Waiting here to meet a friend of Pamarie’s who she tells me is amazing and knows everything about Portland; I don’t know what she looks like other than she’s about 50, and I don’t know if she knows what I look like; and of course since this is *$ who knows if this is the one she was talking about or there’s one around the corner?
Had a great visit with the Cubbages – talked a lot about politics, and cars; more dispute on the latter subject than the former (I tend to like brutal, sturdy trucks; he likes muscle cars, Porsches, and the like). I’ve always been impressed at the level of the casual discussions there.
(040817.0905 Berry Patch restaurant, Ocean Park, WA)
I rolled into Portland on Saturday evening, and it was warm and humid, tho not too stifling. Britt Cubbage is a friend of mine from College; she’s now living in London with her husband Chris Jones (the name is Welch, not Witness Protection Program) and very cute and apparently brilliant child Ben. But over the years I’ve visited Portland a lot and become friends with her parents, as well, so it was good to see them. On Sunday we took a walk through a nearby park (which was verging on rainforest), and “Dad” took me around looking for car batteries (somewhat more fun than it sounds!). Then I headed downtown, to Powell’s Technical Books, Powell’s, “Trendy-third” street, and the Bridgeport Brewery. Which may have been the best I’ve been to so far, or maybe one or the other of the little ones was better, it’s hard to be sure in retrospect. But the beers were good, and the eavesdropping on other patrons was better, tho I spent most of my time on phonecalls back home. It’s still surprising to me that out on the coast and in remote areas, it’s a lot easier to get an internet connection, than it is to get my cellphone to work.
After visting with Debbie “Nose-to-the-grindstone” (sounds almost as if that could be a Lakota name) and having my oil changed (they would not understand why I was snickering about “Jiffy-Lube”, and I didn’t think I should try to explain it), I blew out of town and up to Astoria, arriving too late to visit the maritime museum, which sounds interesting; did pause to consider the fact that multi-millionare (that was impressive back then) John Jacob Astor founded the town at the mouth of the Columbia, known as the “Graveyard of ships” for the hazardous Columbia Bar; and later perished on the Titanic on an entirely different ocean. It would be entirely too obvious to report my results of trying to get a campsite at the Cape Disappointment State Park; I wasn’t aware till I passed through Long Beach that this is kite festival week. Kinda cool, even though it made accommodations more difficult; actually I didn’t have a bad time, I drove through town and lots of really really ugly trailer parks with wall-to-wall motorhomes, out to Anderson’s north of town which looked the same, but they found me a space back in a little grove of trees near the entrance to the camp that was very nice and very private and relatively quiet except for traffic on the highway nearby, which I promptly ignored. Had an inexplicably tasty Mexican dinner in town, took a walk on the beach and boardwalk where the kites had been. I’ll probably stop there again on my way through town this morning and do a little kite watching.
Which brings me here. I haven’t had a lot of success cooking for myself – even to the extent of opening cans and warming – I think because I prefer to sit somewhere I can have a little interaction with people. That, and despite a cabinet full of canned food, I don’t seem to have all that much that’s appetizing to me – that’s what happens when I clean out my cabinet and camping boxes that are filled with foods that sounded good when I bought them but I never bothered to eat then, so why should I suddenly decide to now.
Burning Man starts in just under two weeks; am thinking I may get there Saturday or maybe Sunday evening; I see Becke in Seattle next weekend; am looking forward to both, of course. In the mean time, I’m thinking I’ll make my way slowly up to Seattle, then next week maybe try to find a stream in Idaho to stand in and look as if I’m fly fishing.
