I found this little guy hanging out by the river early one particularly cold morning.  Although it’s not terribly uncommon to see the occasional seagull in Portland, keep in mind that there’s 80 or so miles and a whole mountain range between us and the nearest ocean.  If the storms along the coast get pretty bad, though, a few will wander inland, fighting with pigeons for food scraps and trash.

He wasn’t too certain about me, inching closer to him with one arm outstretched.  When he thought I was close enough he gave me a little glare, so I snapped my photo, and he flapped his wings and flew off, his business with me done.

Unfortunately I had this idea late on Friday and proceeded to be rather busy on Saturday, so this first Friday Flickr is happening on a Sunday (I know, right? I guess I should probably get that New Year’s Eve recap post up soon too).

To start with, this photo that I took in the command center of my newly constructed secret underground headquarters.

Kidding!  Saturday was a free day at OMSI, and we went so that we could bathe ourselves in SCIENCE! for an afternoon.  They had this nifty “Science on a Sphere” display, which cycled through a number of cool presentations about the planets.  I also took this very cool one of Mars:

….and that’s what I got for today.  Please be sure to join me next week when I will probably miss my self-imposed Friday deadline again.

I did the whole dragon boat racing thing about two years ago, even competed once or twice, and so thought it would be nice if we could wander down to the waterfront this past weekend and catch a few of the races.  Apparently since my time they’ve added a new position to help judge those close finishes: a crew member whose job is to lay flat on top of the dragon’s head, arm outstretched, and pluck their flag from the finish line as the boat crosses it.

A few weekends back we got up extra early on Saturday and went down to the waterfront to check out the Portland Doggie Dash, an organized run for dogs and their owners.

A few of my photos turned out to be worth sharing.  Suspiciously they all seem to be of corgis.  Hmmm…

As you were.

Anyone else ready for it to go ahead and be spring already?

I liked the comment that Kerri Anne left for this photo on the Flickr that I had to post it here with that title.  I suppose there is something sort of bleak and zombie-like about it.  Of course, now I’m thinking about a zombie outbreak in Portland and wondering — would a vegan who became a zombie stay a vegan?  I can’t help but picture a freshly undead local stumbling down the street, arms outstretched, moaning, “BRRRRROCOLLIIIII!”

(The above joke may be funnier if you live here.)

If you like the effect in this photo I got it with the Spica app; there’s an associated group on Flickr.

I went to the Greek Festival here in Portland last weekend, at which I consumed (among other things) a great deal of loukoumades.

Really, they’re just doughnut holes. With some honey, and a sprinkling of cinnamon. But when you say their Greek name they just sound a lot more elegant.

I have just been in more of a pictures mood than anything lately, but maybe I should write something.  Tomorrow sounds good.

While it seems like this past month has been comprised entirely of hellish amounts of work-related stress, truth is I have found quite a bit of time to get out and goof off.  It seems like summers pass me by while I stay cooped up indoors, chained to one desk or another, so this time around I’ve been doing what I can to get out of the house every chance I get, soak up some sun, bask in the perfect weather of the Pacific Northwest.

Naturally, something had to give, with “something” being this blog as of late.  I’ve been out drinking cold adult beverages with my friends, taking in the occasional baseball game or rock show as time allows.  I did find time to hang out with Kerri Anne and Long Story Longer at the Portland Farmer’s Market the other morning, where we ate fresh berries and did our best to avoid all stalkers.

And on Sunday, I even made it out to the beach, where we found clear blue skies, bright sun, and absolutely no waves to speak of.  At least the scenery was pretty, though I would have preferred being able to surf.

Yeah, I know I check in like this now and then to get out of writing anything new on my blog, but you know what?  I think I’ll write another post, purely out of spite.  SPITE, I tell you.  Okay, I was just kidding about the spite — the heat is making me a little crazy.  Eh.

I have to wonder about what those two questions are.

I know I have a few locals reading along here, so for everyone else, here’s how it’s done:  start by hopping on I-84 East, and in twenty minutes or so you’ll forget you started out in a fair sized city.  Take the Historic Highway exit, which leads you across the Sandy River and past some picnic grounds and the Tippy Canoe and up and up through the little town of Corbett, and all the green sure is pretty but there’s nothing all that noteworthy until you come up to the first viewpoint, and here’s a thousand words for you:

If you’re lucky (and we were!) there’s not a cloud to be seen and you can look forever in either direction, and of course you can’t help but notice something different about the next cliff over, and I say that it’s our next stop.

Vista House is all done being renovated, and as high up as you are at this point it doesn’t seem like another ten feet worth of altitude can make that much of a difference until you climb up on the observation deck.

Then it’s back on the old highway, down and around till you’re back on the same level as the river again, and Latourell Falls is first up, a quick walk up a trail from the parking lot.

Down the winding road a few more miles there’s another place to park, and here there’s a waterfall with a name I can never remember other than that it starts with a ‘W’, so I’ve taken to calling it Wenatchee Falls, which doesn’t make much sense but this particular day it seems appropriate. There’s a grueling serious of switchbacks taking you straight up the cliff, and finally you’ll walk right across where the water spills down off the top of some rocks, and then keep on going straight up across felled trees and moss covered rocks until you’ve gained something like 800 vertical feet, at which point the path veers away from the falls and across the top of the ridge.  You’ll increase your altitude by another hundred feet or so, till there’s only the wind whistling across the top of the ridge, surrounded by trees that a half hour ago had seemed impossibly far away.  Few venture this far, and for the most part you’ll have the trail to yourself. Keep along that trail, along the crest, and eventually you’ll come to a clearing and the view will be worth what you’ve done to your legs.

Keep going, and you’ll pass patches of ice and trees that split in half from last winter’s cold, and after a while you’ll realize that noise is too steady and too low to be wind anymore, and it must be water, and you’ll come across a scene far above the waterfall that most people don’t get to see.

Follow the path back down, and other hikers start to become more frequent, as you trace the water down through one waterfall after another.

After a while the stream levels out a bit and eventually you’ll come across scores of people milling about. The trail veers away from the water here, down another series of switchbacks, and at this point you’ve earned the right to grin savagely at the suburbanites lumbering upwards, pausing at the corners to complain about how far it is to get to the top. Try coming around the long way.

The trail near Multnomah Falls really seems designed to be descended rather than ascended, keeping the falls hidden from the new viewer, doling out glimpses here and there, before finally letting you cross a bridge through a fountain of spray, and down and around to the main plaza where most people are just starting their journey.  You can stop and take a picture here, knowing full well that it’s almost impossible to do the scene justice.

It’s a breathtaking view no matter what, but I think it is even more so if you can look up and know that you’ve walked down the series of falls above this, that you’ve dipped your hands into the stream at a point far above where anyone down here can see to drink water from freshly melted snow, that you’ve hopped over fallen trees that weren’t there last season and trudged through ankle-deep mud from a landslide — that’s when you can lean back and look up and think I’ve earned this.