Category: All (-ish)

My friend Kelly lives in Vancouver which is all the way on the other side of the Columbia River. However, since the move, I live much closer to her. We decided to do a bike ride in the great city of Vancouver.

On the way to the bridge I rode past a long line of trees and sidewalk between Delta Park (the race track) and the Expo Center. This is a long expanse of road and sidewalk where almost no one walks.

As I rode along, I head a bird angerly chirriping at me. Suddenly, to my left, the bird puffed up, stood and attempted to scare me off. I could see she had a nest full of eggs, just sitting out in the open. On the way back, I stopped by and took these pictures.

While the area doesn’t have much foot traffic, I don’t think those eggs were long for this world. Much too much exposed.

I rode over the bridge, on the correct side this time, and through Vancouver. Esther Short Park is quite lovely and there is a huge brick Catholic Church to see too.

Kelly and I had a lovely egg and cheese bake/fruit salad/toast for breakfast and set off on our bikes. We rode through more neighborhood to get to the Discovery Trail which is a lovely urban trail. It was a beautiful day, and there weren’t many people out. We rode for about two hours at a leisurely pace and the sun was so welcome.

It was a good ride back and the next day I was exhausted. But pleasantly so.

A verdant meadow full of wildflowers far out in the country, away from the hustle and bustle of the city? Nope. This meadow is right next to the Steel Bridge on my commute to work every day. Lovely.

One of my goals this year was to reread the Harry Potter series before the last book comes out. I did this because, frankly, I forgot what happens in each book and I’m not a huge fan of the movies (I’ve only seen 1 and the DVD extras of 3) so things aren’t really solidified in my mind. I decided to read one per month which would have me finishing in June.

“What are you going to do for the rest of June and most of July?” asked Matt. We were arguing about whose reading schedule was better. I told him I would review.

I’m really glad I reread everything because I didn’t really remember much of the second book and only a little of the fourth book. The third book was less murky for me because I saw parts of the movie, but most of that was pretty unfamiliar too. Still, even with all of my reviewing, I got to the part in the sixth book when the big spider dies, and there was a reference to an earlier book when Ron and Harry encountered it. I had no idea what she was talking about. But I’ve got a good foundation for the last book.

Without further ado here are my predictions for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

This assumes you have either read all six books or don’t really care if you find anything out.

•We will spend 80% of the book thinking that Snape is evil, and 15% wondering if he might be good and 5% finding out that he is good. Although he did KILL Dumbledore. So this might be way off.

•One of the Weasley’s will die. There are just too many of them. They can’t all be in mortal peril forever. I’m guessing Charlie as he has been in Romania for the entire series and we haven’t gotten attached to him.

•Dumbledore is dead, but will advise/aid Harry in some way.

•Harry will die, and even though this will be tragic and sad, it will make for a somewhat tear sodden happy ending.

•If Harry doesn’t die, he will defeat Voldemort and become a quiddich player.

From “Eat, Pray, Love” by Elizabeth Gilbert.

The following morning, I arrive right on time for the 4:00 AM meditation session which always starts the day here. We are meant to sit for an hour in silence, but I log the minutes as if they are miles—sixty brutal miles that I have to endure. By mile/minute fourteen, my nerves have started to go, my knees are breaking down and I’m overcome with exasperation. Which is understandable, given that the conversations between me and my mind during meditation go something like this:

Me: OK, we’re going to meditate now. Let’s draw our attention to our breath and focus on the mantra. Om Namah Shivaya. Om Namah Siv—

Mind: I can help you out with this, you know!

Me: OK good, because I need your help. Let’s go. Om Namah Shivaya. Om Namah Shi—

Mind: I can help you think of nice meditative images. Like—hey, here’s a good one. Imagine you are temple. A temple on an island! And the island is in the ocean!

Me: Oh, that is a nice image.

Mind: Thanks. I thought of it myself.

Me: But what ocean are we picturing here?

