Dining with the Queen of Sheba

• Restaurant website
• Location: Northeast Portland (past convention center)
• Cost to fill up two people for dinner: About $35-$40

If a restaurant could take an award for best people-watching, Queen of Sheba might top the list. Fortunately, the food (Ethiopian) is good, too.

Robyn and I took a seat by the window and watched a wondrous procession of dancers, bikers, dogwalkers, hip chicks, shirtless rock throwers, and one fellow in red flannel pajama tops whose Nike shorts continually slid to his ankles. Even the illustrious Ted Sawyer, Bullseye’s research director and wonderful glass artist in his own right, showed up.

And while we watched, we ate. [Read more]

Rocketmaniac

OK, file this one under “Seriously cool, especially if you’ve got a deathwish.” Yves Rossy just did the Icarus thing in Switzerland, i.e., he strapped on a pair of homemade wings and flew all over the countryside. Unlike Icarus, nothing melted or dropped like a rock.

Rossy’s stated goal is to fly “like a bird, or Superman,” according to interviews and his website. His team built a carbon composites wing, attached four small jets to the underside, and made sure that the straps holding the wing on Rossy’s back were nice and sturdy. (I guess it’d be kinda undignified to leap out of a plane and have your wings fly off without you.)

It takes a fair amount of confidence to strap on a 3-meter long wing filled with kerosene, jump out of a plane, and freefall for awhile until you level out and can start your engines. The wings also serve as brakes once Rossy runs out of fuel and needs to land (using a parachute).

Sounds like a lot of fun. The nice thing about using jet engines, aside from the comforting forward propulsion, is that they’ll mask the deafening noise of my screams on the way down.

Much less embarrassing that way.