...yield properly

I had the chance to fly Portland to Portland, and in doing so to cross five weeks of roadtrip in one day. This ability to travel by plane has erased all need for Lewises and Clarks anymore. However, I suppose it provides opportunities for adventures Sacagawea could never have taken them through. Either way, by bookending the country in this way I thought there would be some fun or poetic excitement. There was no excitement. There was one long day with two connections, three explanations of safety procedures and many hours in waiting rooms. Fun…

But it was poetic. On one flight I sat next to a wonderful lady who was taking a poetry course and used to teach English and had daughters who should do theatre and we had a grand time looking at her and her classmates’ work together. 

The next flight I got to switch to the exit row because it wasn’t full, which means more rooms for long legs and wide shoulders. Yes! The flight attendant swung by and asked, as is procedure:

            “You are sitting in an exit row. Have you familiarized yourself with the safety procedures featured on this plane and are you willing and able to assist the flight crew in the event of an emergency?” Honestly, I didn’t even let him finish.

            “You haven’t met anyone more willing and able. I am fully prepared to tell women to ‘Take off your heels before you jump!’” He looked at me quizzically. “You know, so the slide doesn’t pop.” I pointed to the no smoking symbol with a heel in the middle instead of a cigarette and he laughed and said perhaps I should be a flight attendant. It is a definite bucket list item.

Leaving Portlandia was great because I was anxious to get home. All that time in a van moving ever forward makes one long for a bit of consistency. But it wasn’t all celebration. Portland is a great city and I wasn’t there for too long. The locals called it the city of bridges for assumable reasons but I felt like it was the city of pedestrians (there's a bridge for that, too). Never before have I felt like, as an automobile operator, I was driving on roads that belonged to those on bikes or feet. There was no chaos, people were not leaping into the road or jaywalking, but it felt as though the design, the DNA of the city wasn’t meant for me. I was always yielding the right of way to someone else. But that changed as soon as I parked and walked to Powell’s Book Store where I meandered my way through four floors of stocked stacks to the drama aisle and found myself some gems.

I also swung northwest of the city to a beautiful coastal hill-topping town called Astoria, where the Columbia river meets the Pacific Ocean. Here there is a real sense that the country has come to an end, as if the river carries with it all the exhoes of experiences and peoples of the mainland and meets the great unknown distance. There is no more land to walk on, no more Westward to go. I visited a couple of friends there and they took me to see a lighthouse over the 3-mile bridge to Washington, the trendy downtown and the house where the Goonies was set in. It is a gorgeous town that felt very much like home to me. 

There is much that feels like home here, actually. Green with pine, coastal, bricked buildings and lighthouses. The same kind of folk roam the streets, tattooed and fluorescent, young and aware of their youth. This is different than many of us who are young and let it pass by in the pursuit of a middle aged life we don’t know we’d trade for youth once we got. I am wooed by this relaxing self-awareness that shucks off the pressure tall buildings and corner offices press down upon us as we saunter under their manmade shade. The Portlands both express this, but perhaps Oregon does it better; we are too close to New York City and they are bunkmates to cool California. Either way, I yielded all my apprehensions about leaving, any unfinished business and all my frustrations with this air travel and accepted that I was headed home. Another time I would visit again, I'm sure. This time I will cross the country, and it will only take one day.