St. John's Bridge

St. Johns Bridge, looking west towards Forest Park

Younger son bought a house in St. Johns this summer. St. Johns is also known as North Portland on account of it being due North of downtown. Hillsboro, where I live, is 10 or 15 miles due west of downtown Portland. Between Hillsboro and St. Johns there is Forest Park and the Willamette River. Forest Park is a large wooded area that starts near downtown and heads northwest along a range of hills. The hills continue for several miles. If you want to get from Hillsboro to St. Johns you have to cross them, one way or another. There are three prinicple routes across these hills. There is Cornelius Pass Road which heads due North out of Hillsboro. There is Germantown Road which branches off of Cornelius Pass Road and heads northeast, and then there is the Sunset Highway, also known as Highway 26, which heads due east towards downtown Portland and crosses the hills by going through the Vista Ridge tunnel.

Germantown Road

All three routes have their pluses and minuses. Cornelius Pass and Germantown roads are both windy, two lane blacktop which means your speed is constrained by the traffic. Generally it is pretty good, but you can often get stuck behind a truck on Cornelius Pass Road which can slow you down to a molasses like speed. Germantown Road is so windy that trucks don't use it. Except coming home yesterday afternoon I passed a semi going the other way as I crossed Skyline Boulevard (at the top of the hill). I thought sure I was going to read about the disaster this was going to become in the morning paper, but no sign of anything going wrong this morning. I'll bet that driver doesn't do that again.

I want to know what they do with the rest of the mole.

Germantown road is insanely windy. It would be perfect for one of those automobile commercials, except the vistas on the Western half are fields and suburban development, and there are no vista on the Eastern half because you are buried in forest primeval. It could be a very enjoyable road if there wasn't so much traffic, but there is and all these people are trying to get somewhere. They aren't interested in the road itself.

Highway 26 is a straight shot until you get within a couple of miles of downtown and then traffic generally grinds to a half and you get to play creepy crawly until you break free on Interstate 5 northbound, or, if you are perverse, Highway 30 heading northwest.

Sunset Highway, Fremont Bridge, I-5 North, Columbia Boulevard

When highway 26 comes into downtown Portland, you are presented with three choices: 405 North, Market Street into downtown proper, and I-405 South. We take 405 North and then over the Fremont Bridge and onto I-5 North until we get to Columbia Boulevard, where we head back west to St. Johns.

Cornelius Pass Road

All three routes take roughly the same amount of time, about 45 minutes, but they all depend on the time of day, traffic, and a large helping of luck. Germantown road is the shortest but most driver intensive. Cornelius Pass is my preferred route, not too much traffic, and not too windy. It is a little farther than Germantown Road. Taking the freeway (26 & I-5) is longer distance wise, but if you don't get caught in gridlock it doesn't take any longer. And long stretches are smooth freeway cruising.

Taking Cornelius Pass or Germantown Road, either way you end up using the St. Johns Bridge to cross the Willamette River. The St. Johns Bridge is old. It was built during the heydey of bridge building in Portland, back in the 30's. I suppose building it was something akin to putting a man on the moon. It was the longest and tallest bridge in Portland until the Fremont bridge was built 75 years later. Back then it was such an accomplishment that nobody minded any of the minor nuisances that came with it, like the west of end of the bridge dead ends into a mountain and the only access is through narrow little two land blacktop roads carved into the face of this wall of dirt. The east end isn't any better. It dead ends right smack into the middle of downtown St. Johns, which is desperately trying to be the center of St. Johns. This wouldn't be so bad except for constant stream of heavy trucks traveling through this otherwise bucolic small town center on their way from the dockyards in northwest North Portland and the northwest industrial district.

Back in 1931 these were minor inconveniences that were easy to overlook in the face of this giant accomplishment. But that was almost 90 years ago and no improvements have been made to the approaches. It's like city planners think we reached our peak when they made this bridge and no further improvements have ever been needed. Goes right along with the City Council's preferential treatment for pedestrians. Between the  blissfully unaware pedestrians, the bicycles and scooters, the limited parking, the lanes given over to buses and trains, and the constant road closures from construction, driving in downtown Portland is an odious chore to be avoided at all costs. You don't suppose that turning download Portland into an impossible-to-solve maze has anything to do with all the empty store fronts in the downtown area, do you?

