BIG TIME FOR BIG CITY PORTLAND, AND OREGON

Big city Portland gets the name for being the biggest city in the state.

How big? 

The next biggie, Eugene, is three times smaller, rounded up and down for 600k people in one, 200k in the other.

(K = 1000)

In California we’re between San Francisco and Fresno; in New York between Hampstead and Brookhaven; in Illinois between Aurora and Chicago.

LA, NYC, and Chicago are BIG big, huge big.

Big city Portland would drop into any of them without a ripple.

As in every city, town, and village, there are places to go, people to meet, and things to see.

Since it’s Oregon, these are Oregon places, Oregon people, and Oregon things.

Call me a homer.

 

I Like Bright And Shiny 

Every corner of Portland has its own show going on.

Every step back tells more about it.

The further back you go, the more it looks like a small capsule surrounded by towers.

 

 

It’s a busy looking backdrop of steeples, trompe l’oeil, business, and housing.

Trompe l’oeil?

Across the street is a different vibe.

First one way, the the other, from north to south.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Big City Portland Welcome

Call it an omen.

I did when I saw the church steeple reflected in the art museum window like a renaissance vision.

That’s the church in the picture above.

 

 

Like every city that’s not rolled out on a plan, or rolled over with a new plan, Portland has one-way streets that could be two, and two-way streets that could be one.

It’s got forty story towers looking over two story blocks, that may be short lived.

 

In 1853, Emperor Napoleon III (a nephew of Napoleon I) appointed Haussmann to direct the urban renewal of Paris. Paris still had many medieval buildings and high-density areas connected by narrow streets.

Working-class people lived together in conditions typical of nineteenth-century cities: stench and disease, particularly from sewage running down the streets.

Haussmann had no experience in urban planning or architecture, but he likened himself as an “artist-demolitionist.”

Haussmann’s plans to redesign Paris continued for almost 20 years, until he was fired by Emperor Napoleon III in 1870 due to public concerns about Haussmann’s financial mismanagement.

 

 

 

 

And Oregon Too

The beauty of Oregon, and it is a rare beauty, is the unusual drive through the countryside.

In hardly any time at all you can leave the congestion of big city Portland and find yourself on a road where anywhere else you’d turn around.

At least you’re asking yourself, ‘Should I turn around now? I could turn around now? Maybe I ought to turn around?’

On my drive with my wife, we could have stayed on 99W to Hwy18 to the coast.

Could have taken I-5 to Corvallis and taken Hwy 20.

“Let’s take the Keiser exit and wind our way through the coast range.”

Follow me for more travel advice.

 

One sign said, “Road Narrows.’

The next said, “Unpaved Surface.”

I’m out in the hills on an unknown gravel road in Oregon? If it were anywhere else I would have turned around.

That’s when the pioneer spirit kicked in. Would I have turned around and left the wagon train at the first rough patch on the Oregon Trail?

 

PS:

Do a self-check on when things get to the point of quitting, or turning around, giving up.

PSS:

Then do a review of everyone you know who quits, turns around, and gives up.

Are you more alike, or different?

If you are in the car, check the gas gauge before you answer.