The Peninsula Park Pedal Picnic, that is. An event I am helping to organize as part of Pedalpalooza. But first, the BLOCK PARTY:
next Saturday June 5: our block (NE 18th Av between Wygant and Going, a block south of Alberta) is having a BLOCK PARTY. Starting around 4:00 PM, bring food for potluck (and there will be grills to toss grillable food onto) or bring a homemade PIE, as there will be a PIE CONTEST! A neighbor's band will play too, and there may be a Tuba/Clarinet combo! Oh, and there's gonna be homemade ICE CREAM to go with the pie!
Second (but not least!)
the **PENINSULA PARK PEDAL PICNIC**
on Friday June 11 from 5:30 to 9:00 PM at the Peninsula Park picnic pavilion (N. Ainsworth and N. Albina, on the west side of the park just north of the rose garden.) This is gonna be a big blast of a picnic (Bring your own food but feel free to share!) for all ages! Kicking off Pedalpalooza, with CLOWNS ON BIKES, a family Biking Demo, kids' bike-helmet giveaway, music, games, YEEE-HAW!! BE there!
Oh so much more I could write about right now. Big stuff, little stuff, all kinds of stuff. Stay tuned.
The final 3 entries from my recent bike tour.
Monday May 10, 2004: "Today's Journal Entry"
Today I went up this big hill, then down the other side, then up another hill and down it, then up this other hill? You know? And then there were these other hills after that and this one really steep one, but after that it was level for awhile and a friendly grinning local coming out of a hamburger stand yelled as i rode by "Hey, still pumpin' away! I seen ya awhile back on the road!" but then there was another few hills with a few level stretches and on one a pair of vicious dogs chased me for 50 yards and almost got run over by a car, then there was a super long hill that got real steep in the middle part but finally it leveled out and went down again for a long ways to this weird town full of old people and hillbillies in overalls. [Ed. note: Shelton, WA, pop. 8600, seat of Mason County, "Christmas Tree Town, USA", company town almost wholly dependent on Simpson Timber Company, who many decades ago signed an exclusive and unprecendented lease on several hundred square miles of Olympic National Forest known as the "Shelton Sustained Yield Unit" but which has now been entirely logged over.]
Coming out of that town was a steep hill and after that there were some smaller little hills for a few miles, then another super long hill, then sometimes there would be, like, a hill that you'd go up and over and down and then it would be flat, like along a stream maybe, but then it would go up again. And other times it would be a curving stretch of hill going up around the side of a little ridge then swooping down and curving around the head of the ravine but then go right back up again. Then towards the end of the day it was pretty level for a few miles, just some little ups and downs, then there was one last steep hill but it wasn't super long and it went down further on the other side to where I'm staying the night.
[Ed. note: Elma, WA, small, tidy town midway between Centralia and Aberdeen, in a hostel run by a friendly couple named Jay and Linda Kemp. From here, the author plans to ride east to Centralia (birthplace of his brother and sister) then south on rural roads to Kelso, across the Great River into Oregon and down Highway 30 to Portland, arriving home sometime Thursday, May 13, 2004.]
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Wednesday May 12, 2004: Mad Dogs
On my entire tour last year I don't recall having once been chased by dogs. Seems incredible, but true. Now I seem to be making up for it all at once. I was chased at least 12 times by dogs today. Chased? Attacked is more like it, though only one actually made contact with me. I discovered after awhile that most of them turn tail abruptly if I yell "Git!" in a really loud surly voice. I intend them no malice, after all they are just dogs, but that's precisely the point. I love dogs but they are basically witless pack animals who sometimes only respond to extreme verbal expressions of seeming displeasure. Particularly if they are owned by witless yokels who let them run amuck along busy roads. Have you ever heard of a cat going nuts and running snarling after a passing stranger? Case closed, cats are better than dogs. Sorry Max and Tucker.
In Centralia I happened upon a house completely surrounded by large art objects made from various reused things, from giant rebar to enormous carved chunks of flotation styrofoam. I was so fascinated I entered the yard and met the owner/artist, who gave me a tour. The most fascinating piece (of many) was an assemblage of large pieces of some kind of broken structural plastic, built up into a sort of tower and held together by cord tied at all angles from one part of it to another. Very hard to describe but the impression is of a strange big architectural model that holds itself together in defiance of physics. Other pieces were more straightforward, some were silly (like a woman made out of old mop heads.) All in all though it took me about 20 seconds to decide the guy is a genius.
I camped in a non-sanctioned spot at the edge of Lewis and Clark State Park north of Toledo. I never heard that they made it up into here, but maybe. The main feature is a nice bit of old-growth forest, basically the only remaining in the entirety of southwest Washington outside the Cascades (and not much there.) The rest is all clearcuts, farms, pastures, and vast realms of second or third growth. Some older second growth can be very nice but nothing compares to real deal old growth.
