When we awoke on Monday morning it was clear it was not going to be sunny... Undeterred, we donned raincoats and headed out in the drizzle to Mount Tabor Park, winding hiking trails around a little dormant volcano. No sooner had we got to the top, rain so torrential that it felt like we were underwater blasted from the heavens while we attempted shelter under a tree with some joggers and dog walkers... Luckily it went off and we had a lovely walk, and were just headed for lunch when the heavens opened again - impossibly even heavier than before!
We grabbed a bus as soon as we could and took refuge in another delicious healthy lunch bowl place where we had lunch til the rain abated, and went for a potter in the funky shops of Hawthorne Street before retiring to Powells bookshop cafe for a currant scone and a hot chocolate, just as a new episode of rain, exceeding the others, was delivered! Our subsequent rapid dash across the road to the Baghdad Theatre cinema was thus rendered an expedition of rainforest proportions. We spent the rest of the afternoon in this brilliant, beautiful old theatre watching How to Train Your Dragon 2 - not so much a choice as the only thing on, but it was surprisingly good. Though Roz, who is not good with peril, spent the whole thing in high tension, peeking at the screen from between her fingers. Which made the film even more amusing (for me and the many calm children sat around us...).
That night we had dinner at home, then went to a book reading at Powells by a (deservedly) obscure author, and finished the evening in a cool bar that served cheesecake.
Tuesday was cycling day! We hired bikes down by the river and cycled about 22 miles, first around the waterfront near town, which was cool and scenic and industrial, then down the Springwater trail which was pleasant though unexciting. On the way back, after a superlative sandwich in a village bakery, with the sky looking ominous, we parked our bikes and went to OMSI, the science museum. Small but fun, and almost entirely hands-on, we played like children, and admired the quite cool dinosaur exhibition (with moving dinosaurs) before returning our bikes and heading home for dinner.
That evening was one of the planned highlights of our trip: The Moth! The Moth is the grandfather of storytelling shows, the biggest, probably best, and certainly most famous of the genre. And it was on in Portland! The venue, The Holocene, was cool, the show was sold out, and we scored great seats. The format is a "story slam", aka a tournament of people telling stories and three sets of audience judges awarding points. I put my name in the hat to tell a story... Then spent the first half of the show tensed to the point of discomfort as I tried to enjoy the show and not anticipate whether my name would be called next. Then, right after the interval, it happened! I got up to the stage, told my story, and all three judges gave me 9.7 out of 10! I got to relax and enjoy the rest of the show, and at the end, I was officially designated the Moth StorySLAM winner! I could not have been more excited. We walked home to bed, bubbling with delight.
On Wednesday, we were off on another bike tour, this one to the famous Columbia Gorge. We were astounded at how beautiful this place is. Just about a 40 minute drive from Portland, there's this huge, wonderful area of hills and waterfalls and a big river centerpiece. They've built a pretty road that winds through it, with stops every mile or so to climb up little trails to amazing waterfalls. We cycled along the road, stopping several times for delightful little hikes, and photographing a lot of waterfalls. Absolutely the highlight of our trip so far.
Back in Portland, we lunched like the locals, ie buying a lunch bowl from one of the hundreds of excellent food carts, and then, with the sun incongruously making an appearance, set off on another adventure: paddleboarding! This turned out to be our most stressful paddleboarding experience to date because the paddleboard place was about a quarter mile from the water. We were given a board and a paddle and 2 wheels on which to balance them. So began the sort of sequence you'd see in fast forward in a slapstick movie as Roz and I tried to navigate them out of the shop, down the street, across railway lines, along a path in a park, and down to a jetty, from which, alone, we launched our boards. Success! The actual time on the water was a delight. It was beautifully still, beautifully sunny, and had beautiful scenery, around Ross Island, which is full of birds. At one point we even lay down on our paddleboards to sunbathe on the water...
Alas all good things come to an end and after lots of maneuvering and cursing, we eventually got the boards back to the shop and headed back into town having amazingly acquired a bit of sunstroke! We cooled off in a Ben and Jerry's shop, and did some Capital Fringe publicity as the tickets for our shows next month have just gone on sale. Then we had another healthy tasty bowl for dinner, and headed to yet another beautiful Portland theatre, to see yet another sold out show: we both love how Portland dwellers are such committed theatre goers! Five a Years Later was a quite good musical about a relationship going wrong. Into grossly, given how this blog began, w e were still a bit sunstrokey, and stumbled home to bed soon afterwards.
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