A Short Day in Portland

Pioneer Square in downtown Portland.

Santa Rosa (STS) to Portland (PDX) late Sunday afternoon. No matter the weather this city, Portland, that is, though I have nothing to say against Santa Rosa, I just don't know much about it except for its nice little airport, Sonoma County Airport, named after the cartoonist Charles Schulz, who invented the "Peanuts" characters and the comic strip chronicling their adventures. According to Wikipedia Santa Rosa has had other famous people come from that city including Luther Burbank and Julie London, but on the other hand its "seismicity" which W uses to describe the likelihood of an earthquake, may be higher than a lot of other places.

Anyway, Portland plugs away just being a decent civilized place, with toleration for most kinds of people, including the ordinary like us. By the way, is there a lobby for normal ordinary people with no special axe to grind? I have no idea why Portland would want to try to be a major league city, they are barely at the AAA level.

Tonight we were hungry and tired and decided to try Typhoon, a Thai place, next door to the hotel: we scored heavily on their nibble menu, washed down by some of Oregon's Pinot Gris from King Estate, of course.

And of course, the estimable Hotel Lucia, as in the Italian pronunciation I think, a short walk from Pioneer Square, always delivers cosmopolitan comfort, including beds very similar to our own by Tempur-Pedic. And apparently a recent addition is the new flat screen TV.

Sunday must have been a slow day for the hotel as they gave us a really nice corner room on the 6th floor, from where we had the usual city views in the morning along with the usual steely grey overcast sky. Carol had trouble finding the hair dryer until she looked in a bag next to a strange device labelled "iron" in the closet. I had my usual difficulty opening the hermetically sealed coffee thingie but the nearby corkscrew saved the morning. Is this problem just part of aging or are the people who make packages getting better at sealing them so that children and normal non-thieving people have great difficulty opening them?

I think I am sounding like Ian Fleming: "Bond flicked his trusty Zippo, and quickly inhaled his favorite Turkish brand of cigarette."

Powell's Book Store is probably the best in the world. And it is very close to the Hotel Lucia, as is the ballpark and some other good places to eat, and some theatres, etc, etc, etc, come to think of it. I only got as far as the Technical Book Store this time as I only had a morning to spend.

Sorry, my pictures from downtown Portland went somewhere, I know not where, including a picture of an interesting evangelist walking down Broadway who greeted me with "Jesus is back on earth, friend." He had very large hands and was slightly reluctant to have me take his picture. He had a blonde beard and flowing robes and sandals so he obviously had been to makeup and costuming.

We may be taking one of the last direct flights from PDX to BIL early this afternoon, as I read somewhere that even Horizon is desperately trying to staunch the cash hemorrhage sustained with the increasing cost of oil. It seems kind of redundant to suggest that a civilized train system might help everyone. Like the one they have in Portland which takes you directly from the airport to downtown.