T1B

Had a couple of hours to kill in North Portland (wait, I used the word "kill" in the same sentence as North Portland? At least Derron thinks I'm funny), and had a bicycle, and a mediocre cell phone cam, so what the heck.

Early in the ride, I went around the back side of Portland International Raceway, and since it was a Wednesday, the car meet was starting to get going, before the Wednesday Night Drags started. On a good day, they expect about 1500 show cars. It's not a tightly organized event, doesn't cost anything to get in the parking lot (you have to pay a few bucks to get in the drags), they have a band, and food and booze.





The McLaren is cool.




Back side of Hayden Island (Columbia river)




Behind the house in the middle, is the top of Mt St Helens




Right at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia. Couple of big ships coming upriver.






Looking upstream on the Columbia, Mt Hood in the background (tried to keep the dudes out of the pic, but they wouldn't cooperate)




Wish it zoomed more -- might have to bring a proper camera one of these days. There were quite a few hotties, but I was out for a relaxing bike ride, and thought a fistfight with a pissed off boyfriend would detract from that. Sorry.





No, it wasn't snowing. Cottonwood trees.




Celebrating 125 years of IKYABWAI





The Columbia Slough, a rather stagnant and nasty body of water.





Then, I was pretty much back where I started.

Rack the PET.

Very scenic and pretty area. How often is it blue sky and sunny? I would move there.

trev wrote:Very scenic and pretty area. How often is it blue sky and sunny? I would move there.

This time of year, it's clear and sunny every day -- that's actually "cloudy" for July. In January -- not very often. And that scenic and pretty area (which it is), is all shipping ports and industry. The neighborhoods nearest there are some of the shittiest in Portland (even had a broad-daylight drive-by a couple of days ago).

Papa Willie wrote:Those people swimming are cold. I know they are. Pretty pix, Dins.

At the mouth of the Willamette (where the chicks are), water temp is 68-69 right now. Columbia hits low-to-mid 70's by late summer. It was about 80 out. Wading out a bit like that ain't so bad, swimming isn't too safe. Some Russian dude found a funky undertow at that very spot last year, and the sturgeon ate well.

But the salmon don't bite as well when the water gets warm like that.

My pics of the Honda port sucked, so I didn't post them. But all of the Japanese-made Hondas (cars) come to a freaking huge lot that's "next door" to the park where I took most of the pics. Too bad, because it always shocks me how many cars are there waiting to be shipped. Lot is probably 300 yards or so wide, and about a mile long, usually pretty full. They have these cool newfangled train cars for them, which have these weird rail system thingies, and they go from car to car (I think, I've never seen it very close up), so they can load them all from one place, quite quickly. Sometimes I see literally miles of railcars loaded with Hondas.

Toyota's import dock is just upriver. I can often get a sense (at least in my mind) of how the economy is doing -- if Toyota and Honda's import yards are full, things are going OK. Fuckers were about empty in 2008. Toyota has a pretty small yard (relatively speaking), so they keep them going through pretty quickly, and they only have room for one ship at a time.

I like my swimming water warm -- 90 is fine. Which is probably why I don't go in the ocean, which might be 63 (depending where on the coast). That, and there's the shark and jellyfish thing -- the ocean creeps me out. So I might go fishing on it next week.

The nice thing about the Portland area, is you have recreation like this so close by. Those areas are a bit away from the hoody crime areas, but never far from it.

Celebrating 125 years of IKYABWAI






Even though it may be at my expense, I laffed. Hard.