Ravings of a Textual Deviant

On Tuesday, Ed, Ari and I started our excursion with a trip to Washington Park, an enormous park just shy of the West Hills. As odd as it sounds, one of the interesting features of the park is the MAX (light rail) stop. It’s about 325′ underground, and the platform area features a soil core from the excavation. There’s a geologic and natural history timeline on the walls. It also has a highspeed elevator that displays one’s height above sea level, rather than the floor (as there are only two levels with stops). Our original intent in going to Washington Park was to see the rose test garden and the Japanese garden. There’s also a zoo, arboretum, Vietnam War memorial, and “forestry discovery center,” any one of which would have been a better choice, as it turned out.

The park has several miles of walking trails, and we had an exceptionally nice day to trek across the park, which is exactly what we did. It’s not the best way to get to the gardens, though; there is supposedly a bus that runs through the park, and that’s a much better option. It’s hardly peak season for roses, so the rose test garden was a bit of a letdown. I’m sure it’s much prettier in the spring and summer. The Japanese garden might have been a better option, if it hadn’t been closed. We did get a fabulous view of Mt. Hood (but not Mt. St. Helens), so the park wasn’t a total bust.

We had lunch at a nifty storefront restaurant called Pizzacato (guess what they serve) and then headed over to Powell’s New/Used Books. Powell’s covers an entire city block and has four levels. The store thoughtfully provides a map so that you can fnd your way around. I spent most of my time there in the Gold Room (genre fiction) perusing the science fiction and fantasy, with side trips to the Purple Room (history) and the Red Room (cooking). As it’s a) a large bookstore, and b) in the Pacific Northwest, there’s also a Coffee Room. That’s where one finds the humor section, audio books, and of course, the coffee bar. I left Powell’s empty-handed, mostly because I had very limited suitcase space and intent to order from the website.

From Powell’s, we trekked from Tenth St. and Burnside up to Trendy-third Twenty-third Steet (a walk that has since been referred to as the Bataan Spa March) so I could visit Lush. Ed and Ari took refuge in the music store next door while I smelled every soap, shower gel, lotion, bath fizzie and skin care product at least twice. I managed to exercise restraint in my shopping, partly because of the prices but mostly because the nice salesperson assured me that the website had full shopping functionality.

From Lush, we went back to City Grille, on Kim’s recommendation. It’s a 30th-floor bar and restaurant that affords a three-sixty view of Portland, provided that you’re willing to go into the smoking section. I got a picture-perfect look at Mt. Hood, but still didn’t see St. Helens. I tried a sip of Ari’s Fat Tire amber (as a hardcore bicycle commuter, he likes the label design) and liked it even better than the beers at Full Sail in Hood River. Ari told me that Oregon’s soil and climate do wonderful things for Pinot grapes, so I tried a Kings Gate Pinot Gris, and was not disappointed. It had a nice balance of fruit and acid, with some weight to it. There were a couple of menu items that intrigued me, but the place was packed and I didn’t want to wait an hour for a snack. However, I present them below, so that perhaps I’ll remember to try and recreate them later.

#1) Key Lime martini - Citron vodka, key lime liqueur, and fresh lime juice

#2) Papaya, Cucumber & Avocado Stack - sliced papaya, cucmber, and avocado in a papaya-seed vinaigrette, served with lotus root chips. (Any ideas as to where I might acquire lotus root chips?)

Finally, we caught the #14 bus back to southeast Portland, where Kim and Ari’s house is. We had to make just one stop on the way—at Powell’s on Hawthorne.

I’ve often said that one of the best science-fiction authors whose work you probably aren’t reading is Connie Willis. Along the same lines, what’s the best game that I’m probably not playing?

Yesterday was a trip to downtown Portland (Powell’s Books! Lush! City Grille!). Today, Willamette Valley wine country (still slightly woozy, but happy). Tomorrow, the coast—whale-watching and the Tillamook Cheese Factory. Details upon my return (Friday). Hope everyone’s holiday has been as much fun as ours.

By now, I (and much of the Reading Public, I’m sure) have been innundated by Christmas specials on TV, at the movies, in print, and on the radio, to the point where it’s just not that special any more. These look even less special than most, and yet, morbid curiousity has seized my interest…

After a good twelve hours of sleep on Saturday night (we had a 21+ hour day, what with the travel and three-hour time change) Ed and I fortified ourselves with wonderful Pacific Northwest coffee and went out to the Columbia River Gorge with Kim and Ari.

The Columbia River divides Oregon from Washington State. Oregon, I noticed, has lightly fortified its side of the river with what appears to be a wooden palisade. There are also some monitoring or signaling devices of some sort. Clearly, they take interstate rivalry seriously here.

