Maintaining

Hello friends. Yep, it's been a little while since the last blog post. Long enough that a few people emailed to ask me if I'm okay.

Well, yep, I am. It's been not the easiest month around here due to the break-up, but I'm surviving. April and I are still on decent terms, but it wasn't until I moved into my new digs last weekend when it really hit me: it's over. As for where I'm living, I moved in with my friend Marina, who is subletting Casa Crow off Hawthorne through January. The owner of Casa Crow is my friend Ken. Ken and his partner Heidi have been travelling around the world this year, hence the sublet.

It's a bit ironic, actually. I've known Ken for about as long as I've lived in Portland (he moved here a year after I got here). And there's been a couple of times that I almost moved in with him over the years (and I actually did stay at Casa Crow for awhile several years ago, but it was very temporary) but now I'm living at his house when he's not here. Yep, I have a weird life.

The move wasn't too bad. It consisted of several trips with bike and trailer between the two houses over the span of a couple days. (The two places are a little under a mile from each other.) But I can't say it was a fun move, as it wasn't done under the best of circumstances. And it was pretty weird for the first few days, getting used to Not Living With Someone. (Yes, I have roommates, but it's not the same as co-habitation with a partner.)

Anyways, there is more I should have written about over the span of the last month, but the break-up had sapped a lot of my creativity, creativity that I just find starting to flow again. The trip to Vancouver a few weeks back was good, and in hindsight it was good to get out of town for a bit. I don't know if I'll write about it in more detail soon, but in the meantime you should go check out the photos on flickr.

What's to come in the future?

• I have three days off in a row starting Thursday, so my friend Ed and I are taking the train up to Tacoma in the morning, then riding about 50 miles to the northwest corner of Rainier National Park. Here is the Carbon River Valley, a nice glacial river passing through a temperate rainforest. This part of the park is very quiet, as the four-mile road up to the Ipsuit Creek campground got partially washed out a few years back. Now it's only open to cyclists and hikers. We'll spend two nights camping there, then ride back to Tacoma on Saturday and catch Amtrak back to Portland.



Ed is on the left.

• I'm getting a bit of time off around the second weekend of September, so I will be taking Amtrak northbound again, but this time to tour around the San Juan Islands. No details have been hammered out yet but it shall be fun! While I've taken the ferry through the San Juans to get to Vancouver Island, I've never actually been on the islands.
• And I've got some local rides in store soon. Keep posted for details!

Overall, it's been a meh month, but things are getting better. Hope everyone out there is doing well.