Commuter Documentation: A Personal History in Two Coasts

I find myself in the mornings pulling out my phone around the same part of my commute and taking a picture of the environs, just to document the different ways the day looks in that section of South Central LA. It started, maybe, because I think the particular street doesn't look like any part of what's normally associated with "the 'hood", and could be mistaken for other locations in the Southland.

But this practice of mine---snapping a phone camera picture of the same, mostly pleasing set of landmarks or other environs---dates back to living in New York.

(I dug the following pictures up from deep in the bowels of our deathbed Mac...)

The year was 2007. I was working at the most hard-core restaurant I'd ever worked in in Manhattan. Have you seen Pixar's Ratatouille? Like that, only more serious and stressful, since it was just opening and working towards its Michelin star. The Chef was Michelin rated and had been running Grammercy Tavern for a dozen years for Tom Colicchio, and this restaurant was to be his new baby.

Anyway, I would take the A-train to West 4th and walk through Greenwich Village over to Union Square. It was a longer walk than transferring trains, but sometimes it would take less time, and I could control more of my commute, as it were.

One day, as I came up from below, I looked up the street before cutting right (and east, towards Union Square), and saw the Christopher St. Historic Firehouse. I thought it looked cool, so I pulled out my tiny, candy bar-like phone and snapped a picture of it. It had been a dreary October day, and it was mostly lunchtime:

12:45 PM

(I put, as a caption, the time-stamp data from the picture, and, you can see, I did it for all of the pictures here.)

I was working night, as was every other cook at this restaurant, seeing as how they didn't yet have day shifts. On a different day, I came up again, saw the same sight, pulled out my camera, and took another picture. This day was Halloween itself, and after my shift, Corrie and I braved the Village on the walk back to the rain. Greenwich Village on Halloween? Done it once, accidentally, and that was way enough...

Check out how blue and crisp that day was:

1:06 PM

A few days later, in November, I remembered to take another picture. It was another dreary day. I remeber those shifts were stressful and no fun, for sure. They'd start early, and end late, with your ass being chewed on the entire time. It wasn't for me...

12:46 PM

In any case, the restaurant began, in mid November, to offer lunch service, and I fought pretty hard to get one of the morning spots. Some folks really wanted those positions, but not everybody. Many of the white kids who, for them, this was one of the Golden Jobs, all wanted the night shifts. For the Latinos, and the white kids who don't love the life and were in the middle of stressful wedding planning and wanted to have a relationship with their fiance, the morning shift was key.

This led to a new style of Firehouse Photo: morning...

6:34 AM

 I'm truly enjoying the limitations of that old camera's abilities; the softness and the blurs...

Some mornings were rainy or damp, like above, while others were clear, like this next one:

6:53 AM

In the one above, and 7 minutes to 7 am, I can tell you that I was late, and that I was stressed the 'eff' out at that moment. I don't remember it personally, but I know what that job did to me on a daily basis as it was...and knowing that I was going to be even a few minutes late? Forget about it...

Here's a more appropriately timed clear example:

6:26 AM

It's so dark at this early hour because it was then December, and as it got later, it would get darker. Check out this next picture, recorded a single minute earlier, but noticeably darker:

6:25 AM

And then this collection ends with this next picture, where, taken at 6:23 am, we see it's still nighttime. It was around here that I started just transferring trains and missing the sun entirely. It took longer, but the walk across Manhattan was becoming quite unbearable:

6:23 AM

Fast forward six years and a few months, say seventy-five months. My commute, and life, are definitely different, as now I'm on a different coast, but still stationed in one of the nation's two largest population centers.

What strikes me about this whole endeavor is the vast similarity and consistency in the times that these various collections were taken.

Again the view is looking north, only here it's along Miramonte Street:

6:58 AM

The quality of the photograph is better:

7:00 AM

As is, generally, the weather, although this next picture I took specifically because it was foggy:

6:43 AM

For that one, I had left the house earlier, caught an earlier train, and had to spin my wheels, figuratively, and burn off some time before I could get to my final destination.

