Back From Bend

A group of us went to our conference meeting in Bend, Oregon, this past weekend. Elaine and I, along with one of our members named Rob, left Thursday morning. Eleven hours later, we pulled into the hotel parking lot. I love road trips, but that was a long one. I was grateful to have had some company with me.

I had been to—or rather, through—Bend once before, on my way to teach at Black Sheep Gathering in Eugene, but that was over 20 years ago. Bend has changed quite a bit since then. It has become quite the popular place and its population has exploded. As the person doing the driving, I had a lot of trouble there, and it wasn’t until we left that I figured out why.

Bend is full of roundabouts. Almost every intersection is a roundabout. I understand that roundabouts do a better job of routing traffic than four-way stops. I get that. The five-mile trip from our hotel to the meeting site included close to a dozen roundabouts, however, and it was agonizing. As we were leaving Bend yesterday and back out on the open road, it dawned on me that I was getting motion sickness driving around all those roundabouts. Temporary and mild motion sickness, yes, but enough to be noticeable. I could never live in a place like that.

Elaine and I met up with our friend Beth, from Boise, on Friday morning. The three of us prepared four comforters for tying:

These were set up in the back of the meeting space so that people could work on them during the worship or seminar times. Beth brought the tops and thread, I brought the batting and pins, and Elaine made up instruction cards to put on the tables. By the end of the conference, all four comforters had been tied. They will be bound by a quilter from one of the Oregon churches and sent to Mennonite Central Committee to be distributed.

I was walking into the meeting area when I spotted someone doing some hand sewing, so I went over for a closer look. Emily, who is half of the husband-wife pastoral team at Menno Mennonite in Ritzville, Washington—where we have the relief sale every fall—was making hexies. (There may have been some excited squealing when we discovered that both of us brought EPP projects with us to work on during meetings.) I asked Emily if I could take a few photos:

Emily inherited a stack of aprons from her mom and aunt, so she decided to turn them into a quilt. She also had fabrics from some of the dresses she wore as a child.

I did not get to the big quilt shop in Sisters, which was only 20 minutes away, although Beth and I joked about ditching a seminar to go there. I did run out to the Joann Fabrics in Bend to get a few supplies and discovered a quilt store next door, so I stopped in for a look around.

Rob and I left Bend early yesterday morning for the trip home. Elaine went on to visit her sister in Seattle for a few days.

I am glad we got to go, but that was a long trip for a short meeting and I am tired. I don’t have a lot on the schedule this week, thankfully. The gardens are going to need my attention. The rest of the raised beds arrived. I should probably start shopping for a birdbath and a bench or some chairs for the herb garden. And plants, of course. I’ll need more plants.