I still have a few friends in Oregon, in the Gresham, Portland, area. So I always spend a couple to a few weeks here as I pass through. As I mentioned in the last update, I made it up to Portland and then spent the night visiting with my friends Jeff & Jackie. They have a beautiful new babe, Mattie, (not sure of the spelling but when she’s old enough to be incensed by that I’ll be dead or senile so what do I care?), and I got to hold her for a while, then off to bed in the RV. They bought a house that has a nice, nay, perfect place to park right across the street. It’s your typical crowded neighborhood but the spot is right on a curve before a cross street and the houses driveway is not anywhere on the curve. I could stay there for days. Only problem is the lack of electricity.
Anyway, continuing the previous post, after spending time with Jeff, Jackie & Mattie, then spending the night across the street, I headed off 10 miles to Troutdale to visit Theresa…she doesn’t happen to be working now like Jeff & Jackie, what with her broken foot and all, so I got the time to visit with her.
Theresa, her bf Lee & I end up at the bar!
Here’s TJ hobbling out using her crutches.
We all told her she would never get a guy with that get up but she persisted.
Here’s my friend Max resting after her bar tending shift.
And here’s Theresa’s BF – Lee. Yeah, he always looks like that.
That night I spend in a field nearby to the new LT’s tavern. I could have hung around Gresham for the rest of the day, maybe taken a hike on the really cool bike path that goes for miles, but I had shopping to do so off I went towards downtown. It takes 20 minutes to get downtown driving a car but I only went half way in the RV. After shopping for around 20 minutes, I couldn’t stand it anymore (shopping is so not fun-but I did get a case of beer) so I just left the RV there in the parking lot and jumped on a nearby Max light rail train heading downtown.
Riding the light rail, heading downtown…
There’s the Max train after I jumped off near Saks 5th Avenue.
A little of downtown Portland, Oregon, USA. One of the most livable cities in the world.
Another interesting building.
One of my favorite places. Saks! Fifth! Avenue!
Saks has shrunk.
This whole building use to be Saks, now it’s got all sorts of upscale businesses in it. Can’t really see them in this shot.
There’s some stuff, surrounded by those velvet ropes, set up in an artsy way. Canned food drive, apparently. I later had a nice cappuccino down there.
Taking the sky bridge across the roadway. View to the South.
This is the view to the North from the sky bridge.
This guy has been doing this for years.
You ought to see people jump when they approach him and he suddenly moves. There are many bronze sculptures in downtown Portland so you can’t blame people for thinking he’s the real deal.
Another bronze.
More sculptured seals.
A much older building but it’s still ‘stylin’.
Here’s the 100 year old courthouse.
It might be over 100 years old but it’s not like Europe where they have 1,000 year old public buildings, but it’s at least something to give us some history.
“May I help you?”
And of course, a tour of downtown Portland shouldn’t miss without a picture of the world famous “May I help you?”, “Umbrella Man” sculpture. Or whatever it’s called.
One of the quiet streets in downtown. How about that?
Another, older building, but the shot was really about all the arrows.
Pioneer Square.
Lots of times this square is filled with people.
On the way back home, there’s that leaky glass tower. There’s two of them and they are a maintenance nightmare…it rains in Portland, and these towers leak badly.
The subject of this shot is the really neat purple color of the seats. I love that color in this setting.
And heading off east, towards Gresham.
Nice shots of my home country, Portland, though I hate driving downtown. They keep changing street configurations and dinking with transportation system down there, so I never know what I’m driving into. MAX is easy enough, though not usually as fast as driving, is no longer cheap, and some riders are weird. But that’s true in every city. The smog downtown never has been good for my mild asthma, but again, that’s true for most bigger towns. They’re always working on some project, too – like now the Broadway Bridge is closed for 3 months for streetcar addition, the I-205 bridge is being worked on, and they want to rebuild the I-5 Interstate Bridge as a toll bridge. It never ends.
Is umbrella man offering help, or is he flagging a cab?
Never been in Saks since they came to town, but it sure looks like the inside of the Galleria. ?
Good shot of the old Meier and Frank building and Pioneer Square.
Hey, Dude. Are you ever gonna catch up to your present-tense Alaska on this blog?
Pretty sure I read somewhere that umbrella man is offering to help someone.
Saks is much more expensive. First time I ever saw a man’s dress shirt under glass because it was so expensive was in a Saks. I liked taking women in there and showing them dinner dresses. Most in the $5,000 to $10,000 range. Luckily none felt they needed a dress like that. Not even for the opera.
Present tense? In the grand scheme of the age of the universe I’m so close as to be in the instant-tense by comparison. Then there is the fact that I lost all those pictures, the computer died, rebuilt it, hard drive died, replaced it, recovered missing pictures, and on and on. Finally, there is the fact that it could be pretty boring here this winter…I won’t know till we get there…so I’m stretching out my trip.