Ship Spotting Redux

MV Bob Hope -or- MV Fisher

Germantown Road is a very windy road. Coming up the hill from the St. John's Bridge there are several driveways. One is an entrance to a complex of condominiums. I've noticed it before, but driving by a 40 MPH it looks very scary. If I pull in there, would I be even be able to get back out? But the other day I screwed up my courage and pulled into the driveway. There was a large flat spot just off the road so I was able to stop and get this picture. 

Condo Complex off Germantown Road

The condos are like 30 feet lower than this entrance and there is a correspondingly steep driveway that goes down into the complex. Funny how a driveway that looks steep in person doesn't look so steep when you are not on it.

Peddling Across Norway

My Electronically Enhanced Gym

I've been riding an exercise back lately. I got tired of the built in videos that Peloton provides, so I thought I'd try YouTube. There might be a way to get YouTube on the Peloton screen, but maybe not. Not my Peloton, so I don't want to mess with it. Besides there's a big screen TV on the wall. I think the girls had the idea of turning this into an exercise studio, but I think I'm the only one using it. I'm using my laptop to play a YouTube video over the HDMI cable, and YouTube Music to play tunes using the headphone jack which is connected to an old soundbar I had laying around. Both audio and video are coming over WiFi, but the Peloton is connected to the internet with a wire. It's supposed to have WiFi but for some reason the WiFi doesn't want to cooperate.

The video is the view out the front of a train as it travels from Trondheim north to the Arctic Circle. It's 10 hours long. At the rate I'm going I should be there by summer. I posted a short excerpt from a trip from Birgen to Oslo.

I used to ride real bicycles outside in the real world and it was great, some of the time. Then my heart flaked out and I realized why it was only some of the time, so I gave it up. Also meant I wasn't out playing in traffic which always made me a little nervous. I mention this because I drove over to St. Johns today and because the weather was pleasant the bicyclists were out in force. I don't like having to watch out for them, it's a little nerve racking to be bombing along a country road and have a cyclist suddenly appear on the scene. Where there is a straight road without much traffic, it's not too bad, but the road to St. Johns (Germantown) is neither straight nor low traffic. Nobody in their right mind would take a bicycle up Germantown road, but today they were there, lunatics anonymous, peddling their little hearts out. 

Go Play in Traffic Kid

Space Age Quik Mart

Drove to the airport to pick up dangerous daughter this afternoon. Google Maps tells me traffic is going to be bad, so I opt to take Germantown Road over to St. Johns and thence Colombia Boulevard east to the airport. Things were going along swimmingly until I got about halfway down the far side of Forest Park and then traffic came to a halt. It was creepy crawly until the bottom of the hill. 

Often, at the bottom of the hill there are a dozen or so cars backed up waiting to turn onto the ramp for the St. Johns Bridge, but this time it was about a mile, so it took a little while to get through that. Get to the bottom of the hill and there is no sign of any problem. However, go up the ramp and onto the bridge and we find that a car had broken down there. A tow truck had just shown up when I drove by. At least the plug hadn't been on the road coming down the hill. I'd probably still be there in that case. The rest of the way to the airport was smooth sailing.

Coming back I wanted to turn left on MLK, but there was a honking big gas truck trying to pull into the Space Mart station there. He was blocking two lanes of traffic, so the opposing traffic ended up having to use my left turn lane to get around him. Yeah, with all this traffic I'm not making a left turn here, which means taking Vancouver which is a drag because it's loaded with speed bumps. 

These days, I often find myself driving down streets I've never been on before. Call me Chuck, the intrepid street explorer.

