Back from several trips to Portland, the one to the west. Portland, OR always looks to me in print as if I should be saying...OR...something else and it is not something else. Portland is in fact a city that seems oddly familiar. Grey and a little funky, with city and residential streets that remind me of home. The architecture is different, lots of wooden homes and many old ones but with large chunky columns on wide dark porches with dormers overhead. Spooky Tolkien Tudor style and Starbucks sprinkled liberally throughout neighborhoods.

Funky bars and record stores and at least one world class bookstore spilling over with funky people. Casual and it's OK to be middle aged and single in this city, in fact it seems as if it is desirable.

None of that is why this city seems like home to me. It's because they have managed to screw up their highways and city streets just as badly as Boston or Newark or Providence.
Roads turn north then west then north then northeast, change names three times and there truly are places in the city to which you cannot get from other places in the city...
I'm glad to be home at last and at least for a week.
Next week, Austin!