Mostly the days are blue and crisp, like below:

6:58 AM

And again, the sun making everything golden:

6:57 AM

I ride my bicycle up this street and turn left onto Gage Avenue. There are certainly less people than in the Village, even earlier...

6:58 AM

My reflections of my experiences in these last few, the Miramonte Collection, are mostly absent because I'm still living this commute. I don't think I would have been able to have the perspective on my own life had I had this blog active back at the end of 2007.

Sometime in the future, maybe a better and more robust reflective piece will be available to my brain...maybe this post can be considered "begun", but not ultimately done-dundy.

Happy Birthday Tuxedo

Today is the day we celebrate Tuxedo's birthday...we don't know the true date, just that it was between March and May. At first we chose March 17th as the day to celebrate, but after some discussions with our erstwhile vet, we chose to move up the celebration day, and settled on the 20th of April. So, happy birthday Tux!

He's ten years old. Ten. Years. Old. I'm not sure how to feel about that. Right now we're battling something that's wrong with him, and that's frustrating, since nobody really knows what's wrong. We've got a plan of action, which is nice, but still, it's mostly groping in the dark.

Other tidbits...

While in Portland, Corrie and I saw a dog that we both felt like we could settle on when the time comes for us to get a dog (which is on the horizon somewhere). I'm not going to say now, but this is an exciting moment, since we've discussed on many occasions what kind of dog would make both of us happy, and be able to be with us in our living conditions.

On May 4th the Simpsons is debuting their Lego episode. It begins with Homer waking up in a Lego world and thinking something isn't right. Or something like that. In an interview I read, the writers and producers mention that the Lego aspect is partially aimed at the kids of the show's primary viewers. That's how old we are, folks: we grew up having our notions of humor shaped by The Simpsons, and now are having kids and showing them the same show that we grew up watching, only it's not the same show. A local channel here in LA shows reruns during the time of evening when I'm doing dishes and getting dinner ready. The episodes were from season 14 or 15, and were shows I'd never seen. I didn't pay much attention to them.

Then, sometime last week, I noticed the colors were far older looking, and the episode was one I'd seen, but couldn't immediately place. It turned out to be the Whacking Day episode, and I stopped working and found myself watching, shaking my head that this episode was on broadcast television in 1992 or whatever. It's a show about clubbing snakes to death and even has Marge getting turned on by Homer's practicing.

Broadcast, primetime network television.

I neglected to mention that I started reading The Pale King, Wallace's meditation on boredom and existential dread---and the Internal Revenue Service---on precisely April 15th. It seemed fitting and all.

Portland: Final Impressions

One thing I haven't yet mentioned were the meth fiends. The pictures I've posted or painted with words thus far have, for those people familiar with Portland, been devoid of the aggressive, twacked out druggies who like to accost you at all hours of the day. There were many homeless folks, like San Francisco. Many of them like to babble incoherently, and if you're unlucky enough, they'll babble in your face directly at you like you were some kind of mechanic who had wronged them.

Late at night Audrey, with little experience dealing with drugged out weirdos, was taken aback by the people who would temporarily join our walking cotillion, loudly laughing and talking about how much they liked something that would then trail away into mumbles that you couldn't understand but could sense the person's enthusiasm. "Was that guy on LSD?" she'd ask.

"No honey, that was a meth fiend, like all these other jaunty scab-faced black-toothers..." Actually, not too many exhibited the normal facial features--they were still in the fun, early stages of their dependencies.

They weren't totally overrunning the place, but the aggressiveness is something I hadn't seen before. Maybe chock it up to the young folks and their sense of privilege and entitlement affecting their drug habits and drugged out point of view.

Anyway, it wasn't a deal breaker.

There were, though, deal breakers as far as choosing a city to live in. We're not in the market to move, by any stretch, but we've been told before about how we would love Portland and could totally live their and would fit in perfectly.

