Portland, Oregon Day 6

Betsy cooked up a storm for us on Wednesday night. It was really nice to sit around and have a family dinner. Also, it provesa that American food in the right hands can be cooked to make a delicious and healthy meal.

Sherry and I then headed down to the Rose Garden for the Pistons vs Blazers game. Rich was a legend for giving us his tickets to the game. Any game is great to see for me and I was looking forward to seeing Greg Oden, Brandon Roy, Lemarcus Aldridge, Ben Wallace and Ben Gordon. Detroit now have Big Ben and Little Ben.

I've written a lot about this in the basketball section of my blog so all I'll say is that the Blazers put away the Pistons early, but let the Pistons back in the game. The Pistons began pressuring the abll up the floor in the fourth quarter and this led to bad shots and turnovers from the Blazers. I was appalled that Nate McMillan didn't have any answer for the Pistons pressure defense and how the players didn't sense the need for urgency to re-gain the ascendncy and put the Pistons away for good.

It was good to see a close game though. Sherry and I have been to two other NBA games and both of them were decided eell before the final two minutes. This one it was all still up in the air with a minute to go.

I liked the game ball passing, the Flinstones tom-tom, the Blazers mascot (mountain lion? trailblazer? wildcat?) and the rythmic pulsing at the start of the game.

After the game it, shock! horror!, was raining. We'd done so well to avoid rain for nearly an entire week and it just started to sprinkle as we left the Rose Garden. We cut across the grass which seemed like a good idea at the time. After about 10 paces we soon realised that lawn actually meant swamp. Luckily we made it out of the grass without too much damage.