Welcome to the blog of Chester and Ned, owner/operators of Chester and Ned’s Banana Company, a freeze dried banana manufacturing outfit, based in Forest Park in Portland, Oregon. I’m Chester, the older and orange guy with a blue hat, and I’ll be writing this blog. Ned is my fraternal twin brother who is yellow and wears a red hat. I’m the older brother by 6 1/2 minutes. I also carry a little more heft than Ned. We are starting this blog as requested by the owners of www.monkeysgoneape.com. They approached us when they were thinking about opening a monkey gift and accessory website and wanted us to give them a little advice on what to carry. We do have pretty good taste, so no surprise there, and they told us they would give us a cut of the gross. We could always use a few extra bucks to finance our lifestyle, so we signed on the dotted line. Anyway, we have a somewhat exciting life, so here goes…

Here is a photo of our manufacturing plant, which conveniently is located on the first floor of our treehouse. I usually man the processing belt, the most important job, and Ned does the packing and shipping. I usually have to stop the belt every so often so Ned can catch up. I’m not bragging when I say I’m lightning fast and efficient on the belt. Together we process around 1300 crates of freeze dried bananas a day, which we ship around the world. It’s just Ned and me doing all the work, so we reap all the rewards, which are significant. We are rated in the top 14 freeze dried banana businesses in Oregon, so you can see we’re not too shabby at what we do.

OK, I don’t know who took this picture, and I
know it looks like I’m trying to escape from my
work, but actually I was due a break after
running that belt. It is grueling work, and after
10 minutes or so, you have to get some relief.
Ned is a much slower worker than I am,
so of course he doesn’t need as many breaks.

Here’s a shot of us in our upstairs bedroom/loft practicing our instruments. I’m pretty fantastic on the bongos, and Ned plays jazz clarinet.

We have a couple of pet birds. Mine is named Sammy and can speak monkey and human words like you wouldn’t believe! He can even do accents!
Ned’s bird is named Ramona. Ramona speaks, but only says boring words, and has no ability to do accents. Sometimes she says,”Shut up, Chester!”, which annoys me no end.

Can you believe our TV/Rec Room? It’s located behind the garage on the first floor.
We had a professional decorator who took our old rustic look and turned it
into a modern show place. We usually have our meals here while we watch tv.

Take a look at my chopper! It’s my prized possession. Ned sometimes rides along side
of me on his Vespa, but I have to go so slow that my high powered engine
almost dies. I sometimes let him ride on the seat behind me, but I get tired of
hearing his shrieks, and the constant, “Watch out, Chester, there’s a little old lady
crossing the street!”, or some such nonsense.

One of the perks of our business is that we get to go on some international trips
to promote our bananas. We tend to mix a little pleasure in, and on this trip to
France, we took a bike ride along the Seine at twilight. If only I could have
had a girlfriend behind me instead of Ned… That’s right, I’m currently single and
looking. I figure this blog may be a good way to bring attention to myself among
the vast female population out in internet land.

Ned and I are quite the athletic and
adventurous type. so while in
France we figured, why not enter
the Tour de France bicycle race?
We entered as one of the few
tandem riders allowed in the race.
Formidable! I think that’s a french word?

We were keeping pace pretty well with all those single racers,
and even out in front of a bunch of them,
when whomp!, our front
tire hit a big pothole, and we went flying! Wouldn’t you think those french people who organized the race would fill up all the potholes
before they let a few thousand bicycle tires run into them?

Anyway, Ned’s hands were clipped a few times by a few of the racers,
and I had a terrible scrape on my forehead and gravel bits imbedded in my knee.
Ned took me to the emergency room, and I ended up ok. Ned’s wrists had to be
put in casts, but it was no big deal. We protested to the officials that the whole thing reeked of
unfairness, especially for us as tandem riders and Americans,
but they answered with some french gobbilty
gook, and sent us on our way with only a pat on the back. We didn’t even get our
entry fee refunded! So we left France on a less than high note.

Back in the good old US of A, here we are in the bricks and mortar store owned by the people who run monkeysgoneape.com. We’ll let our french wounds heal before we venture out again.

To be continued….

”

We went on a quest to find our own bulldog after watching that You Tube. We
discovered a bulldog rescue home where old circus bulldogs retire. Ringo, that’s
the name that he was already given, was a circus dog specializing in chasing
clown cars. His short, stubby legs finally wore out, his bark was reduced to a
pitiful squeak, and off to the rescue home he went. We think it was fate that
we found Ringo. We plan to spoill him silly, and we’ll keep all clowns out of his
sight.

We needed to make a business trip to Marrakesh and realized the annual
Morocco ATV Desert Classic was to be held at the same time. We had our
custom ATV shipped over. What a race! Ringo enjoyed the ride in the back,
though he flipped out a few times until we decided we had better rope him
in. Next time we will all three wear goggles, since the sand was murder on
the eyes! We didn’t win, but I think that’s because the other racers had
only one rider per ATV, and we had two monkeys and a bulldog, which
gave us a definite weight disadvantage. Otherwise, no way could we
have finished 87th out of 87!

We’re supposed to remind you to check out the monkey stuff. Just click a category
to the left on the top of this page.

Thanks,
Chester
www.monkeysgoneape.com

Soon after hitting the road to Qatar, we came across a sign directing us
to a camel race. We are always in the mood to compete, and even though
we had never been on a camel, we figured we could race with the best of
them!

We had quite a long way to drive to Qatar, but we had banana business
there to transact. The camel race, the 112th Qatar Sand Flats Classic, was
open to new entries. Of course, first we had to find a camel. We found a
one named Zahir and proceeded to the track.

Ned and I fit pretty well on top of Zahir, though Ned had to hold on to
me for dear life. We wanted Ringo to go along for the ride, but there
was no space. Ringo didn’t take a liking to Zahir anyway, so he was
to watch the race from the sidelines.

We got off to a decent start, but out of the blue, Ringo bolted from
the spectator area and tore out behind us! He started nipping at Zahir’s
elbows, and Zahir slid to an abrupt stop. We didn’t finish the race,
and needless to say, we gave Ringo the cold shoulder for a couple
of days. Too bad we had bet on ourselves and lost quite a bit of
riyal (Qatar $$$). We would have to double down on our banana
transactions to recoup our losses.

We needed to travel to Egypt next for a business meeting. We had no
intention of keeping Zahir, but have you ever looked into a camel’s eyes
and not felt a connection? We did, and we decided to keep him. He
trotted behind our ATV as we ventured on toward Cairo. That did slow
us down quite a bit.

After conducting our business, we played the tourists and trekked to
the pyramids and the Sphinx. How convenient to have Zahir to ride!
We even squeezed Ringo up on top after he couldn’t keep up with us in
the heat and sand.

What a sight the pyramids were! We highly recommend seeing them.
Be sure to ride a camel up as close as you can, and take your dog.