We would fit in, mostly. And I could get used to the bikability, and the Blazers are a quality run local sporting franchise. But the city itself, with the quaint half-sized blocks, is oddly slow. That's nice for many folks, but I'm not sure it's the kind of thing we're looking for.

I'm not sure what exactly it was about Portland, but I wouldn't live there. Visit? Sure...

It was a great trip and wonderful birthday celebration, and I'm glad we got to celebrate with as many people as showed up. Thanks everybody who made it, and thanks Corrie for putting it together and making it happen!

Tuesday: Tram; Too Much Chocolate; Returning to The Beach

We woke early after a restful night sleep and finally got the hotel's coffee pot to work. After packing, we got got out to the bus stop and headed for The Tram.

I capitalize it because it was pretty cool, and I don't know what else it should be called. It was a gondola style skyway commuter deal:

We made it to the "base-camp" around 8:40, and it was packed. People were parking their bikes and filling the gondola. They were all dressed quite well, either in nurse-like scrubs or suits, no one was older than fifty, and they carried themselves in an uber-professional manner, if that makes sense.

The Tram carried the workers and students for the OSHU from a commuter hub near the banks of the Willamette River up to the complex on top of the nearby mountain in two minutes flat, an easy twenty minute drive. It turns out that OSHU stands for Oregon Science and Health University.

I wanted to rock the gondola, but Corrie would have attacked me. At least I would have been surrounded by doctors.

Here's a view of the tram car heading back after making a dropoff:

The cars could hold thirty or forty people. They were pretty comfy, but even better on the reutrn trip, when it was occupied by less than a dozen people. There were two sides, and one at this hour traveled up every four minutes or so.

The view of downtown Portland from inside is only obscured by your own reflection on the glass:

After returning to downtown but before leaving to catch our flight, we stopped in at a pair of chocolatiers to get some treats for the ladies with whom my wife works. Moonstruck was the first, and I ordered a medium sized dark hot chocolate.

It was good, but I had been expecting even more chocolate-ness. At the second place we actually tried what they were calling the "chocolate drink". After sampling it I realized that's what I should have had at Moonstruck. The name of the second place was Kakao. Chocolate drink was sold in smaller portions and was much, much thicker, made primarily with heavy cream. Mine was fantastic, but it was like drinking brownie batter.

After the hot chocolate and chocolate drink, and finishing Corrie's chocolate drink, I was assed out on dairy products. I'd made it to that rare moment: too much chocolate for me...

The Portland airport, abbreviated in a way that is used by many folks to abbreviate the area in general, PDX, didn't cause too much of an issue, of course it wan't as fast as the Long Beach airport, but what is?

When we arrived back in Long Beach we started to reflect a little on the weather. In Portland, it had been beautiful. The skies were mostly blue, the temperatures hovered between 60 and 73, with the only chilly times being once the wind kicked up at night. Long pants and t-shirts were comfortable, but having a sweatshirt was mostly necessary.

When we got home? 76, no clouds, blue skies, slight breeze, and the need to change into shorts was real. As we walked to find a cab, Corrie said, "I love getting home from our trips; the weather is always better here."

Monday: Dinner, Bridge Walks, and Early to Bed

I'm not sure why I ended that last post right then...

Oh well.

We walked a few of the bridges, and took some neat pictures...

This is a view of the Steel Bridge from the Broadway St. Bridge. We walked across the Broadway Bridge, down past the Rose Garden Arena, and back over that Steel Bridge to the west side of town. A few metro rails go over that Steel Bridge, and it is a rocking scary time when you're on foot.

The Broadway St Bridge is a drawbridge deal, and this is a picture of my shoe spanning a gap on the walkway, with the Willamette River visible far below:

Here's the west side of Portland:

This is one of the streets leading up the way to the basketball arena. They'll always love Clyde Drexler around these parts:

This is a working factory of sorts, but I thought it looked cool from the Steel Bridge:

Later that night we explored the town looking for a brewpub that we hadn't heard of to try their beer and grub. We settled in an old saloon looking spot called McManimans, which turned out to be a Northwest chain of exclusive hotels. They'd purchased Renglers, which was the name of the beer makers on the spot, and had the sense to retain the name and beer recipes. The beer was okay, but we are pretty tough to blow away nowadays, and the food was fine.