P. S. I have written a dozen or posts that mention Germantown Road. 

Ship Spotting

Terrible picture of MV Bob Hope -or- MV Fisher

Driving up Germantown Road from St. John a couple of days ago I noticed a US Navy ship and I thought I'd like to get a photo of that ship. Problem with Germantown Road is that there are very few places where you can pull off the road, and it's busy enough that I didn't want to just stop in the middle of the road. Now if I had a proper camera, I could probably have got a shot of the ship just by pointing my camera out the window and pressing the go button. 

Sidebar rant: But I don't have a proper camera, instead I have a fancy-schmancy smartphone. It takes great pictures, much better than my last smartphone, or maybe I've just subliminally modified my phone handling so I am now compatible with the smartphone's preferred method of behavior. Anyway, taking a picture with a smart phone requires, multiple fingers, multiple touches and the patience of a saint. For someone who grew up with mechanical switches that reacted instantly, all these new-fangled electronic gizmos with their multiple milli-second delays are effing bullshit.

Today I thought I would make an effort to try and take a picture of this ship. First I took off driving directly towards the ship. Big fail. No roads come anywhere near the docks. Most of the land is given over to parking lots for imported cars, it's all private industrial stuff, no ger-finger-pokin-tourists wanted.

Cross the St. Johns bridge and head up US Highway 30. Not a tourist friendly area. Cliffs on the south side of the road and tank farms on the north side. Took the first photo from an entrance to one of these tank farms.

Another terrible picture of MV Bob Hope -or- MV Fisher

Took this from another pull-out a little farther up the road. Not looking good here. Turned around and headed back toward the bridge and found a side road so I pulled over.

NW Hoge Ave

And, oh look, there's stairs going up the hill, maybe I'll get high enough I can get a decent shot. The stairs are something else.

Stout, industrial strength stairs

that go way up the hillside

but ultimately don't go anywhere.

Seriously long stairs that got me high enough up to get the next photo

MV Bob Hope -or- MV Fisher

VesselFinder reports the MV Bob Hope and the MV Fisher are both in Portland. I only saw the one ship. Looking at Wikipedia's photos, they appear to be identical. I don't know whether the report showing that both MV Bob Hope and the MV Fisher are in Portland is in error, or the Navy obfuscating their ship's locations, or whether I'm blind and the ships are here.

USNS Bob Hope has appeared here before.

Pedestrianism

Pedestrianism

I picked up a copy of Willamette Week, a free, wacky, Portland tabloid. Amongst all the dreck there is usually a gem. This one is from Dr. Know.

Recently, I was nearly run over by an oblivious driver. Ecological considerations aside, wouldn't I personally be safer if I chose to drive instead of walk? Or should I consider my willingness to be a pedestrian fatality statistic the best way to serve my city?—E.P.
Your question, E., balances the narrow self-interest of the individual against the greater good of society in a way that might be well-illuminated by Kant's concept of the Categorical Imperative. That said, I'm probably not the best person to explore that with you, given that I barely remembered to write a column at all this week.
Indeed, it's this kind of thing that makes me wonder whether I might actually be in some kind of institution, with a journalistic "career" that consists of scribbling phrases like "DOOKIE! LOL" on paper towels and having passionate arguments about comma placement with a fire extinguisher.
In any case, you're correct in your suspicion that, mile for mile, you are more likely to meet with a fatal accident while walking than while driving—but it's still not very likely.
Also, before we start slagging on pedestrian travel as a George Romero-esque bloodbath, we should note that walking brings benefits that mitigate its risks.  A study published in the BMJ found that people who walked six miles a week reduced their risk of dying from heart disease by 36 percent.
But back to the bloodbath: Generalized statistics for the Western world show about one accidental death for every 17 million pedestrian miles traveled. The figure for motorists is around 200 million miles, so driving is, in this sense, a little over 10 times safer.
However, the average pedestrian's speed is only around 2.8 mph. The average motorist's speed—as in the total number of miles traveled per hour behind the wheel, including traffic, stoplights, pulling over to screw around with your phone, etc.—is surprisingly difficult to find, but it doesn't strain credulity to imagine a figure on the order of 25 to 30 miles per hour, if not more. Thus, in terms of chance of dying per hour spent traveling, driving versus walking is probably very close to a wash.
Of course, airline travel—even on Delta—leaves both of these in the dust. The moral of the story: If you have a chance to catch a commercial flight to the liquor store, ditch the land travel and take it.

