News nuggets... Snippets and tidbits from Sisters Country

•?Black Butte Ranch CEO headed to greener links. Almost four years to the day after taking the management helm of Black Butte Ranch, Jay Head has accepted the job of general manager/COO at The Quarry in LaQuinta, California, one of Golf Digest’s 100 Greatest Courses. A search committee has been formed by the BBR board of directors to recruit Head’s replacement.

•?Aspen Lakes beefs up its turf. Bob Fluter will assume the role of superintendent of greens next month. He comes from Michelbook Country Club in McMinnville and was named Oregon Superintendent of the Year in 2019. Mike Gruber from Running Y Ranch in Klamath Falls will be the new assistant superintendent of greens and he is already on premises. A visit to Aspen Lakes shows browned-out fairways caused when a water pump failed last month. All effort was put into saving the greens and tees as repairs took place. A full recovery of the turf is expected.

•?Passenger traffic at Redmond/Bend airport (RDM) continues rebound. Just over 97,182 travelers enplaned or deplaned at RDM in July, up from 86,211 the month before. Last July, as the pandemic was beginning to ease, only 37,026 transited. Six carriers fly to 11 destinations. A recent $800,000 grant to the airport will be used to entice a carrier to serve Dallas (DFW) nonstop.

TSA daily checkpoint counts, however, are showing a small, but steady decline in same-day weekly comparisons for August as more travelers are postponing trips in reaction to rising COVID-19 case counts.

•?Well #4 nears completion. The well control building for the fourth and newest of Sisters’ water wells is completed. All that remains is installation of a decorative iron fence, a few electro/mechanical connections, followed by testing, and it can be brought online as needs dictate.

•?Road striping completed. ODOT has finished center-line painting of the entire Highway 20/126 corridor from the summit to Redmond and Bend. The bright-yellow lines replace the worn ones from the 10,100 vehicles per day average that pass through Sisters.

•?Do pedestrians always have the right-of-way in Sisters? Oregon pedestrian right-of-way laws are not actually that complex. And the first rule is that, under Oregon law, every intersection constitutes a pedestrian crosswalk, whether or not it is marked or controlled by a traffic device. The operative word is “intersection.”

Seventy-five percent of accidents involving vehicles and pedestrians are a result of the driver failing to yield the right-of-way to pedestrians. A whopping 50 percent of all accidents between motorists and pedestrians in Oregon occur when the pedestrian is in a crosswalk.

•?Gallacher Plumbing opens warehouse in Sun Ranch Business Park. The family-operated plumbing company has been serving Sisters Country for 24 years from the owners’ home in Redmond but has now taken 1,000 square feet at the newly finished four-unit commercial property at Sun Ranch Drive and Lundgren Mill Road as they try to meet the boom in local building.

•?Tiny kitchen, big food. Tacos El Comal, located in the very small corner of Space Age Fuel, is approaching 10 years in turning out Mexican cuisine for takeaway dining. Carlos Sandoval is the one-man band who preps, cooks, and serves a menu of nearly 40 items. Carlos minds the works from 9 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. Monday through Saturday. Social media reviews for the affectionately known hole-in-the-wall kitchen are uniformly exceptional.