Jer and I celebrated Earth Day by taking a longer-than-usual walk on the surface of the planet. We picked up the Springwater Corridor trail at the foot of 37th Ave, just a few blocks from home, meandered along Johnson Creek for a while, and crossed the Three Bridges into Sellwood. Then we zigzagged from named to numbered streets til we hit Milwaukie and Bybee. We stopped for breakfast at the Springwater Grill, and were home two hours after we started out. According to the GoogleMaps pedometer, we did a shade over 4 miles. Easy. We're so blessed to be in a position, both physically and geographically, to get out there and casually cover ground the way we do.In the last few days I've filled in a couple more blanks in my mental map of Portland. On my way home from lunch with some friends in SW on Thursday, I stopped at the Audubon Store on NW Cornell Road to buy birdseed and another couple of feeders for our rapacious backyard avians. Cornell winds through the hills -- it reminds me a bit of Grizzly Peak Blvd. in Berkeley -- before turning into NW Lovejoy in the city proper. So that's how that works; got it. Bonus: Caught a glimpse on the street of John Callahan, the outrageous cartoonist and actually pretty darn good singer-songwriter, who lives in the nabe.
Last night, Jer and I went to a faboo party just off Albina, in a pocket of North Portland we'd never traversed before. (Note: Any evening that involves raspberry martinis, mango-habanero margaritas, pear sidecars, cedar-grilled salmon, live accordion music and DIY rocketry is surely in the running for Social Event of the Year.) I now have a much better sense of the order, left to right, of North Interstate Ave., I-5, the Vancouver-Williams couplet, and Highway 99-E. I've pondered this area on a map, in the abstract, and thought "My, that looks confusing." Like so much in life, la-de-dah, it's a lot more daunting in the contemplation than in the doing. Now that I've filled in my mental map, I can certainly find a more direct route home the next time.
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Just to clarify. When we left the party Reva opted to drive home. We headed west on Alberta. When we came to Interstate Avenue I said, "This will do it." Meaning, turn south here. Reva said, "Maybe Alberta goes on through to 99E." "Ok, if you know where you are going," I murmured. She promptly drove into a dead end street. Then backtracked, turned right, and ended up in another cul-de-sac. She eventually found her way back to Interstate and headed south.
Like I said, NOW I know that 99-E lies in, uh, the opposite direction. And thank you for not mentioning that , once on Interstate Ave., I almost but not quite got onto the Broadway Bridge, which would have taken us downtown, which is not where we live.
This seems much like Steve and I driving around Portland!
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