I Am Legendary

Friday night I needed to swim. Badly. And I had the fuel to propel me in the pool. I had one focus: swim hard. Get it all out. Swim! I sunk underneath the water and started swimming freestyle with force. I didn’t stop until I’d swum 50 lengths (about 3/4 of  mile) in 20 minutes without a break. I finally stopped to drink some of my water and an older gentleman in the lane next to me made my day a million times better!

“You have ENDURANCE!” he said with a thick Russian accent.

I smiled and said “I’m only halfway done.”

“You are AMAZING! You can go so fast!” He then said, “You are like Jack Lalanne!”

“I don’t think I could pull a boat behind me.”

(source)

I continued on with the rest of my sessions, doing 1.5 miles in 55 minutes. When I was cooling down with some breast stroke, the gentleman waved to me while he was leaving. He shouted:

“Keep swimming! Keep going! You are LEGENDARY!”

I smiled and waved and kept on swimming. It may have been a silly thing but he really did make a bad day much better. So whoever that guy was, thank you! 🙂 After my swim I met up with Michael at the Slow Bar for dinner and drinks with some of his coworkers and a friend visiting from Texas.

The Quest for the Best Burger in Portland – Part 3

Remember Slow Bar? The home of the current reigning champion of “Best Burger in Portland”. Yep, in our Quest for the Best Burger in Portland, Slow Bar is still #1. Friday’s burger was just as good too. This time I tried the other burger on the menu: the Spring Slowburger. It’s 1/2lb Painted Hills natural beef, Meunster, crispy prosciutto, iceburg lettuce slaw and caramelized onions.

I don’t normally eat two burgers in one week but it just sort happened that way this week. This other Slow Bar burger might even be better than the first one we had. I loved the caramelized onions and the prosciutto. I thought the flavors were all amazing and the this burger was much easier to eat than the one with the onion rings on it…even though those onion rings were pretty amazing…I got the salad with the burger again and once again it was one of the best salads I’ve eaten.

The one thing that was different on this burger from last time was the bun. I wasn’t a huge fan of whatever the new buns are. They were rather dry and crumbly. Whatever the previous bun was, it was much better. Slow Bar should go back to that. I had a vodka tonic (or two) and enjoyed the nice summer breeze coming in from outside.

The place is a cool bar to meet friends at. The food is good, the atmosphere is good, the jukebox is fantastic. The only thing lacking is the service. It was near impossible to flag down a waiter most of the night.

BURGER QUEST:

1) Slow Bar  (yep still the champ)

2) Laurelhurst

3) Gruner

4) Foster Burger

5) ?

It was nice to go out with friends and hangout on Friday night. Although by 10pm my energy was waning. We bid adieu and called it a night, and another great burger dinner in Portland!

QUESTION: What’s your favorite low-calorie drink of choice? In your quest to be healthy, what high calorie drinks have you given up?