It was a nice slow Monday night, and the bartender was very honest and candid with his opinion on the beer his employers made. He was certainly professional.

We went to bed early that night just to make it out to a cool tram ride the next morning. We were going to do a bike tour, but what we thought was our departure time turned out to be the arrival time in Long Beach, which put an end to the bike plans. For a place that perceived as hilly, or mountainous, Portland is remarkably flat, and since most everything is so close to everything else, biking seems like a perfect way to commute and/or explore.

See some upcoming posts on The Observatory for some more random pictures of Portland.

Monday: Alone with Portland's Institutions

So far, up until Monday found Corrie and I by ourselves, a rundown of the things normally associated with Portland that we'd experienced were: roses; the Blazers; the foodie scene; Oregonian beers; the tiny intimacy of the downtown region; the temperate rain-forests of the Greenbelt; and the meth fiends (I'll get to them in due course).

There were a few things that we'd yet to do or see with our "Fellowship of the Paggi", that we decided to tackle on our own on Monday. In no specific order, they'll appear below, but for a glimpse: Powell's Bookstore; Chinatown; Voodoo Doughnuts; and the historic train station.

Chinatown

There was a cool gate that led to the historic district:

...but the district itself was mostly a quiet letdown. A few chop-suey restaurants, a few more gentleman's clubs (establishments that were in abundance), and many empty lots. The area is certainly ripe and ready for attention.

Union Station

It looked cool, and had some delicious water that we used to refill our water bottle:

I'm not sure how old it is, but the black and white pictures inside give an idea...

Powell's Bookstore

I wasn't sure where I wanted to start with this. I have a weakness for books. Powell's bookstore, as I mentioned in last night, is the de facto King of the Independent American Bookstore. I had reservations about that designation, reservations that grew out of my appreciation and love for the Strand in New York. The Strand had signed copies (as in plural) of Gould's Book of Fish, straight chilling on the shelf. 

Whutchoo got, Powell's?

Well...

The Strand didn't have anything like this, an early '60s pocketbook edition of The Crying of Lot 49. Score.

I found the Flanagan section, and while it was robust, it didn't have any signed copies of Gould's...

Not that I'm really keeping score, but this is serious (for me). Powell's had enough Mishima books that you could tell it would be a contender, but their Mo Yan selection made me a believer. They had multiple copies of each of his books except the one I wanted, of which they only had a single copy. It happened to be a first edition hardback and cost fifty bucks.

Too rich for my blood.

They had nearly every Murakami book published by the colorful Vintage editions.

I even found the following David Foster Wallace book I'd been looking for since 2010:

It was a first edition as well, but less than ten bucks.

This was the book that Wallace was writing when he ended his own life. It's about sadness and boredom and tax professionals.

Powell's did have a rare book room. The Strand may have one, but I didn't get over to see it. Powell's was very nice, quiet, clean, and had a handout of sorts, a sheet of paper explaining various things about their rare book collection.

Curious about their oldest book in their rare book collection? Printed in 1480, De Bello Judaica ("The Jewish War"), is their oldest book, printed at a time when book printing was still in its infancy. It only costs $12,500.

I say "only" as a modifier of the cost because it pales in comparison to Powell's current "most expensive book". That title belongs to an 1814 two-volume first edition of Journals of Lewis and Clark, complete with original binding and large, folding map. The original binding and map help make this edition exceedingly rare and expensive: it's priced at $350,000.

The math and science section of Powell's is across the street at Powell's II. 

That's the kind of thing that helps me see them as the preeminent independent bookstore.

