I'm posting through Verizon rather than CenturyLink this evening, the latter being my primary provider. The hardware is not the issue, in other words there's no physical disconnect in the optical fiber, just routing issues above my paygrade as the say. I've never worked for the telephone company. CenturyLink used to be USWEST.
Anyway, with that out of the way, let's talk about trips, by various modes. Plane, truck, car... by foot.
As some of y'all might have seen, I blog about these "inter-modal" trips I'm into, meaning I'll start out on a bicycle from my place, enjoying mostly downhill or flat paved surfaces, but then I'll switch to light rail (around Sellwood) for the trip home, bringing the bicycle on board, which the Max makes easy. Then I transfer to a bus taking me back up the hill, along SE Division.
I'm describing one of my favorite loops, which goes distantly by a famous mausoleum overlooking Oaks Bottom, a wetlands between the cliffs and the Willamette River, flowing north to meet the great Columbia. The Springwater Corridor, bicycle and pedestrian friendly, hugs the river, whereas said mausoleum overlooks the wetlands from high on the cliff.
The whole area is both a wilderness and an urban setting. I'm reminded of some parts of Vilnius I wandered about in.
In the movie My Own Private Idaho I think it is (I've rented a copy in part to confirm (I was wrong)), they make it look like once you leave your Portland high school (was Wilson renamed?), you can just hop in your flashy car your parents bought you or whatever and, snap snap, you're at the beach, just like that.
The reality of course is that the drive from Portland to the coast requires substantial commitment of time/energy, we're talking a couple hours even in a muscle car.
If you get into trip planning, by which I mean to broadly include a whole genre of websites and apps, think about altitude, and about accuracy. Does the terrain have significant drops / rises and does you app reflect that? You might be thinking "if there's a drivable road, I shouldn't have to care; cars go there" and you're right. But "intermodal" very much focuses on the pedestrian experience, which when you think about it, extends to mountain-climbing and hiking in general. Altitude matters in those cases.
And then precision. I remember David Ulmer talking about his snowmobile adventures, as an early adopter of GPS. He was a retired Tektronix executive who know the scene and had access to the latest toys. He inspires my idea of a "bizmo" quite a bit, as I've written. So it turns out this GPS he's using is off by quite a bit, let's say by meters. If you're barreling along in treacherous snowscapes, trusting your GPS... well you just might be a fool, right?
If you're following a known track, fine, but if this is unknown-to-you territory... I'm a big fan of the buddy system, which is not a panacea but which I inherit from my days as a sports diver. If you scuba recreationally, do so with a buddy, at least one other. It's part of the pattern language that maybe one of you can go for help (especially in mountain climbing situations, where an injury may prove immobilizing).
I probably sound like a veteran hiker, and truth to tell, I've done a lot of trail hiking, especially in my younger days, in Europe, in Bavaria. I was privileged in that way. Our whole family did the walking stick thing, with the souvenir badges, every major hike branded, like with a decal. Collect them and nail them to the front and back of your walking stick, with tiny nails. Do they still do that stuff? I have one or two old ones lying around. They're kinda withered with most the badges fallen off. They were not doubt stored in hot humid places, accelerating their decay.
These days I'm not hiking nearly so much, even though the nearby Columbia Gorge is famous for trailheads. The last major hike I took was with a scouting troupe, up Dog Mountain in the Washington side. A few had injuries and had to turn back, with chaperones, nothing serious, yet by the time we got to the top, our number had whittled away. High winds were a big part of it. As a heavier-set guy, I was probably in less fear of being blown away. The views were great. This is a relatively easy climb.
My funny story is from coming down. I had a somewhat bold descent technique where I'd use a target tree downhill from me as my stop, meaning I could gather momentum a little, then smack into the trunk, we hope not missing and plunging into some crevice or whatever.
The funny part: I was carrying a jug of Soylent, a white fluid, for nutrition, in my backpack. At one point I slipped and fell on my back, unhurt, but crushing the jug pretty good. White fluid oozed out from me, like robot blood. I felt like that robot guy in Aliens. What a spectacle.
OK, I'm soon to sign off for the evening. I'll try CenturyLink again.
I'm thinking of Denny Barnes of course, having attended his memorial service today. Such a wonderful family. Denny had Quaker roots and was a member of our meeting. I was the clerk of his Clearness for Membership Committee, per our Faith and Practice of the time.
Nomenclature is known to change over time. Business meeting takes its time to season a membership recommendation.
The applicant starts the ball rolling with a letter, typically read aloud at some point. Lots of workflows; we're talking about a subculture that goes back to the 1600s, and that experienced quite a bit of duress.
Denny came already prepared with a lot of research into his ancestry. His Quaker roots want way back, through generations. Such a pedigree is in no way a requirement for membership, but nor would we want to discourage anyone from exploring the role of Quakerism in their ancestral tree, were such to be found.
Denny was a scholar and professional diplomat who loved to study history, so of course he'd already done an impressive amount of homework into his lineage, when we first met.
Joining the Religious Society of Friends through a Monthly Meeting is by the book, how it's done, and that's what Denny did. We continued our friendship.
I'm grateful to be "living in the future" as it were. I used to think of the year 2000 as "the future" (I'd be old, like 42!) and I didn't think much about how there'd be a lot of "after" (as in after the future had already started, which it already has). I'm astonished in my own time, in a good way. Everything seems new and different, even as so much seems to stay the same. You know what I mean, right?
Like I'm grateful to have had this much time enjoying Portland, from very early in my life, to sometime visits, to returning to live here, and we haven't had to reckon with any seismic disasters, this being the Ring of Fire as we all know.
There's that sense of precariousness of it all that makes it all seem more precious, whereas in reality everything is fleeting per some time scale.
