I went up to Portland, Oregon, to see some dear college friends. They were doing some yurt camping on Beverly Beach, and so I tagged along. Yurt camping is apparently a pretty popular thing in the Northwest; I hadn't really heard of it. It makes sense given the weather, though; certainly beats putting up a tent in the rain.
Portland has an extraordinary beer culture, so I saw (and drank) a great deal of that. We had one dinner at McMenamins when they were doing their live music, and got to listen to Kathryn Claire and Hanz Araki.
We also ran in the Foot Traffic Flat on Sauvie Island, in the 5k. I don't really run at all, and didn't in this race (my first) really push myself (I had a flight the next day!), so timewise it was nothing impressive, but it was fun in its own way.
On Thursday, I was on the MAX going back to the airport and had a pleasant surprise. The Barbershop Harmony Society was in the middle of having its international convention. Massive numbers of participants, mostly but not exclusively seniors, got on, and sang a few songs. I think a lot of them were coming from the Good News Gospel Sing at some Presbyterian church or other. In any case, it's one of those pleasant surprises.
Flying up was quite straightforward -- Southwest really does in many ways seem to do a better job than most other airlines. Flying back was a bit mixed, though. The TSA agents in Portland were actually the nicest TSA agents I've ever come across -- not that that's a high standard, but it was a big difference. Security was as much of a pain as ever, but at least the agents didn't make it worse. (I got patted going and coming; the machine kept registering something or other about my right ankle. I don't know what that's about.) The second leg of my flight was delayed by about fifteen minutes -- I knew that going in -- and then when they got there they had difficulty with their auxiliary power unit, and that had to be fixed, so we ended up leaving an hour after originally scheduled. I got on the plane in Portland at 2:30, Pacific Time, and with travel time from the airport didn't get back to my apartment until after midnight Central Time. Long day.
I miss Portland weather. Their daytime highs now are about where our nighttime lows are here, and I don't mind rain all that much. It will take some adjustment!