Voodoo Doughnuts

Home of the famous maple-bacon bar, we stopped by a few times only to see the line fifty people deep. On this Monday, though, it was oddly quiet, so we went inside and took a look at the Big Board:

We did get two of their famous signatures, the bacon-maple bar (a maple bar with two slices of bacon on top), as well as one of our cashier's favorites (it was also my choice for doughnut number two) an Old Dirty Bastard. The ODB is a chocolate frosted doughnut with crushed oreo for sprinkles and a drizzle of peanut butter over it.

I was prepared for the maple and bacon mixing for yummy-ness, but I wasn't prepared for the super high quality of the doughnut itself. I'd taken for granted how good a good doughnut could be. Oh man, was it good...

Sunday: Washington Park; and the Game

1. Washington Park

Portland is surrounded by greenery, and they legislate the preservation of such. This drives up the prices something fierce, and the "Green Belt" becomes a patchwork of parks around the city, squeezing the working class people who have a hard time affording the high prices south, to peripheral cities like Beaverton.

In any case, one of the parks, Washington Park, is one of the main ones, seeing as how it houses the Rose Test Garden. This is one of the oldest of the city's rose gardens. All the rows of rose bushes are labeled, but, alas, none are budding:

Later on we hiked up into the hills behind the park, getting lost in the nature. Tony and Mike joined us, and we talked about various things like movies and the Cabin. Here's a view from the hike:

One thing that I thought was amazing was one of the vista points. From one spot we could see two of the volcanoes that menace the cities up here in the Pacific Northwest. Look at this picture, maybe after making it large:

If you can see, there will be one bright mountain in the front, and one darker one behind, further away from the viewer. The closer mountain is Mt. St. Helens, which famously her stack in 1980. Behind, in the far distance, is Mt. Ranier, the volcano that menaces Seattle.

Mt. Ranier is visible to both Seattle and Portland! I never knew that, and I'm not sure why it surprises me so much.

There's also a cool grassy amphitheater on the Washington Park grounds:

2. The Basketball Game

When Corrie was in the planning phase of this adventure, I thought it would be cool to see a basketball game. The Blazers are the one main team in the city, besides the Timbers in the MLS of course, and any city with one major team (one of the four major US sports (MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL)) tend to be maniacal for that team. 

When it turned out that the one game that would be happening during our trip would be against the Golden State Warriors, I got really excited. The Trailblazers are a very good team and headed for the playoffs, starting very soon. The Warriors are also a very good team, and they happen to star one of the top five best players in the game in Stephen Curry. The Warriors, with their regional name, actually play in Oakland. This was going to be a very good, playoff atmosphere-type game, and we were going to be there.

It turned out to be the best NBA game I ever attended.

And I have a new favorite NBA player in Steph Curry. I went from none to one, so, there's that.

While technically the name of the basketball arena is the Moda Center, everybody, and most maps as well, still refer to it as the Rose Garden. It sure looks new

The fans arrived in droves and were knowledgeable in everything from the team's history and lore, to the intricacies of how fouls should be called, to even the fringe players of their beloved team.

The Blazers opened up with a physical first quarter lead behind all-star forward Lamarcus Aldrige. The second quarter saw Steph Curry decide to take over the game. Curry, a shooting guard who's not the tallest or burliest of players, has an ability to seemingly make any shot he feels like making.

When he's resting, the Warriors seem to make a shot here and there, sometimes getting bogged down in their own plays.When Curry returns to the floor, and he's on, every shot from every spot seems to go in. "Who is this guy!" I kept saying out-loud. I mean I know who Stephen Curry is (son of former NBA player Del Curry and star of Davidson U; carried Davidson all the way to the Final Four that year), but in person to see the spectacle before your eyes is something else.

He single handedly led the Dubs, as the Warriors are affectionately known, to an eight point halftime lead. There were some questionable calls, and the fans let the refs know about them, but there was that thirteen point shift from the first quarter to half-time.

