This is my second time writing this. Since I am computer-stupid, I erased the entire entry right before posting.
I find Portland and interesting city. The people are laid back, everyone seems to have a nose ring, and there are more bars and bicycles per capita than any other city. There is also nothing in the skyline to distinguish it from other cities. Were I just dropped in town, it would take me a minute to figure out that I was actually in Portland.
Wednesday went much like my "tourist" feeling days in Seattle. I rode to S.E. Portland with Megan, saw where she has been doing her AmeriCorps work at Lutheran Refugee Services, and then spent 3 hours at the coffee shop a few blocks down. With a bottomless cup at my side, I spent more time on the computer that I did in all of my time in Seattle. I hate knowing that on some level I am addicted to technology, but I am. It is too easy for me to take things which I want to do and turn them into things I feel as though I have to do, like reading other friends blogs or writing emails.
Megan and I ate lunch with some of their co-workers and I then went to the park to do some writing. I love the trees in this part of the country. If the branches were a bit lower I could have spent most of the day just climbing up in them.
We went to happy hour with some of Megan and Sarah's friends. I ordered the salmon quesadillas. When they showed up, it was difficult locating them on my plate. Did I get the infants menu by chance?
There is a high school on the N.E. side which has been turned into a bar/restaurant/movie theater. The company which owns it takes old buildings all over the city (like schools and funeral parlors) and turns them into drinking establishments. We went to see a movie, which was showing in what was the gym. Instead of rows of chairs, it was rows of leather couches and end tables so you would have a place to set the beer you purchased to enjoy while watching the second-run movie. Shouldn't every town have a place like this?
As we were picking up one of their friends from the airport getting back from Chicago at 12:30 Thursday morning, we did not get to bed till just before 3. Not a great time when you are getting up at 8 the next day to go hike around Mt. St. Helen. We were tired to say the very least, and it didn't help that I forgot to put in the filter when I went to make coffee. A rookie mistake, and a hell of a mess to clean up. Thank goodness it was a clear day with warm temps outside to lift us all out of the fog of sleep-deprivation. We were thankful pulling onto the freeway that unlike so many, we were not going to work this day.
Helen is about a 2 hour drive from Portland. We chose the north unit of the park as none of us had been there before. Since it was the north side of the mountain that blew out during the 1980 eruption, I was glad to hike this side. The landscape is obviously still recovering from such a natural disaster. The site of the mudflow is still mostly barren, and downed trees still lay all over the place. But there is a beauty which has emerged from the destruction, and it is a reminder of how the earth is not stagnant and way beyond the power of human control. Each time we would emerge from a wooded area of the hike to see the mountain, I would have to stop in my tracks in awe of what I was seeing.
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