd followed this cardinal rule. We were in love with this place before we'd clicked through all of the photos on the initial listing view. Hell, we are still in love with the place now, after we've sat and re-evaluated all of the negatives there were, and what a load of work it would have been. There's nothing wrong with being in love with a place.... eventually, but it's got to be worth it, and it's got to be yours to love. Otherwise it's just too difficult when you realize you fell in love with what it could be, and that you'll never have the chance to make it that.

8. If you do make mistakes, learn from them. This is one we have taken to heart like nothing else. We still make a lot of mistakes in our quest, but for every one, afterwards we sit and discuss where the misstep was, whether it was avoidable, and what we'll do next time. Eventually, we will get it all right, all at the same time, and it will be glorious, my friends!

Book Review - FAT TUESDAY by Sandra Brown

Fat Tuesday by Sandra Brown

1997, 458pgs

Burke Basile is a pretty messed up dude. He's a burnt-out detective that's almost out of a job, lost a wife to a gym teacher, accidentally killed his partner, been pushed away from his partner's children and friends, and has been saddled with a new, obnoxious partner. About the only thing he's got going for him is that he sports a mighty fine moustache. Basile blames all of this but the moustache to a certain extent on Pinkie Duvall, a nefarious and dapper Defense Attorney/Crime Lord, (one of the only times you'll ever see that combination, by the way). Pinkie was in charge of the man that got his partner killed, and has his pinkies in everything else too, from prostitution, to drugs, to extortion. Basile decides the fellow needs to be taught a lesson, at any cost, and kidnaps Pinkie's disturbed but beautiful wife in a complicated plan that he clearly didn't think through involving priests, rednecks, gay flashers, Cajuns, fishing, gators, guns, a naked upper lip, and handcuffs. Naturally, some time alone in a fishing cabin with the captivatingly flawed beauty queen leads Basile to start thinking about more than just revenge, and soon he finds himself fighting to defeat the well armed, well connected, well heeled, orchid growing, killer attorney for the both of them!

Sandra Brown has written over 60 books, starting primarily as a romance author and evolving into an author of "thrillers" and this novel definitely shows a little bit of both types of books. Despite being a well respected, strictly law-abiding veteran detective in New Orleans, Burke is also apparently irresistible to women, both with and without his moustache! Now, I'm certainly not saying that one couldn't live in N'Awlins and have been a cop for some years without keeping oneself in shape and attractive to the opposite sex, but I am saying that I've never really met someone who has, that's all. Brown seems to find it necessary to cram as many features and quirks into a character as possible, making them all seem so outlandish that you can't help but have a good time reading about them, from the gay-aspiring actor-ex-con-wimpy-public exposing-from a rich family-accomplice, to Burke's brother, who only has a couple of pages, but still has a couple of memorable quirks and you can't help but wonder what's going to pop up next!

The book starts pretty strong, with a good basis for why Burke hates Pinkie so much, and certainly makes you feel like Pinkie deserves what he's obviously got coming. The abduction of Pinkie's wife, Remy (yes, that's her real name... ) is hilarious, complete with costumes and elaborate scams and angry homophobic hillbillies. Unfortunately, once the two reach his remote swampbound cabin, things start to get a little romance novel-ish, and they inevitably find feelings for each other and lose clothes for each other as well. The ending was also pretty disappointing to me, it seemed like there was a couple of chapters missing, and that others had been crammed into one without any real sense of reason. While the first half was drawn out and clear, the last half had about a dozen double crosses and nearly as many dropped or ignored plot points. All the same, it ended good, if utterly predictably, and it was a fun read. I'll probably check out some of Sandra Brown's other books, especially if they're as cheap as I got this one.

6/10

Additionally, I'd like to share a second opinion, written in pencil on the first page of my copy of the book, by the mysterious B. Olsen:

That's right - "Very good!"

Now Reading - Fear Nothing by Dean Koontz (I don't have a very high opinion of Koontz, and this one seems pretty... unlikeable so far, so it may not get finished....)