In the second half, for a while it was like it was the Blazers versus Stephen Curry and four guys wearing blue tank-tops. I couldn't see the display with the individual scores as it was being blocked by a banner of a retired player, but at one point late in the fourth quarter I remember thinking that it seemed like Curry had made at least half of the Warrior's points.

When the score came into view, that feeling had been basically substantiated: he had scored 44 of their 96 points up to that point.

The following picture is right before an end-of-regulation flurry that saw the lead change twice, and then a three-pointer by a Warrior not named Curry to tie the score with 3.6 seconds left:

When the five-minute overtime period was finally finished, the titanic battle was done and the Blazers were victorious 119-117. Stephen Curry finished with a game-high 47 points and did not disappoint this observer.

Corrie and Tony and Audrey and Mike were along with us this evening at the Rose Center. Mike headed back to Seattle afterwards.

We finished the evening around town, seeing as how both Audrey and Tony were leaving the next morning, and we wanted to enjoy as much time together as we could.

Saturday: the Gorge Region; and a Big Dinner

1. Late Start

We started late leaving Portland, but since everything is so close together not much took very long. Tony picked up Audrey and helped her check out of her first hotel (out near the airport) and into her second hotel (more expensive and around the corner from us), and then they came to get us.

We fielded phone calls and then got dressed. It was a little less active. After attempting to get over to Voo-Doo Doughnuts for a breakfast bite, we snatched up some quick edibles and hit the road.

The Cascades, the mountain range that stretches from southern Alaska to northern California, are full of volcanoes, and Mt. Hood may be the closest one to Portland. I'll post a picture of it soon in one of these posts, because on this car ride, in the beginning, you could see it, but not get pictures of it.

Anyway, it is staggeringly huge and looming. Holy cow.

2. The Bridge of the Gods

After maybe forty minutes of beauty, we crossed over the Bridge of the Gods into Washington State. One reason was because that's where Tony's phone-guide said to go, another was because Audrey had never been. The bridge was designed to make sure rain flooding never occurs:

Once on the other side we drove for a bit and took some pictures. It is seriously beautiful. Here's a shot from Washington looking south and west across the river towards Oregon:

It turns out that taking that picture was illegal. I had crossed some railroad tracks to get to the edge of the rocky slope. Later on, when all four of us hopped across the tracks and slid down to take some pictures, a Washington trooper called us all back, telling us that we were guilty if criminal trespass, and it would just be better if we all turned around and returned to the trail opposite to the river, heading up the mountain.

Um, whatever you say?

Later we found a silly name for a road:

...and headed back across the bridge to Oregon, where we ate a huge lunch of pizza and ale, at the Cascade Locks Alehouse. If you find yourself in the vicinity of the Bridge of the Gods, the Alehouse is a decent restaurant.

3. Multnomah Falls

After eating lunch we headed back to Portland to shower and relax before dinner. We decided to stop at one of the major waterfalls we saw on the way out, called Multnomah Falls. It was chilly in the tiny glacial canyon created by the falls, which were spectacular:

There was a century old footpath that had only recently been put out of service by gravity:

And, looking back towards the Columbia River, we can see the canyon surrounding the falls:

By the time we left Multnomah Falls, all four of us were pretty well wiped. And we still had a huge dinner party to host/attend.

4. Dinner

Dinner was held at the Park Kitchen restaurant in Portland. Reservations were at 8 pm and were for 11. We had the tasting menu, which meant that they kept bringing out plate after plate of food. After a while, and all the plates were cleared, I was dazed and needing a nap, and became shocked when they placed a large plate down in front of me. They hadn't even delivered the entrees yet. 

Corrie sat at one end of the table and I at the other, us trying to keep the various groups of people engaged in conversation. Being able to talk with my cousin Mike and Tony and our friend Joe all at the same time reminded me of our wedding a little bit, with disparate groups of friends confabbing. The one pair of folks I didn't get too much a chance to visit with was Lauren and Ruben, but they were hanging out with their old friends who live in Seattle, and the four of us have seen each other each of the last three weekends. We live within a bike ride of each other, and harbor no hurt feelings over Portland slights.

