Portland. Part One.

As I walked off the plane in Portland, Or, I could hear folk acoustic guitar being played across the terminal, saw a Columbia store and a coffee shop down the hall, and knew I was hooked on Portland before even leaving the airport. The love affair with this Pacific Northwest city continued to grow more and more each day.

It began with stop at the famous Powell Books in the Pearl District to replace the travel guides my adventure buddy Andrew left on the plane. A Half Price Books on steroids, Powell's has three levels of used books for nerds like me to peruse. They had a great Spanish section that made me realize I need to start practicing my Spanish before heading to Guadalajara at the end of the summer. Books replaced, we continued a tour of the Pearl District, which reminded me of the urban renewal of Milwaukee's third ward -- a former industrial area whose warehouses have been converted to boutique shops and lofted condos with garden roofs. That much admiration worked up an appetite, so we stopped at Deschutes Brewery for local beer flights and a bite to eat (they even had two vegetarian options not including appetizers). While trekking through the Pearl district we stumbled upon Cupcake Jones, grabbed Pumpkin Pie and Red Velvet Cupcakes, and went out in search of a coffee shop. Coffee shops are abundant in Portland, unless it's quarter to nine and you want to avoid a Starbucks in hopes of patronizing a local establishment. We were in luck. Although the little french cafe we went into was about to close their kitchen they brewed us two espressos and let us enjoy the Portland weather outside at their sidewalk tables.

Evidence of the friendly and generous nature of Portlanders continued to become evident at nearly every turn. Exhibit number one is Steve. We met Steve through Brian, a friend of Andrew’s, at a small bar a couple miles from the one-step-up-from-hostel- style hotel we called home for four days. Steve heard us talking about renting bikes to roam around the city and, no questions asked, offered us a couple of bikes to borrow for a few days. To my surprise, he didn’t flake out when we called the next day. In fact, he did the opposite of flake out. He had two awesome bikes waiting for us, helmets and locks, and spent about an hour mapping out routes for us. Before we picked up the bikes, we made it downtown to the Wednesday afternoon farmer’s market. For as many people flocking to the booths you’d think it was a Saturday, but once you tried the produce, you’d know why they were there. The hood strawberries may be the best thing I ate this entire trip, and the lavender jam was an unexpected delight. I fell so much in love with the farmer’s market that when I got back to Butler, I went to the Monday farmer’s market today (a good effort, and hopefully a good start to something larger, but definitely lacking in comparison to Portland).

The first stop on Steve’s route was Alberta Street. We passed the Community Cycling Center, where Brian works, and stopped at Random Order to pose as typical Portlanders looking busy in a coffee house and indulge in tasty chai paired with homemade granola (next time I'm there I have to try the pies, they looked amazing, but didn't seem like the right fuel for a days worth of biking ahead). An unexpected adventure awaited us outside when we went back to our bikes. Andrew’s back tire was flat. Luckily we were two short blocks from the cycling center (every town should be so lucky as to have a community cycling center. The work that the center does is phenomenal, and includes refurbishing bikes for the kids and running summer camps and workshops). This happy detour landed us a tour of the center’s shop and sent us on our merry way with a new tire in less than a half hour for less than $25 bucks. Our next stop was a fun thrift store on Hawthorne with a plethora of great hats and a black dress I had to run away from before I got too attached. Unfortunately I have a rule that requires me to give one item of clothing to charity for every new item I purchase, so running away was a must considering I already have to get rid of a shirt for the shirt I bought at the last Portland thrift store (a T-shirt with a sad, but cute, picture of a panda bear painting a cub with black strips to look like a panda under the text: Climate is Changing). Our last stop on was for cocktails at the Bagdad Café, another flight for me, this time Oregonian wines, and a new cider, McMenamins, for Andrew. We walked along the pub/coffee shop/book and thrift store lined street to our bikes ready for a good night sleep. Riding back to the hotel was the perfect ending to our typical Portland local day.