Mind: The Mediterranean. Imagine you’re one of those Greek islands, with an old Greek temple on it. No, never mind, that’s too touristy. You know what? Forget the ocean. Oceans are too dangerous. Here’s a better idea—imagine you’re an island in lake, instead.

Me: Can we meditate now, please? Om Namah Shiv—

Mind: Yes! Definitely! But try not to picture that the lake is covered with…what are those things called—

Me: Jet Skis?

Mind: Yes! Jet Skis! Those things consume so much fuel! They’re really a menace to the environment. Do you know what else uses a lot of fuel? Leaf blowers. You wouldn’t think so, but—

Me: OK, but let’s MEDITATE now, please? Om Namah—

Mind: Right! I definitely want to help you meditate! And that’s why we’re going to skip the image of an island on a lake or an ocean, because that’s obviously not working. So let’s imagine that you’re an island in…a river!

Me: Oh, you mean like Bannerman Island, in the Hudson River?

Mind: Yes! Exactly! Perfect. Therefore, in conclusion, let’s meditate on this image—envision that you are an island in a river. All the thoughts that float by as you’re meditating, these are just the river’s natural currents and you can ignore them because you are an island.

Me: Wait, I thought you said I was a temple.

Mind: That’s right, sorry. You’re a temple on an island. In fact, you are both the temple and the island.

Me: Am I also the river?

Mind: No, the river is just the thoughts.

Me: Stop! Please stop! YOU’RE MAKING ME CRAZY!!!!

Mind (wounded): Sorry. I was only trying to help.

Me: Om Namah Shivaya…Om Namay Shivaya…Om Namah Shivaya.

Here there is a promise eight-second pause in thoughts. But then—

Mind: Are you mad at me now?

–and then with a big gasp, like I am coming up for air, my mind wins, my eyes fly open and I quit. In tears. An ashram is supposed to be a place where you come to deepen your meditation, but this is a disaster. The pressure is too much for me. I can’t do it. But what should I do? Run out of the temple crying after fourteen minutes, every day?

page 134

What’s your theological worldview?
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What’s your theological worldview?
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The other morning the sun was shining in Teacher John’s classroom, and his mobiles of origami made this great shadow on the wall.

Rob Sheffield
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pg. 29
I had never made out, smoked, drank, broken a law, set fire to a car, vandalized a cemetery, or worn socks that matched. But I had the passion for rock and roll; I was a regular Dr. Johnny Fever in the body of a Les Nessman. Nobody could truly understand my quest to rock—except maybe Annie, my favorite Solid Gold dancer. I was totally clueless about social interaction, and completely scared of girls. All I knew was that music was going to make girls fall in love with me.
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pg. 90
I was still serfing away at grad school. My friends and I assumed that we would soon be tenured professors, which is an excellent life goal—it’s like planning to be Cher. You think, I’m going to wear beads and fringed gowns, and sing “Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves” on the way to work every morning, and then one day, I’m going to get a call saying, “Congratulations! You’re Cher! Can you make it to Vegas by showtime?
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pg 214
There’s a lot I miss about the nineties. It was an open, free time of possibilities, changes we thought were permanent. It seemed inconceivable that things would ever go back to the way they were in the eighties, when monsters were running the country and women were only allowed to play bass in indie-rock bands. The nineties moment has been stomped over so completely, it’s hard to imagine it ever happened, much less that is lasted fix, six, seven years. Remember Brittany Murphy, the funny, fizzy-hared, Mentos-loving dork in Clueless? By 2002, she was the hood ornament in 8 Mile, just another skinny starlet, an index of everything we’ve lost in that time.
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When Avril Lavigne sings “Sk8tr Boi,” a song about how lucky she is to wait backstage for her rock boy, how is anybody supposed to remember that the Avril Lavignes of yesteryear were sold pop fantasies in which they had a place onstage, too? (“Sk8tr Boi” is a great song, too—which is part of the reason why there’s nothing simple about these questions.) Something was happening in nineties music that isn’t happening anywhere in pop culture these days, with women making noise in public ways that seem distant now. Nirvana brought mass appeal back to guitar rock, and the mass appeal made the bands braver—some of them even had something to say about the real world, which is way more than anybody has a right to expect from musicians. A kind of popular song existed that didn’t before and doesn’t any more, as arty guitar bands sized the moment to communicate with huge numbers of fans and go to extremes and indulge their appalling drug-addled muses and say dangerous or dumb things and expand the emotional/musical languages with which people communicated.
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I remember the summer of 1996, at a drunken wedding with one of my professors, a Hendrix-freak baby boomer, when he was complaining about the “bullet-in-the-head rock and roll” the kids were listening to today, and he asked Renee, “What does rock and roll have today that it didn’t have in the sixties?” Renee said, “Tits” which in retrospect strikes me as not a bad one-word off-the-dome answer at all. The nineties fad for indie rock overlapped precisely with the nineties fad for feminism. The idea of a pop culture that was pro-girl, or even just not anti-girl—that was a 1990s mainstream dream, rather than a 1980s or 2000s one, and it was real for a while. Music was not just part of it but leading the way—hard to believe, hard to even remember. But some of us do.

