Demo a Marin bike with Cog Wild

Melanie from Cog Wild sends this along: You are invited to bring your ID and come to Phil’s Trailhead this Thursday & Friday from 3pm to dusk and demo a Marin hardtail, full suspension and free ride bike. Cog Wild will be doing shuttles up Skyliner so you can have … Continue reading

Wednesdays in June at the Blacksmith: Beers

In May, the Blacksmith‘s Wednesday tastings were all Martinis. For June, they’re doing beer: Prepare to achieve beervana. During June, the Blacksmith Restaurant + Bar + Lounge gives brews their due at Wednesday tastings featuring beers from near and far. Join the Blacksmith’s own beer connoisseur’s study group in the … Continue reading

Deschutes County restaurant scores online

This is huge: Deschutes County is now posting restaurant inspection scores online and publicly available. Go here to see them. Every restaurant in the County—even places that are not nominally restaurants, like hotels, or small food counters in other types of establishments—is online, it looks like. You can search by … Continue reading

I loves me some local Iron Chef

Each year at the Bite of Bend, a local "Iron Chef" contest is held, featuring—obviously—local chefs from some of the fine dining establishments in the area. I get a big kick out of this (though I’ve never actually watched an entire match), so naturally I got excited when I saw … Continue reading

Sonic is open already!

In today’s paper, there is a photo and caption indicating that the new Sonic Drive-In up on the north end (the old Tom Tom Diner location) is open already. Cool, but puzzling as I drove by there as recently as Friday, and it sure didn’t look like it was anywhere … Continue reading

Life jacket requirements

With the summer months coming and outdoor activities ramping up, I found this dispatch from the Deschutes County offices (the "Marine Minute") on life jacket requirements interesting: One of the most misunderstood issues regarding boating in Oregon is the life jacket or PFD (personal flotation device) requirement. Most people understand … Continue reading

Two new restaurants

Seems like you can’t go a day around here any more without hearing news of a new restaurant planned, but I notice that two of them actually, you know, opened: The Bungalow Grille and Celina’s Gourmet Latin Bistro. (No, I haven’t been to either one.) The Bungalow Grille is the … Continue reading

Park and Rec off-leash dog meeting

This card came in the mail today, and while I assume a bunch of people probably got it as well, I’m not sure what the Park & Rec‘s selection criteria might be—and I figured this would be something of interest to a lot of people. Yeah, I’m lazy/geeky enough to … Continue reading

Controlled burns this week

No that anyone would necessarily notice because of the weather so far, but there are controlled burns going on this week that the County wanted people to know about. (We’ve seen this happen in the past, when nobody quite knew what was going on.) From the County: Last year, when … Continue reading

Bella Cucina

This weekend we had breakfast at Bella Cucina down in the Old Mill District, and I was suitably impressed to write about it. In fact, Bella Cucina has been down in the Old Mill for quite some time and until Saturday I’d always avoided it. Why? Because of a really … Continue reading