Mt. Tabor, finally

It only took us three years to check out Mount Tabor, an almost-200-acre park smack in the middle of southeast Portland, maybe 12 minutes from our front door. Mount Tabor is the site of an extinct volcano and three active reservoirs, the source of much of Portland's drinking water, each graced with crenellated gatehouses and ornamental iron fences. The total effect is more Versailles than municipal utility project, which is kind of cool.


As you look east from the other side of the Willamette, Mount Tabor is a conspicuous landmark. Not surprisingly, the view toward town from its slopes is spectacular.


We encountered several very happy dogs on the short hike to the summit, and found a canine mis-en-place, complete with excellent throwing stick, along the trail. All that was missing was the Alpo, or whatever brand/formulation enlightened dog owners favor these days.


Speaking of food, on the way home we detoured a few blocks east and had a delightful breakfast at the Arleta Library Bakery & Cafe. Jer had turned up his cute snub nose at the menu I pulled from their website, noting that "the only way they do eggs is scrambled." Oh dear. But what they do with their scrambled eggs is, midway through, change course and turn them into an elegant omelette roulade. Delicious. It's a tiny, friendly neighborhood place, and we will be back.

Scenes around the 'hood

On one recent walk around the neighborhood, we saw...

a charming sign:

a large-scale model airplane hanging in what appeared to be an abandoned and partially-demolished workshop. It seems to be a bit deficient in the wingspan department. If I'm not mistaken, the engine cylinders are crushed beer cans:


a challenging doorway:


and a tile-encrusted set of stairs worthy of a Mexican village:


Most of our perambulations aren't quite so rich in amusement value, but we usually see something that makes us stop and think, or grin, or scratch our heads. For instance...

a flicker rat-a-tatting on a metal chimney:


a kitty curtain call:


an insouciant vehicle:


and, last but not least, what I will G-ratedly refer to as the Tickle Chair:

Happy Solstice

I observed the summer solstice by showing up for jury duty. Jerry dropped me off at the courthouse downtown. It was a relatively painless experience, as these things go. Comfy chairs, no blaring TV, free wi-fi, a good book to read, frequent communications from the staff about the status of our potential empanelment (30 names were called, mid-morning, none of them mine) and, just before noon, blessed release. In the eyes of the law, I have done my service, and I'm off the hook for the next two years.

It was a beautiful day, sunny but not hot, and I decided to walk home, or at least see how far I could get before calling Jerry to pick me up. I went over the Hawthorne Bridge, along the East Bank Esplanade, and connected with the Springwater Corridor Trail. Wildflowers were in bloom everywhere -- purple, fuchsia, yellow. I saw ospreys nesting, herons wading and geese paddling off Ross Island, and a professionally-printed sign glued to a bridge support that said "You could be a millionaire... if you stopped fucking gambling."

Jury duty doesn't lend itself to photography, and I didn't have my camera with me anyway, so instead of wildflowers and waterfowl, you get a picture of a cool twiggy structure I found that has both moss and lichen on it, and another cactus flower shot. Oddly enough, this is from the same plant as the one that bloomed so spectacularly in May, but the blossom is twice the size and white instead of pink.

Looking at the map after I got home confirmed my hunch that cutting through Oaks Bottom and over to Bybee would have shortened my hike by a couple of miles. But I wanted to go all the way through Sellwood so I could familiarize myself with the portion of the trail that reverts to city streets between the Sellwood Bridge on the west and Three Bridges to the east. Plus I was starving by that point and realized that SoTac Coffee and Cream, which I'd been wanting to check out, was just a couple of doorways off my route east on Umatilla. Plus I get into this macha mindset sometimes where I just have to do things the hard way.

So, fortified by a double scoop of Tillamook's fine lemon sorbet and wild mountain blackberry ice cream, I finished my journey. I did a shade over seven miles in a shade over two hours, including osprey-nest ogling and ice-cream buying time. A pretty good pace, considering that I wasn't even thinking about power-walking. In the back of my mind I've been pondering the best way to get downtown and back by bike, and this was an opportunity to scope out a likely path. It would be a fairly easy trip, I think; it might take half an hour.

I actually wouldn't have minded being picked for an average-length trial. Average = a day and a half, according to the judge who greeted us this morning and explained the jury selection process. It probably would have been an interesting experience. I was summoned a couple of times when we lived in the Bay Area but, like today, just sat until they dismissed us. We were excused outright at Sea Ranch because of its remote location.

Really, though: Given a choice between courtroom deliberations and a long, lovely walk with wildflowers, birds, and ice cream to sweeten the last leg of the trip.... well, you know which one I'd pick. And not a jury in the world would convict me.

Happy Earth Day

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.