The Bike Project:
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In which I attempt to ride all the yellow, green, blue & purple streets on the Bike There Bike Map while increasing strength, stamina, aerobic capacity and exploring Portland’s Nooks and Crannies.
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Day 20
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Weather: A bit windy and threatening to rain. Very grey
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Ride Average Speed: 11.2 mph
Time: 1h 14m
Distance: 13.90 miles
Best Pace: 2:21
Best Speed: 25.4
Calories: 563
Rest Time: 1.35
Rest Distance: 0
Total: 1h 16m
Average Heart Rate: NA
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The Ride:
Lombard & Denver
N on Denver
R Jantzen Beach
Over the bridge to Washington
Turn around and come back
R on Marine Drive
L on Portland Road
L on unnamed bike path by Triangle Lake
R on Denver to start
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I wanted to test ride over the bridge to Washington, something I knew could be done, but I had never done before. Then I wanted to make a big old square and take out a long purple bike path that I had never done before. The directions to are somewhat vague because the map didn’t really have names for a lot of these streets/paths/interchanges.
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How did I do?
· Bike Riding in North Portland is a study in contrasts. I rode on a lovely neighborhood street to an industrial slew to a huge shopping megalopolis to a sidewalk on an Interstate bridge to a beautiful bike path on the Columbia River to a beautiful bike path surrounded by railroads and auto wrecking yards to another bike path that took me past the waste water treatment plant then a golf course.

· The ride up Denver to Marine Drive is a bit marshy. This makes for very pretty viewing of grasses and birds etc., juxtaposed with highway noise.

· The route over the bridge is incredibly not peaceful. All those cars whizzing by are unsettling, even if they are on the other side of the barrier. Also the bike lane/pedestrian path is a bit skinny. I inadvertently ended up on the west side of the bridge (riding against traffic) and I’m glad that no bikers were going the other way. Going back, I poked around figured out the way to get on the East side path so next time I will at least be riding with traffic.

Glorious Bicycling Moments/Neat Things:
· The sign on the Marine Drive Bike Path near the Expo Center says: “Welcome to the Peninsula. Gateway to Nature.” I laughed a little because the Peninsula, like many slough-y areas, has been a bit of a dumping ground, historically. Hence the reason I rode past a waste water treatment plant, and a lovely marshy area has an Auto Wrecking yard in the font of it. However, right before I got to the auto wrecking yard, I came upon a fellow biker who was very quietly following two geese and their goslings. We both followed them as they waddled along the bike path. Only when they turned off into the grass did I pass them.
· Other bird sightings: Two yellow birds flew along in front of me for about a quarter of a mile before they turned off. I interrupted a dove resting on the path and also maybe a killdeer? I’m such an ornithologist.

· Just past the wastewater treatment plant the bike path suddenly opens up and voila! Golf Course. Portland International Raceway is in the background.
· Just after turning onto Denver there was a pile of garbage, but on the top was a ball peen hammer! I stopped and grabbed it. Free ball peen hammer! Excellent ride bonus!