Our first stop was La Tournelle Falls. Mind you, this area is generously supplied with waterfalls in a dazzling variety of sizes and configurations, and La Tournelle is indeed scenic, rushing out of the conifer-frosted mountains to plummet scenically into a misty pool a few hundred feet below. Ed walked down to the bottom of the falls, and the obligatory souvenir photo was snapped. Ed’s not terribly visible in it, but the falls are lovely.

Next, we went to Multnomah Falls, which I’m told is the second-highest non-seasonal waterfall in the U. S., at 624 feet. (Presumably the largest is Niagra Falls.) Multnomah is a two-parter, with the bulk of the height in the upper falls. There’s a picturesque bridge across the break, affording one a great view of the upper falls in one direction and the Columbia River in the other. The trail up to the bridge is a bit steep, but only a fifth of a mile. It’s also more “improved,” as there is a chain and posts on the non-mountain side. Even so, it’s got a switchback or two to cover the vertical distance of 69 feet.

The trail to the upper falls is a bot more of a challenge; it’s nearly all uphill, with a generous number of switchbacks. It rises something like 550 feet in less than a mile of travel distance. Those words really don’t convey the reality of a mile hike at an uphill angle of anything from 10 to close to 30 degrees. I needed a few rest stops, but made it to the top of the falls. The trip is worth it; there’s a deep, swirling, pool surrounded by moss-covered rocks and trees. Ferns, mosses, and lichens cover every available square inch of ground and old-growth tree.

The trip back to the Multnomah lodge is mostly downhill, and affords one an excellent opportunity to contemplate what the words “temperate rainforest” really mean. Even in December, it’s green everywhere. There are dozens of varieties of moss and ferns; many of the trees look as though they’re wearing woolly green sweaters. Conifers abound, as does non-native invasive blackberry, (“It’s taking over the state,” Ari told us. “Starting with our backyard.”) and a wide variety of other plants I can’t readily identify. It was humid, but when the temperature is in the forties (Farenheit), it’s not so bad, and the walk is certain to warm one up.

A two-mile hike up a mountainside is a good way to work up an appetite, so we drove another half-hour west to the small town of Hood River, and had lunch at one of Oregon’s many microbreweries, the Full Sail Brewing Company. (Hood River is a jumping-off point for both snow and river sports, being conveniently situated betwixt the two. It is also home to the International Museum of Carousel Art, which I did not have the opportunity to visit.) The Full Sail’s pub has a limited but very vegetarian-friendly menu, and of course, at least six kinds of beer on tap. Beer is wasted on me, as my malt allergy means that beer-drinking is ill-advised on a significant scale. I did have a small sip of porter and one of amber ale, and though I know absolutely nothing about beer, I can understand why people like it. Of course, as Ed pointed out, that was the good stuff, and worlds away from, say, Coors Light.

Twilight started creeping up on us at around 4:00, and we turned ourselves around and headed back east. When we reached the Bonneville Dam and Fish Hatchery, we stopped briefly to look at the fish. There was an impressively large sturgeon—longer than Kim’s Saturn—as well as some less-impressively large sturgeon, and numerous trout, which Ed enjoyed considerably. Sturgeon are Jurassic-era fish, and definitely look the part.

Even in the last rays of the sun, the Columbia River Gorge is truly breathtaking. Craggy, conifer-and-birch(?)-covered slopes rise steeply away from the river. Domes and peaks rise into the clouds, and mist gathers in the depths of the mountains’ folds. There’s an occasional bare, vertical face of rock or landslide scar and rock pile, but overall, the landscape gives the impression of being lush and wild. The sunset peeks out above the gray, choppy river, and the clouds turn salmon, gold, and rose. Not to be missed, I assure you, should you have the opportunity.

Ed and I rolled out of bed at 3:30 AM on Christmas to head out to the airport. We were on time—even early—right up to the point where we arrived at our gate at Indianapolis International Airport.

Turns out that there was a bit of a mechanical problem with the jetway, so they had to move our plane down one gate. No problem. There was still time to board for an on-time departure. Alas, it was not to be. The plane had been on the ground overnight—with temperatures well below freezing. A member of the ground crew left the potable water valve open, and it had frozen that way. The vagaries of airplane design mean that when the potable water valve is open, the passenger compartment can’t be pressurized. And when the passenger compartment can’t be pressurized, the heat can’t be turned on.

Our 7:00 flight left at 8:30, and despite the assurances of the gate agent (“you’ll be fine; there are enough people going to Portland that that they’ll probably hold the plane for you”) we missed our connecting flight in Denver by about 30 minutes. Fortunately, we were able to get the next flight out at 12:25 PM local time and arrived in Portland only four hours late. At which point I discovered that the airport baggage handlers had ripped the seam of my suitcase.