The bill was nearly a grand.

There were four of us whose birthdays were in close vicinity: Tony's was on the 1st, Joe's was on the 6th, mine was the 9th, and Ruben's was the 13th. We were the April crowd. Tony, Ruben and I were all the same year, with Joe preceding us by a few.

5. Post-Dinner Revelry 

After dinner we went out for a taste, and we went to a place I never knew existed, but apparently do in various forms all across the country. In Portland it's called Ground Kontrol. It is for people my age and the younger hipster crowd: it is a fully functioning arcade, with many of the popular video game cabinets from my childhood, AND it is a fully functioning bar. 

They charged two bucks at the door as well, so they were cashing in at all corners. 

The bar-arcade (maybe is should be known as a "barcade"?) seems like a genius idea. I played a few games as badly as I ever played them two decades prior.

We got to talk to Joe and Nick a little bit more, since they were leaving the next day, and eventually went off to bed.

Friday: Arrival; and "The Fellowship of the Paggi" is Forged

Tony, one of the four of us whose birthdays were being celebrated (four!) arrived around noon on Friday, rented a car, and explored the city because he couldn't yet check into his hotel. Our good friend Audrey, a young lady and old friend of Corrie's from Austin, had arrived the previous night and had spent the day exploring some of the things we were going to be looking into in our time.

Coordinating many people across many hotels spread over a city is, to understate it massively, difficult. We persisted nonetheless.

Anyway, Tony picked us up at the airport, spirited us off to our (fancy) hotel just south of the Pearl District on the west side of town, and then we set off for a bite to eat and some libations.

We met up with Audrey while at one of the least likely places we might have eaten otherwise--had it been earlier in the night, had we been able to find the pizza-by-the-slice place around the corner, we never would have chosen to eat at this place. We only ordered appetizers, and they were things like quail and pork terrine and chicory with smoked sable fish.

The food was good, but not exactly what we were looking for at that moment.

The night ended late (with the lights being turned up) at an underground placed called Blitz, but before we went to our respective beds to slumber, we decided to voyage---with Tony driving his car---east along I-84 into the Columbia River Gorge area and take a look. It sounded like a good way to spend the better part of the first day before the big dinner.

Side Note: Like in Seattle, Corrie found us a fancy and post-modern style hotel. The room was small, but the fixtures and furniture were all "cool" and edgy. Corrie has a hate-on for the floral-print bedspreads, and attempts to search for hotels that have their own character. Part of a cross-country driving trip makes places with that kind of bedspread nearly impossible to miss, but on these inner-city, few day stays, she outdoes herself. In Portland we stayed at the Hotel Lucia, if anyone's interested.

Portland Introduction and Trip Background

Portland, Oregon, lives in Multnomah County, a tiny sliver of habitation along the Columbia River to the north and her tributaries that flow through town. North of the Columbia is Washington State, and it wasn't until a few years ago I realized how far north Portland was in the whole scheme of the geography of Oregon.

Portland is the largest city in Oregon, and one of the three major cities in the Pacific Northwest (Seattle and Vancouver, BC being the other two).

When I was a kid I remember a Clyde Drexler and his black and red uniform with the cool logo design, a logo I couldn't comprehend what it was exactly, but I liked it nonetheless. This was the Portland Trailblazers, the city's lone major professional team, an NBA franchise. The Timbers are the city's soccer team, and the following is wild and fanatic. Someday American pro-soccer will reach an internationally competitive and respectable level, and the Pacific Northwest hotbed will get the recognition it deserves as one of America's centers for soccer interest.

A while back Corrie was thinking of a cool place for us to meet with Tony. Both Tony and I (along with many of our friends) were having a special birthday this year (thirty-five), and since our birthdays are so close together, she thought it would be cool to go out  of town and meet up for a birthday bash.

