I know it's been a while since we've had a new Lumberyard post up, but we've been fairly busy with travel and a host of matches lately, and it's kind of fallen by the wayside. Regardless, The Lumberyard's back, and with it are a couple of things to talk about this week to tide you over until our Portland Timbers take the field again.

First up: the Oregon Brewers Guild's Fresh Hop Tastival. I went to this last year, and found that it compared favorably to other local beer fests in terms of selection (almost all fresh hop beers!) and crowd, but the location at Oaks Park is kind of weird, with no easily accessible public transit options. I'm personally pretty excited about trying Beer Valley's Fresh Hop Leafer Madness and Ninkasi's Tricerarillo (something I can only assume is their Tricerahops made with fresh Amarillo hops). I've already had a few of the beers on the list and I will say that Hopworks' Give Me Liberty is outstanding. Are you planning on going, and if so what are you looking forward to trying? 

Next: Jurgen Klinsmann's roster decisions. What do you think about Klinsmann's decisions so far? I'm a little worried about the Omar Gonzalez news, but I have to admit that it's only because he's considering Mexico; if he had dual citizenship to somewhere else I'd probably say more power to him. I think it's been kind of fun to see the effects of a fresh set of eyes on the USMNT, and the Shea move has been incredible. I probably won't watch Saturday's friendly against Honduras live, (see above), but I'll look at the replay at least. What do you want to see out of the Nats on Saturday, or what are you looking forward to?

HAVE AT IT!

Da Rules:

The Lumberyard is here to give the entire site a place for true non-soccer conversation and random thoughts. Its purpose: A place where people can come and chat about all the stuff that doesn't fit in with the rest of the site, and even be loose in terms of byplay and humor. The goal of the Lumberyard is to foster c

ommunity; to let people get to know each other outside of the everyday front page posts. There will be happy ones, sad ones, ones like a sharing circle, and ones like an open mike night at the comedy club. In the Lumberyard, people really have a chance to become a family.

So, if you have a one-off thought, post it in here. The rules are basic, and are as follows:

1. Ad hominem (personal) attacks will never be tolerated.
2. Everything you write is visible publicly, so be careful.
3. Don't use the Lumberyard to call out or talk about users from other threads on Stumptown Footy.
4. Remember that every image posted will slow the thread down, so try to post as few as possible. Posting a link to an image you want to share is an acceptable alternative, and thus can share as many images as you wish without slowing down the thread. If you do post an image in the thread, please post something in the subject line so that the image stays mimimized.
5. Most importantly, HAVE FUN!!!