Mt. Hood
I am having a blast in Portland-Vancouver area actually getting to play tourist. When I lived here going to school and training at the temple I didn’t really do too many tourist things, although I certainly saw many things.
It is really special when you can re-visit with friends you have made from the past and newly made friends. I always get a treat out of trying to get my friends together so that they can all meet each other. It seems just kind of special when I can get people who don’t know each other but who know me all in the same room. It is especially nice when, as usually happens they all get along together.
Tim & Angel
On my first night here the couple I am staying with and whose wedding I will perform the service for humored me by going to a nice restaurant in downtown Portland that I had developed a hankering for called Mother’s. It is one of the first restaurants another good friend of mine introduced me too when I first came to Portland.
Diane and I (self portrait)
I had met over Facebook, an online community of people, a really remarkable woman who recently moved back to Portland after living in Alaska for a number of years. We had exchanged several, many actually, on line snippets and short conversations and it seemed we kind of got along. She is a Jodo Buddhist priest so we did have some things in common. Well, I invited her and her son to come along and meet my other friends.
It was a whole lot of fun, though I wish we could have sat at at round table, because that does make conversations easier. Any way, I had a lot of fun and it did seem that the others did too.
All of that was Wednesday. Then Thursday I had set aside as my one day to just do some of the things that I had wanted to get done before the wedding stuff kicked in. First on my list, since I was staying in Vancouver, WA was to visit the old fort here.
So I got in my rental car and took a drive across the city and did that. I wasn’t overly impressed, there really wasn’t much there, but it wasn’t a totally unpleasant experience. It was a nice little walk around and they did have some neat things. But honestly I have seen so much of the same sorts of things at various historic houses and national sites on the east coast. After you have seen a hundred such historic places you pretty
Mill Stone
much have seen them all. Again it was a nice walk and a pleasant way to spend the morning.
In the afternoon I had wanted to go visit a place with the nickname, Witch’s Castle. It is formally called the Stone House. I guess they try to down play the witch part to discourage some elements of society from attaching too much importance to it.
Diane and I at Witch's Castle
It really is just an old partially destroyed public restroom. It was built back during the depression era as a public works project to be a public restroom on one of the trails in the northwest part of the city of Portland. Some time back it was damaged during a storm and never repaired. So now it sits in the hills on a trail in the NW of Portland.
Well, it was nice little hike , I managed to get Diana to bring her son along, that took most of the afternoon. We had a good time, saw a snake, lots of moss and ferns, lots and lots of people and finally a very not-scary un-haunted broken stone building. Fun though and we did have some nice quiet time to walk, think and do some talking. Those are always good things, yes?
Oh my, what I hadn’t taken into account when I was planning all of this stuff was traffic. I was stuck in rush hour traffic on the way home. It does seem to me like the traffic in Portland has gotten worse that it was when I was here two years ago. But maybe it is just that since the economy is so bad and there are so many people out of work that they just drive around more. Who knows?
Bathroom ceiling at Rimsky's - the entire bathroom is as if you are underwater
Thursday night was dessert night at Rimsky’s. It is hard to describe Rimsky’s to someone without referencing Alice in Wonderland or the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party. I first was introduced to
Rimsky’s by Max’s mom. Max, a remarkable young man that I met when he attended the Portland Nichiren temple, and his Mom and I were going to see a play one evening and since it ended up being sold out we all went to the place. They only serve dess
ert and is only open from 8PM to 2AM. Since that time I have been numerous times.
They have two special ‘trick’ tables there that are neat to have unsuspecting friends sit at. One table slowly revolves around so gradually in degrees your
Bathroom at Rimsky's
drink or dessert creeps away from you and ends up in front of someone else
. The other table slowly, ever so slowly, sinks into the floor and then rises again to almost shoulder height.
The movements are so gradual you can’t re
ally perceive them unless you are actually sitting at them for an extended time.
Max, Arnesto (Diane's son), and Diane
Well, anyway, last night I got Max and his family, Diane and her son
, and Tim and Angel all together there. We had a great time. Again it was neat having some of my friends who don’t know each other all get together in the same room and meet. I don’t know why I like doing that, it just seems really neat. I guess I like being the six degrees.
So, today is a day of meeting the bride and groom’s families and then a lunch, a practice in the afternoon and then a bit of free time. I think I’ll head to Voodoo donuts tonight another thing I had wanted to do.
Diane & Ann (Max's mom)
I’ll post more of this later on in installment 2 after I leave on Sunday. I do have some more friends I’ll be hanging out with so it will be all fun. I may even have some photos from the wedding to share as well.
Stay tuned, if you want.