She chose Portland for a few reasons. One: we've been wanting to visit it for a while; two: it was far enough that most everyone would have to sacrifice, but not too far that the sacrifice would be too painful; and three: there is plenty of adult-style playing available there---basketball games, liquor tasting, beer testing, etc...

The mix of people who made it was very cool. Tony flew in from Louisiana; Audrey from Austin. Lauren and Ruben, our Long Beach friends flew in from the LBC, like us missing the Grand Prix in the process,, and they had friends drive down from Seattle. We too, had people drive down from Seattle: my cousin Mike and our friends Nick and Joe, themselves originally from Upstate New York.

Our dinner on Friday at the fancy place called the Park Kitchen was lively and big.

There are a few things about Portland that should be addressed:

1. There is no sales tax in Oregon, so they nickel and dime many other places.
2. Portland calls itself the "Rose City", and roses make up a significant amount of images in the periphery or centrally in many logos and street signs.
3. The "Faces of Meth" web site---the site dedicated to educating the masses about the horrors of meth-amphetamine through multimedia, with the most popular feature being the progression, through mugshots, of how destructive meth is---was originated and still administered by the Multnomah County Sheriff Department, and centered around meth abuse in Portland.
4. Meth abuse is still visible and rampant in Portland.
5. Portland is very white. 
6. The drive from Portland to Seattle is shorter than the drive from LA to San Luis Obispo.

There will be other things I'll discuss in passing that could have made this list. 

Moving along...

Lost in the shuffle...

Norm and Norman came out and stayed with us for a few days, but that visit got lost in the shuffle. We went to the aquarium and did some other cool stuff, but I'll have to look back and remember. I'll post about that stuff over on the Norm and Pat blog later on today or this week.

This week will be quite busy for me, seeing as how it's Spring Break. Today has been set aside as blog-stuff day, a day to sit at the computer and get personal, non-school related stuff, taken care of. We just back from Portland and the "Pat and Tony's Birthday Bash" trip Corrie planned, and the next few posts will be about that specifically.

As always, I have a certain number of posts I've been cooking for a while, but I haven't been able to get to them. Today will see a whole slew of posts, but not to many more until, dang, maybe the summer. Maybe here and there, for sure, but the bigger posts will be on hold until my attention isn't revolving around Sherweezy-ness and the 'Hood.

So, Norm, you know how it goes...

Learning from the Asia Trip posts, not wanting to wait too long to write the material of a journey up, is part of the motivation for today's flood of content.

Late Night Working on my Birthday

You know you're an adult when...

I might give a rundown of my past few birthdays later today, but it shouldn't be surprising if that doesn't happen.

Here's a picture I took, eh, yesterday(?), which as far as my body's concerned, was earlier today, before 7 am, on my bike commute:

A cute, quiet street in the 'hood.

Wouldn't have guessed as much, eh? Here's another view of the same street, later in the day, and facing the other direction:

The 'hood is full of surprises...

Happy Birthday Tony!

The haze was high obscuring the blue. The heat wasn't truly present yet, but it felt like it had never left. This was the hike. They call it the Blue Goose Nature Area at Lake Calcasieu, one of the bodies of water attached to the Gulf of Mexico in Cajun Country--western Louisiana.

One of the roads was being overtaken by swamp. The reeds swayed lazily. The asphalt strip was put down over millennia of crushed oyster shells. Tall grasses made it appear that the distant oil tankers glided through meadows.

Memories having been blotted by evening's activities that night, fading like the sports-talk radio show I listened to driving back to Central Texas. Monopolizing the airwaves that fading day---the end of a Thirty-Five Hour trip to Louisiana---was the new sexual assault allegations levied at the quarterback from Pittsburgh.

Two Caliboys roaming the warm nights of the South, two pals, both Ares, both representing Northern California, fueled by some of Tennessee's finest. Of course the Mystery Mud was the result.

The heady days of trying to make sense of the absurdity of the deep South...

Happy Birthday, my Maltese brother.