The forest. The forest. The forest.
When it's all said and done, isn't that why we live in the Northwest?
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Thursday May 13, 2004: Roadside Attractions
I'm back in Portland now. Total mileage 430.29.
The ride from Lewis and Clark State Park south to Kelso-Longview was mostly a quiet idyll of non I-5 country roads and little towns you always see the signs for but never go into like Toledo and Castle Rock. Nice little places (if you get away from the freeway interchanges) and lots of interesting history. Just south of Toledo is where settlers met in 1851 to petition congress to create a separate Washington Territory. Back then the area was a rich mix of deep forest and prarie openings and even oak woods, the latter two being almost entirely extirpated.
Of all the areas I traversed on this trip I am surprised to find that my favorite has been southwest Washington: from south of Shelton down thru the hills to Elma, along the Chehalis River to Centralia, over the hills to Toledo and on down the Cowlitz River valley to Kelso. Quiet, forests and small farms, half-forgotten but decent little towns, rabid dogs. I tell you though, the people out there are not trophy-home exurbanites. Most of that stretch struck me as more Appalachian than Appalachia. Real backwoodsy. Jerry rigged shack homes, mold-streaked trailer houses, yards full of junk cars, little garden plots, pastures with 4 cows. Lots of that sort of thing. Lots of moneyed looking places too, but a world away from Portland and Seattle. What a strange divide it is
between the cities and the nearby hinterlands that are the actual land and environment of the region.
Rich the yard-artist in Centralia told me this: take a sip of water at least every 15 minutes to determine if you are really thirsty. Don't wait until you are thirsty, because keeping hydrated is the key to maintaining the body and the body is the where the emotions are felt, and you need to be as aware of them as possible, because mostly they arise without our awareness and if we don't take care of the body they will go awry and we will get a false sense of who we are, and we need to be able to feel truly and to be open to what comes at us. I paraphrase, but that's the gist.
From Longview I rode across the high narrow (almost harrowing) Lewis and Clark Bridge to Rainier, then turned south/east on Highway 30 and made it to a tiny public campground at the edge of the Scappoose airfield. Has trees though and only charges 5 bucks for cyclists.
I need a professional massage. Like for real.
A couple more entries from my recent bike trip.
Friday May 7, 2004:Fortress Washington
Today I rode past Whidbey Island Naval Air Station and boarded the Keystone/Port Townsend ferry next to 115 year old Fort Casey, which was obsolete before World War Two when its big Seattle-defending guns were recycled as scrap metal (problem was, their range was less than that of potential attacking Japanese battleships, thus they were useless.) I'm spending the night at Fort Worden, now a State Park with a campground and a hostel and another set of old concrete bunkers. Just down the road is Old Fort Townsend, built to defend against possible attacks by natives. South and east a bit across Hood Canal is Bangor, home to Trident nuclear missile launching submarines. Across Kitsap Peninsula from there is the Bremerton Naval Shipyard, and north from there along the east side of Puget Sound is the Everett Navy Homeport. Down the sound and inland a few miles from Tacoma are Fort Lewis and McChord Air Force Base. Whatever else it may be (pretty, lush, "liberal") western Washington is armed to the teeth. In fact it could be said to be a major military center of the American empire. But at least when the bases become obsolete they make great public parks. It's not very PC, but old forts and bunkers make great places for kids to run around in and imagine battle scenes. I spent my whole childhood doing that sort of thing. Funny thing, if I had kids I'd want to instill values of non-militarism in them, certainly would not want them "playing army" and yet I grew up for years on and around army bases and for most of elementary school our main form of play was pretending to fight pitched battles, kill and be killed. But I guess childish play is one thing, adult pathology is another.
The ferry Quinalt that i rode from Keystone to Port Townsend was built in 1927 and still runs on the same motors. They were built by General Electric.
Port Townsend is that rare tourist tow that actually has some taste. Or anyway is slightly upscale. There are several good quality book stores and an old movie theater that shows decent films. The town intended way back to be the main city of Washington but it was a pipedream based on the wish that a railroad would build its terminus here. None did but there's still a nice collection of Victorian buildings.
The hostel has an old piano, an unexpected surprise and enough to momentarily satisfy my craving for making melodies and chords.
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Saturday May 8, 2004: Fjord Country
Jeez but its hard to get away from the world. Everywhere i turn, headlines about abuses of the most grotesque variety. Could things get any worse, just in general? Meanwhile minor frustrations like my new clip-on sunglasses (to replace the other new ones I absentmindedly lost) breaking and I have to repair them with super-glue. Or the headwind kicks in at precisely the moment I start up a long climb (Mount Walker grade on 101.) Or the rain starts in again just when i want to start making supper. It's easy to get frustrated at little things but when I find that happening I say hey, this is just a physical event. Frustration or upset only exists in my head. It's all life, one way or the other.
