Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Category: Event

  • Tom’s Day

    I remembered the day well although I couldn’t recall the exact date. It came to be known as “Tom’s Day,” within my close circle of friends, a day so perfectly aligned with my interests that it must have occurred through divine intervention. No day will likely improve upon it. Many readers will probably consider it…

  • What the Hill

    My wife keeps signing me up for running races. I guess she wants some company during her crazy pursuits. It seems harmless enough so I join her even if I’d rather be doing something less competitive. Those are the kinds of compromises one makes to keep peace in the house, and we’ve been together a…

  • Fire

    It seemed like wildfires burned all across the American West this summer, each one worse than the other. A fire in Montana burned so long and so intensely that many nearby towns experience perpetual nightfall for days. Amazingly, the fires of 2017 stripped an area as big as the state of Maryland. For the European…

  • Totally Eclipsed

    Can anyone stand one more eclipse story? I promise this one will be a little different than most. I drove a thousand miles for a 4-day weekend and, well… Mother Nature had different plans. Lots of loyal Twelve Mile Circle readers asked me if I planned to see the August 21, 2017, total eclipse of…

  • Boring, Dull and Bland

    Boring, Dull and Bland hopefully doesn’t describe Twelve Mile Circle or my social life although maybe observers would disagree. It referenced a unique relationship between three very special communities. One day a Scottish bicyclist took a scenic ride through Clackamas County, Oregon, just outside of Portland. Then she passed through the unincorporated community of Boring.…

  • Regurgitated

    Twelve Mile Circle goes back into its vault every once in awhile to offer little addenda to earlier articles. Sometimes it involves a flash of brilliance that I wish had come to mind during the creation of the original. Other times something new comes to light that didn’t exist beforehand. Still in others instances, it…

  • Duckpins!

    An interesting conversation took place on Twitter recently between two regular Twelve Mile Circle readers, @CTMQ and @oxwof. They linked me in at the tail-end of their friendly discussion about two unusual and quite rare variations of Ten-pin bowling: Duckpins and Candlepins. They’d answered most of their questions by the time I arrived on the…

  • Ramble On

    It’s the Thanksgiving weekend and I’m feeling a bit lazy. I think I’ll just ramble on for awhile instead of writing a real article. Those of you reading from countries without a similar holiday may not understand much about Thanksgiving. In the United States it involves several days of overeating to the point of immobility,…

  • Playing Games

    Twelve Mile Circle felt like playing games. More to the point, I’d collected a few town names tied to games that I wanted to share. I did something similar awhile ago with the sport of Lawn Bowls, a particularly popular choice for names. Atlantic City also made the cut with Monopoly although the town inspired…

  • Ted’s Last Stand

    A last stand didn’t mean that the person subjected to the stand had to die, I supposed. I looked to the modern era and examined the curious case of Ted Kaczynski, the so-called Unabomber, for the final of this series of final stands. His last stand happened at an isolated cabin in the wilderness, ending…