Portland, etc.
I’ve now been here for a couple of days and this is a really cool place. Yesterday I took Kevin’s bicycle and went all over downtown and around through North Portland. The downtown area is really bicycle friendly in layout as well as the people, and almost the entire way from their house has dedicated bike lanes, very nice. I wish Nashville had more lanes than just the one near Vandy. Thai food is everywhere here, and so far it’s really good too. The Portland Central Library is impressive on the outside, but more impressive on the inside. There is a huge marble staircase going to the second floor, with fairly intricate engravings of vines and leaves and birds all in the stairs. I visited REI, the Columbia store, the Library, Riverfront Park, the North Face store, ate at Pizza Schmizza (which was good and the greek salad was perfect), and visited Powells Books. I must expound a bit about Powells… Holy Cow that place is cool. Being the information hoarder that I am, I was very disappointed to know that of all of these awesome books that I would like to have for cheap would have to be shipped home if I bought them. If this place was anywhere near Nashville, I’d have to line my entire house with bookcases. For those of you tech heads out there, there’s a Powells Technical Books as well, which I visited too, of course. And just to give you an idea, there are several copies of lots of books, good books too, ranging from math to networking to engineering and any other technical topic you can think of. One of the copies may be a new book, one a used book, another an early edition, another a hardback and some of them were even in special packaging, and the prices vary accordingly. It was enough to make me drool through the whole store.
Last evening, Kevin and I went to the Rogue Ales Public House and had some incredible food. We then proceeded to check out 23rd Ave. and the panoramic view of Portland from the top. Today we’re going the the Columbia River Gorge and check that out, then watch Katie and the Break Neck Betties whip tail at Roller Derby.