Satisfaction isn't meant to be reserved for certain special moments. A long ride gives you a lot of time to either be in your head or actually experience what's going on, take it all as it comes and notice what you're experiencing.
Oh Yeah, Hood Canal, the fjord I mentioned. It is a long glacially carved arm of inland sea just east of the Olympic mountains. Along with Puget sound, it is what makes the Olympic Penninsula a penninsula. Speaking of penninsulas, and completely off topic, if you live in Portland make sure to come to the Penninsula Park Pedal Picnic, Friday June 11, 5 to 9 PM. It's an event I am helping to organize, and it is gonna be a blast. Besides just being a potluck picnic hoo-ha, it is a big event for the kids and families. There's going to be a family biking demo, a free kids' helmet giveaway by the city, clowns on bikes, and (yes) much more. Fun for the whole family! You'll hear more about it, believe me.
Hmm... where was I. Yeah, Hood Canal. The Seattle Times (or was it the P.I.?) had a big feature the other day about how all fishing in it has been suspended and it is in major decline just in the past several years, from a combination of human sewage (too many septic systems and too many new homes near it,) agricultural runoff, and rotting chum salmon from carcasses harvested for just their roe and tossed back. The latter problem is fairly easy to take care of (find a market for the salmon themselves) but the others are toughies. Too bad because this place is a treasure. Sitting here on the banks of the Dosewallips, with Mount Constance rising 7,000 feet above me to the left and the little river delta and Hood Canal a quarter mile to my right and the phantasmogoric green
jungle all around, where else is quite like this? Southeast Alaska I suppose. Which may be my next big trip. Itching for that one for years.
I am addicted to milkshakes. I am addicted to milkshakes. I am addicted. To milkshakes.
I'm back now but since I was unable to post to the blog while on the tour (except for the first couple entries,) I will post several of the Journal entries at a time here. Enjoy.
Wednesday May 5, 2004: Ode to Bellingham.
Well, friends, its been nice knowing ya, I'm moving to Bellingham. Not too big, not too small, not too yuppie, not too redneck, not too frigid, not too hot, not too cocaine, not too pot, not too noisy, not too hushed, not too sober, not too lush, not too brain, not too brawn, not too garden, not too lawn, not too Fight Club, not too Disney, not too shotgun, not too frisbee, not too head trip, not too baptist, not too put you on my black list, not too cedar not too hemlock, not too kool-aide, tea, or time-clock, not too pitcher, not too pint, not too sunset, not too light, not too sluggish, not too fast, not too fortresses of glass, not too ...
Okay, maybe you get the picture. Today was my kind of bike-touring day. 32 miles, fair skies, leisurely perusal of small but intriguing city, now camped in cedary woods of Larabee State Park, relaxing on a litle cove beach looking out to the lowering sun and the San Juan Islands. What else could I ask for?
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Thursday May 6, 2004: Oyster Mania.
How is it I've never before now spent anything more than a day trip in this corner of Washington? Well, I guess I'm making up for it. Today was another mid-30's mileage day, it looks as though almost the whole trip will be like that, which is fine by me.
Lots of views to islands and water and snowy mountains today. Also oil refineries, there's been several so far and I even took a nice picture of the one by Birch Bay. Hideous, sure, but also beautiful in the manner of a strange artifact or archaeological remnant (see it now while it is still belching steam and flames and its civilization is still lurching. Heck, its like seeing a functioning Roman aquaduct in 320 AD.)
Sure are a lot of tribal casinos up here; although personally I think casino culture is repugnant I have no problem with the tribes taking money from dumb white people (or dumb people of any color.) We took Lummi Island and everything else from them. Lummi Island is a big forested hump-backed whale of an island just northwest of Bellingham, sacred to the Lummi Tribe. I once picked up a Lummi guy hitchhiking at the edge of Portland who told me that his grandpa had been robbed of his place on Lummi. Grandpa may not have had title, but titles are a strange invention and convention of civilization. Not that I wouldn't like to have title to a little place of my own. Or at least some mode of ownership rather than tenancy. Doesn't have to be a trophy home. A place in a tribe, more like it. But I digress.
