Back in Portland after three weeks working in the Bay Area. Coava morning. Bright morning of blossom trees and spring enthusiasm of biking to work, why not it’s a glorious morning, the sun is up and what could possibly be wrong when there’s a row of tulips in every yard.

April and another season of seasons in this offshoot of two rivers and rest stop along the I-5 whose freight truck traffic and Seattle-bound, San Francisco-bound, LA-bound drivers barely catch (or not at all if they take recommended I-205 bypass) that there is this fine little Northern European university city at the confluence of Willamette (Wil-LAM-et for some Oregonian reason) and Columbia rivers. Blink and you might miss it. A whole city…

…with parks and trees and houses and shops and hopes and dreams and people who wake up at six AM to exercise, and people who stay up half the night tuning their transistor radio to pick up basketball games from Anchorage AK and punk rock stations from Vladivostok. It’s the Pacific Northwest after all. Settler mindset, pioneer mindset, Go-west-young-man mindset.

Chuck Palahniuk: "Being the cheapest city to live in on the west coast, Portland has its share of washed-up nothings making it rough around the edges."

I always knew I'd move to Portland: Summer vacation when I was a kid was two weeks visiting mom's family on Kitsap Peninsula. We drove from the Bay Area every year, Dad the Driver preferring to stretch the drive out to two days allowing us to stop and explore the redwoods, the Gorge, Mt. St. Helens. We never stopped in Portland though. Maybe that's what fascinated me: we'd drive all this way through coast and mountains and valleys and farmland and then all of a sudden there was this city, this Bridge City. I got so excited for the bridges.