Leaving Portland: Applying the Test

In the 24 years I’ve lived in Portland, I have had 12 different addresses. So I know well the application of The Test. And as I prepare to leave for good (ish), I’m about to start applying it in a very real way.

I don’t mean a test of character, or planning, or searching for a place, or any mental acumen. I mean the test that determines whether I keep a thing or not.

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I Love Rick Steves

Rick Steves

There are very few people who always make me happy. Rick Steves is absolutely one of them. He’s also something a guru to me.

There’s just something impossibly endearing about a guy who is an absolute goofball and makes no attempt to either hide it or change. “In my early days of touring,” he has said, “I used to worry about being a cultural bumpkin — but now I embrace it. After all, I travel to learn.”

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Leaving Portland: Am I Excited?

Today I flipped the calendar to May – quite literally a normal event, except that for me, May 2021 will be the last month I live in Portland, Oregon.

It will also be the last month I technically live anywhere. The last month, at least for a year, that I will spend in my home, surrounded by my stuff, hanging out with my friends, going to see my team play, hiking trails that I know, and basically knowing what each day is going to bring.

30 days. Then I’m gone.

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Hike the Columbia River Gorge Without a Car (Oregon Side)

You can’t do any real hiking without a car, right? Wrong. There are literally days worth of hikes a person without a car can do in the Columbia River Gorge. Here are a few I have come up with on the Oregon side.

Hiking in the Gorge without a car means simply being patient, flexible on timing, and getting to know the schedules and logistics of public bus systems — specifically the Columbia Gorge Express on the Oregon side.

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