Did you know that the oysters you eat probably come from cultivated beds in Padilla Bay, a rich estuary in the Skagit River Delta shore? The Skagit is the master stream of the North Cascades, and all that mineralized high mountain silt gets deposited (or did moreso before Diablo and Ross dams) and mixed with the muck of decaying vegetation; and a gazillion little creatures like oysters, clams, phyto and zoo-plankton and crabs and every species of bird you can think of, all LOVE it and thrive there, and like all estuaries (where fresh and saltwater environments intermingle) it is the richest ecosystem ANYwhere. Or was before they harvested the native Olympia oyster to near extinction by the 1920's and built all those pulp mills and the dikes to "reclaim" the delta lands and grow tulips and cows (both of which are beautiful, don't get me wrong) and houses and people and refineries. So they introduced the Pacific Oyster from Asia, and cultivate it in enormous beds that look like furrows of a muddy farm field when the tide is out across the delta mud flats. Interesting stuff, I think. But oh, so much beauty remains. Look, over there: Mount Baker rising 10,000 ice-encased feet above the cows (it is "pound for pound" the iciest mountain in America, completely sheathed on all sides by glacial ice), and over there: the San Juans, and the Olympics too for heaven's sake, and right here a hawk on a telephone wire just staring at me (or past me to a tasty mouse) and a red winged blackbird chasing a crow 3 times his size.
Staying the night at Deception Pass park. Deception Pass is the narrow passageway between Fidalgo and Whidbey Islands, and the tidal currents churn through it like a great river.
(I probably will not be able to post these entries to the blog daily. If you want a more regular update, click on "Join the mailinglist.")
Sometime I want to spend a long time in and around Vancouver, BC but this visit is just a stop before heading south again. My first time here was when I was 5 and our family drove up from Seattle for a soccer meet. My main memory is of wandering out of the hotel room to explore and then finding myself locked out. I think a maid let me back in, lesson learned about how hotel room doors are always locked.
Approaching the city from the border was a drama of jagged peaks rising directly above apartment towers, ragged grey clouds, a sea lion on a rock beside the tracks. All the northwest cities are lucky in their geography but Vancouver is like an exclamation point: both more urban and closer to jaw-dropping wildness than either Portland or Seattle. All the tendencies of density juxtaposed with nature that the other cities aspire to, taken to the extreme.
I mean really, this place is pretty incredible to a humble Portlander or Seattleite. So vastly many apartment towers, a veritable Manhatten of them, but somehow it works. They aren't afraid of density here and what they've ended up with is appealing in a hyper-urban way.
Oh, and then there's Stanley Park. Every city wants one, only Portland has something analagous in Forest Park. And the mountains looming right over there where they ought to be, next to town instead of 40 miles away.
And no urban freeways. I repeat: no urban freeways. Ponder on that for a moment, think how much freer a city can be without those noisesome barriers snaking through it, cutting off the best parts. A city can be a city, grow inwardly to its full potential.
Oh, and it is a different country. No Bush regime. I repeat: no Bush regime and all the badness that implies. And the candy bars are all different. I'm dismayed to find that the Cadbury Wunderbar, my erstwhile favorite Canadian candy bar, has changed from something like a soft chewy butterfinger to a little Rolo style thing with hardly any filling. I don't get it.
There's downsides to Vancouver too of course. All that glitz can get tiresome, and there's seaminess that makes lower Burnside look like a
model street. I don't recommend the hostel I'm staying in (Cambie Hostel)
if you have a bike. There's nowhere to store it except up the stairs in your cramped dorm room. The place does have a certain rickety skid-road kind of charm. Not enough shabby old hotels anymore but Vancouver seems to have a few.
Sad news for fans of independent radical bookstores: venerable collective-run bookstore Spartacus and the rest of the building it was in burned to the ground last week. They did not have fire insurance because rates went up so much after 9/11, so it is a total loss.
Did you know that 40,000 hospital workers are on strike in BC? That's right, 40,000.
It's a nice sunset as i sit here on the sandy beach between Burrard Bridge and Stanley Park.
Well, I'm en route via train to Vancouver, BC. Got my bike with me and the plan is to ride south. Ideally all the way back to Portland, although the weather forecast is for lots of rain this week so if it is too miserable I'll do a shorter version. I had a lifetime's worth of sodden touring last year. But that trip was capital-G GREAT no matter what the weather on any given day, and now I'm jonesin' to get out again. So here I am. yee haw! I may not be able to post directly to the website this time so if you want emailed journal updates click on the "Join the Maininglist" link.
Yesterday i rode 36 miles in and around Seattle and out to Issaquah, a nice little town at the base of Tiger Mountain and dozens of miles of trails that saved my soul back in the day. Visited my friend Matt Gould and his wife Jeni and their 19 day old firstborn, a beautiful girl named Monica Rose. Impossible to be jaded in the presence of a new human being like that.
Now visiting with old friend David Mello and his partner Keiko Welch. Dave is an award winning photographer, he had resisted going digital but has just purchased a pro-quality Canon digital SLR and 300 mm zoom lens. Dave has some flower portaits that ought to be in a calendar. He brings a unique artfulness to every subject he chooses. He can capture people in a way that could replace a lengthy novel.