I don’t think I’ll be collecting enough frequent flier miles on the airline in question to cash them in for anything good.

Several days ago, in passing, I encouraged the Reading Public to ask me about the Loma Prieta earthquake. Here it is.

I was living in the Sunset District of San Francisco in October of 1989. It was my freshman year of college, and I lived on campus at San Francisco State University. At 5:04 PM, when the quake hit, I was studying in my sixth-floor room. I heard a low, rumbling noise, like a very large truck going by, and then the room started shaking. I’d lived in the south part of the Bay Area for four years, so I knew what was going on. I stumbled into the door frame where I braced myself. As the building rocked, I watch the plaster in the corridor crack. It seemed to go on forever, and I looked back over my shoulder in time to see the minute change on my clock. I’d guess that I felt it for around 60 to 75 seconds, although it was probably much less than that. Cassette tapes flew out of racks, stacks of books collapsed, things on shelves rattled, and something tipped over in the closet, crashing loudly to the floor.

The dorm staff and RAs started evacuating us almost immediately. I’d sprained my knee earlier that day, and I knew I wasn’t going to get out in a hurry. Coincidentally enough, my roommate, Kelly, and I had just been to the grocery store that afternoon, so I took a few minutes to throw some bottled water, portable food, a radio and spare batteries, a sweater, my wallet, keys, a change of socks and undies, and of course, a book, into my backpack. Naturally, we were not allowed to take the elevator (I found out later that one of my pals was stuck in it) and I found myself sliding down six floors’ worth of bannisters, thanks to my bad knee. I’d say that they had everyone evacuated within ten minutes, including slow people like me.

We were herded into a parking lot, where those of us with radios promptly turned them on, hoping for news. We all knew that it was a big earthquake, but we had no idea how big, or how widespread the damage might be. The first hour or so after the quake was very confusing, especially because all the local radio stations were right in the middle of it. Because the World Series was being played in the Bay Area (San Francisco/Oakland), there were a lot of extra TV crews in town, and I’m told that just about everyone had better news coverage than we did. Reports starting pouring in later—damage to the Bay Bridge, the Cypress Structure freeway collapse, fire in the Marina District, a BART train stopped in the Trans-Bay Tube, unknown damage to the Embarcadero freeway, and so on. It began to sink in then exactly how big the quake had been. We heard estimates of everything from 6.5 to 7.3 (it was eventually declared a 7.1). Power was out (sporadically) over the most of the Bay Area.

Groups of people had managed to find each other; I was sitting with several other girls from my floor, including my roommate, who had been out at the time of the quake and also had a backpack and purse with her. Most other people who had been in their rooms weren’t so lucky; they’d rushed out without keys, shoes, or wallets. We found out that the campus was being inspected for safety—but they’d started at the end opposite from the dormitories. The sun went down, and it started to get quite chilly, as San Francisco does in October. People started fires in trash cans. Between the six or eight of us who had purses with us, we had enough for a hotel room…except that with the World Series in town, finding a hotel room–especially when public transportation was down and none of us had a car—was going to be quite the challenge. Nor had any of us been able to get to a phone (this was before cell phones were ubiquitous). We decided to wait and see if we could get back into our dorms. By 8:00, it seemed likely, although we heard that it could be another hour or two. I looked around and saw a group of students lying on their backs, pointing at the sky and scribbling in notebooks. Naturally, I looked up. Without any light pollution for fifty miles in any direction, the entirely Milky Way was visible; I saw more stars that beautifully clear night than I’ve ever seen before or since. It turned out that the prone stargazers were actually an astronomy class…and they were doing their homework.

Finally, around 9:00, I went off in search of a pay phone. I agreed to meet my pals in an hour, regardless of whether I’d found a working phone or not. After a trek across campus, to buildings that had already been inspected and declared safe, I found a trio of phone booths. Apparently only two of them were working, and the lines stretched across the quad. Fortunately, there was an entirely unattended pay phone inside one of the safe buildings. I managed to get ahold of my parents in Indianapolis by calling collect…as soon as I could get an open line. It was a fairly brief conversation, and I distinctly remember my mother telling me that because they hadn’t heard anything on the news about the University, they figured that I was OK.

By 9:45, I was back in my dorm room. It turned out that I’d been lucky; asbestos fell out of the ceiling in one of the other dorms, and the peole who lived there were given fifteen minutes to grab everything they’d need for an indefinite amount of time (it turned out to be something like a month before they could move back in). My roommate and one of her friends from the asbestos-laden dorm turned up a little while later. There was already a party in the room below us—as we sorted out our stuff and made room for my roommate’s friend, we could hear the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations,” AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long,” and Elvis’s “Shake, Rattle and Roll” through the floor. We decided not to put too much effort into cleaning up, as there were bound to be aftershocks. Instead, I went to the party downstairs and Kelly and her friend went out elsewhere.

