Portland Part 2: Bikes, Bikes, and Friends (also on bikes)

During my time in Portland, I was staying with my friends Liam and Siobhan. They were kind enough to let me crash on their couch for almost a week. They showed me some of their favorite places to eat, the best bars around, and in general gave, me a good idea of all that Portland has to offer, good and bad. Seeing as Liam used to work at Geoff's Bike and Ski with me, we had to start the trip off with a fun ride through town and up into Forest Park. This rainforest like park contained every shade of green imagineable, and that is coming from someone who is partially colorblind. The recent rains combined with the sunny skies added a shimmer to all the leaves and moss with vines hanging down every other branch. The fact that Portland has this 5 minutes from downtown was astonishing to me. I could have ended my trip right there and been happy, and that was just the first day!

The second day we did our BIG ride. There is this great resource in Oregon for gravel riding called Our Mother The Mountain or OMTM. They are a group of people who excel at creating the gnarliest rides around northwest Oregon including "hardpack, singletrack, gravel, pavement, goatpath and janky forest connector." The route we picked out may be one of my favorite rides I have ridden. We were on forest roads for a majority of the time crusing through the trees as the fall colors were slowly arriving. The weather was mid 50s and it was sunny. Perfection! Unlike Iowa where you go up a hill for one minute at best, we were spending almost an hour climbing and rewarded by descents as long as 15 minutes. After the final descent I was sore from descending for so long, something that I have never encountered in Iowa.

As many of you know, the bible states that on the 3rd day, God said, "Let there be more biking," so we did exactly that. Today was for mountain biking. We picked up a mountain bike from the bike shop Liam works at for me to ride, got some donuts, and started heading up toward Mt. Hood. This was another special place for me as I had eaten one of the best breakfast buffets on the PCT at Timberline Lodge, located on Mt. Hood. For those who missed it, go check out my post about it here! We parked at the base of the mountain, took the shuttle to the top and ripped our way down. Despite only having ridden a mountain bike a handful of times, I only crashed once and had a absolute blast. Having gone to Bentonville, Arkansas recently, I can say while both places have world class trails, they are completly different riding and I cannot reccommend BOTH of them enough.

Now that I have hiked and biked Mt. Hood, all that's left is to ski it! That could be happening sooner that I might think...

The last day was spent checking out the Oregon coast at Cannon Beach, this time Siobhan was able to join us as well. We walked along the beach looking for anything interesting the ocean washed up on the shore. Liam, being the expert fisherman he is, was able to identify most things for us. I had my first whole boiled crab and blown away by the flavor, though I still prefer my crawfish boils. As we were heading out of town we saw a herd of elk, something I had never seen before. They looked like a combination of cow, horse, and deer. They were incredibly majestic, even just sitting and eating grass.

This trip went about as well as it could have. My van let me experience the journey in a completly different manner than if I had flown, seeing and doing so many more things. While it is advantageous in that sense, it also presents its own issues. Where am I going to park at night? Where am I going to get water? Where am I going to go to the bathroom? What is the temperature going to be at night? I am thankful to have tackled the PCT and have previously thought about many of these questions before. And Portland?? It was incredible. Food everywhere from every culture. Cyclists on every corner. You could surf, bike, and ski all in the same day. There are so many characters and personalities there. Is it weird? Yeah, it kinda is. But you could tell eveyone felt free to act and be whoever they wanted to be, which makes anyone feel welcome. A few hours before I left, my friends Josh and Aida came down to vist me from Seattle. I continued my culinary journey of the city with them and got more coffee and a vegan banh mi. That might just have been the best thing I ate the entire trip? TBD...

I will be back Portland, and who knows, maybe sooner than I think...

-Joseph

P.S. On the way home I discovered the bands Hawktail and Väsen AND learned that they were playing a concert together in Minneapolis the next day....so of course I added a little detour to make one last stop to go see them. If you have not heard of them go check them out, the extra driving was worth it!