HinesSight

My new favorite jacket: John Aranda's custom fleece

My wife, Laurel, and I love the Harvest Faire in Sisters, Oregon, an annual October delight that we've gone to for many years.

When we co-owned a cabin in Camp Sherman we made sure to schedule the weekend of the Harvest Faire, and we're still doing this now that we co-own a house in nearby Black Butte Ranch.

This year I went to the Harvest Faire on both Saturday and Sunday, while Laurel went only on Saturday. Good decision on my part, since walking by the booths today with our older dog, ZuZu, I took a longer look at John Aranda's handmade fleece jackets, vests, and hats.

There were only two large men's fleece jackets left. One caught my eye immediately, since I'm attracted to orange and black -- as shown by the fact that I was wearing an orange t-shirt and black pants today. 

When I got back to Black Butte Ranch, Laurel and I went for a bike ride that included a stop in the Big Meadow to say hello to the horses grazing away. This was the test drive for my new jacket. It performed marvelously. I really like what John Aranda has wrought.

He told me that the jacket has some of the features that I like in the Patagonia jackets I own. It is windproof, as evidenced by Aranda having me put my hand in one of the two small "phone" pockets in the chest area while he sprayed some cold compressed air over the pocket.

I felt nothing, just as I didn't feel the considerable chilly wind that accompanied our bike ride. This is now my favorite jacket: warm, good looking, four zippered pockets (two large, two small), windproof and water resistant.

I'm going to email Aranda and ask if he could send me photos of other men's fleece jackets, with various color combinations. That's how impressed I am with this jacket: I don't want to wait for the 2020 Harvest Faire to get another one.

(He lives in Gresham, Oregon. The back of his business card says: "Custom Fleece Hats and Jackets. Specializing in Windproof Fleece. Warm and Comfortable. Protection From Bitter Cold Weather. Made in Oregon.")

Here's my other Sisters purchases, a charming small town that I never get tired of. The mug was bought Saturday at the Harvest Faire. The blue color is appealing, as is the perfect 16 ounce size, with just enough room for the half-and-half I put in my coffee.

Every time I visit Paulina Springs Books in Sisters I walk out with at least one book.

I got Richard Dawkin's new book, "Outgrowing God," yesterday. Today I got a sale book, "No Barriers," which describes a blind man's inspiring adventures (such as kayaking the Grand Canyon), and "The Deep History of Ourselves" which has the subtitle  The Four-Billion Year Story of How We Got Conscious Brains.

Well, my brain is grateful for the dedication and creativity of people like John Aranda, the woman who fashioned my new coffee mug, and everybody who works to make Paulina Springs Books such a great bookstore. It changed hands last year, but the quality has remained as high as ever.

My first Pickleball experience was frustratingly fun

My daughter, Celeste, and I had overly optimistic expectations of how great we'd be at Pickleball. Since this racquet sport is sort of a cross between tennis and ping pong, both of which each of us has played a lot of, we figured that Pickleball would be a breeze for us.

Well, we were partly correct. 

It was a breezy day at the Pickleball courts at Black Butte Ranch in central Oregon, where Celeste, me, my granddaughter Evelyn, and Laurel, my wife, tried the sport for the first time.

That enabled me to blame some of my many mistakes on the wind, a skill I learned in competitive tennis -- along with blaming bad shots on a worn-out ball, poor stringing on my racquet, or anything that came to mind other than my lack of skill.

We did have fun.

Pickleball is great exercise, and the small court makes it easy to walk over and retrieve balls that were mishit. At first I had a lot of trouble figuring out how high the ball would bounce, since it is way less bouncy than a tennis ball or ping pong ball.

The reduced bounciness meant that I had to bend my senior citizen knees considerably deeper than I would have had to do playing tennis. I also quickly found that you've got to hit the ball pretty damn hard or it dribbles harmlessly into the net.

Anyway, here's Evelyn's cinematic masterpiece.

At 12 years old she's way more accomplished with an iPhone and its apps than I am. That said, I recommended a horizontal video, but she and Celeste were focused on Instagram, which, being an old guy, I don't use, preferring Facebook. Hence, a vertical video.

My amazing Black Butte Ranch adventure

There are those who talk about doing great things. Then there are those who do great things. I'm pleased to be both "those's." I both do and talk. 

So after canine ZuZu and human Brian explored the far reaches of the mysterious land in the wilds of Black Butte Ranch known as Big Meadow, I was pleased to document our adventure -- just as (well, sort of as) Lewis and Clark chronicled their great journey of discovery.

Behold, and click...