The next day, aftershocks started early. The first large one started at about 6:00 in the morning. Kelly (who was a native Californian) woke up screaming, got dressed, and was out the door in under seven minutes. I opened one eye, decided that nothing was likely to fall on my head, and went back to sleep. Exactly ten minutes later, there was another aftershock. Again, I scanned the room briefly, and went back to sleep. Another ten minutes passed, and the strongest aftershock yet (something around a 5.0, I found out later) hit. Reluctantly, I dragged myself out of bed and into the doorframe. As soon as I was firmly wedged in place, it stopped. Disgusted, I dragged myself back to bed. Sure enough, ten minutes later there was another aftershock. Not again, I thought. Does this damned thing have a snooze alarm? I didn’t even bother to open my eyes.

We found out later the same day that campus would be closed for at least a week…including the cafeteria. Within twelve hours, campus was emptier than a Portishead concert. Kelly went home to Los Gatos, in the South Bay, which was closer to the epicenter. Everyone who lived west of the Mississippi went home, in fact. Even during the summer, there are usually a good number of people hanging around the average college campus. Of the 3000 or so people who lived on campus, there probably weren’t more than 300 left. I wasn’t particularly rattled (you’ll excuse the expression) by the actual earthquake, but the eerily deserted campus took on a Twighlight Zone gestalt.

One of my very favorite earthquake stories actually came out a couple of weeks later. I was talking to the third-floor RA, who was one of my favorite people. Her floor and the fourth floor both lagged a bit getting out during the evacuation; I expected to be one of the last people out, becaused I’d stopped to pack and I had a bad knee. I was curious as to the reason, and asked if there had been damage or injuries. She put on a wide, wicked grin and told me that she and the fourth floor RA had been in bed together at the time and hadn’t noticed the earthquake at first. I raised a skeptical eyebrow. “You didn’t notice?” I asked, dubious. “Yeah,” she replied. “I thought it was just the mattress sliding off the box spring…again.”

A few years ago, I had the Sunday night shift as an announcer at our local public radio station. Usually, I would get home between 12:30 and 1:00 AM. One year, it seemed as though all of my neighbors had decorated their yards with light-up, wire-frame reindeer. On the Sunday before Christmas, I turned into my neighborhood, and what to my wondering eyes should appear, but a panaroma of pornographic reindeer.

Apparently, our resident bored teenagers had been out earlier in the evening and rearranged everyone’s yard decor into a light-up reindeer orgy. As I drove through the winding streets of my subdivision, I noticed that they’d made excellent use of the motorized ones. In fact, a great deal of planning must have gone into it, because I didn’t see any repetition in the six or so blocks that I covered. I was laughing so hard that I had to slow the car down to a crawl for safety reasons.

Unfortunately, I neglected to take pictures, and when I got up the next morning the reindeer porn had vanished. The next year, everyone went in for giant inflatable decorations…which were, I noticed, exceptionally well-secured.

David joins the yarinareth family of blogs! Perhaps he can be persuaded to post the dragon’s grammar lesson, if he still has it. (Hint, hint) (NB The Cave Linguistica post is not to be missed.)

Dear Friends, Family, and Casual Passers-By,

2004 was a memorable year for us, although not necessarily one we’d like to repeat any time soon. The Great Appliance Plague claimed our refrigerator, stove, water heater, washing machine, garbage disposal, and a television. (Li is firmly convinced that the Accidental Microwave Fire of ‘01 was actually a good move, as we got that one appliance replacement out of the way ahead of time.) We are currently taking entries in the Death Pool for our dishwasher. We also lost one of our mature trees to a high wind, although we were lucky in that there was no collateral damage.

Ed started his first full week of work at Netfor in January, while Li was between contracts. Fortunately, she ended up writing a software manual in February, and went on to land an 18-month contract at a large pharmaceutical company in Indianapolis in March. Both of them are happy to be employed. Li took several classes in both manual and computer graphics, and is enjoying the opportunity to expand her creative horizons.

Summer was a very exciting time for us, surprising Li’s mom and uncle with early birthday parties/family reunion. Li’s brother, Ari, and his girfriend, Kim, made the long trek back east to join us. Li’s mom was utterly speechless for longer than anyone can remember, and some of the attendees have long memories. All in all, it was a great success, and we were thrilled to finally meet Kim. As the year draws to a close, Li and Ed will be stabbing westward to visit them the fair City of Roses.

We hope you’ve all had a fun and productive year, and that the next one is even more so.

Best wishes,

Ed & Li