Driving in downtown Portland is more akin to navigating a parking lot than traveling. You only average about 3 MPH and no matter where you want to go, you can't get there without making a dozen turns and going around the block at least twice.

Germantown road on the weekends isn't much better. The road cuts through Forest Park and there are several wide spots along the way where people park their cars before they trek off into the woods. There are always a few cars there even on days like today when it's cold and wet, but it gets crowded on weekends. Mostly these don't cause any problem, but occasionally someone will attempt to walk along the road and that is never a good idea. It's a two lane asphalt road with a double yellow line down the middle and white 'fog' lines along the edge. The pavement extends about a foot past the fog line. After that you are in the ditch or falling down the hill.

John and I came down this road one Saturday. We come around a corner and encounter a fitness nut running up the road on this narrow to non-existent strip of asphalt. He sees us come around the corner and spreads his arms with an expression of 'what are you doing here?' on his face. We're driving down the road in an armored conveyance, what are you doing here? Trying to put an end to your miserable existence? Moron.

P.S. I have no idea what 'Kant's Categorical Imperative' is, but it was a heck of a way to open his response.

Speedy

Drove over to St. John's yesterday morning to work on younger son's house. I took Germantown Road and about halfway down the far side of the hill, traffic came to a stop. Anytime anywhere near rush hour, there is always a bit of a jam getting onto St. John's bridge, but this exceptional. I was in despair as a traffic jam this long would take an hour to clear and I didn't want to spend an hour of my life creeping along in a traffic jam. Fortunately for all us commuters, it only lasted about five minutes. Seems a big truck carring a load of heavy equipment had gotten stuck. He was going around one of the nine zillion corners on this road and the inside wheels of the trailer had fallen in the roadside ditch. I would like to know who the idiot was who sent this truck down this road. You might think in this day of GPS and sophisticated route planning software, not to mention experienced people, this could have been avoided.

No matter, once I got past that jam it was clear sailing for another couple of minutes until I got to the actual jam at the entrance to the bridge.

That afternoon I was taking a nap in my car (it was hot and I'm old) and I hear tires squealing. I open my eyes and what do I see? A black man in a purple convertible Mustang doing donuts in the intersection 25 yards away. He doesn't go just one, he must have done about six before be sped off. That was so weird I might have written it off as a dream except for the sound. I can't remember hearing much of anything in any dreams.

I also heard a couple of cars come flying by, in excess of 40 MPH certainly, maybe 60, I don't know. This is a narrow residential street. If there are cars parked on both sides, there is only room for one car in the center. If two cars want to pass, they need a place where at least one side of the road is clear of parked cars. At least half the road is clear like that, and there isn't a great deal of traffic, so it's not a problem.

A few months ago Portland reduced the speed limit for residential areas from 25 MPH to 20. I thought this was a really dumb idea, mostly because my cruise control doesn't work below 25 MPH. But now I'm starting to see (hear) the impetus for this change. They don't want maniacs charging through quiet neighborhoods at freeway speeds. I don't think this new speed limit is going to have much effect. It's kind of like any kind of prohibition. People who have good self control and think this is a good idea will follow the rules, and people who don't care will ignore them just like they have been.

I remember when I was kid I thought 25 MPH speed limits were stupid. There's nobody on the road, I can see a clear path for a couple of blocks. People are supposed to look before they go out into the road, parents are supposed to keep control of their kids until they have mastered that rule. Problem is we are dealing with people who at best can be described as pretending to be obedient. Kids especially tend to forget the rules as soon as they are clear of any adults. Combine that with speeding cars and you have the makings of a tragedy.

On the other hand, it just might be that people just don't like that kind of noise, especially when they are trying to nap.

I'm not quite sure how you tackle this problem. Big brother will probably deploy an army of cameras and will eventually capture these miscreants and hit them with big fat fines. That might have the effect of reducing speeding, but I suspect constraining these yahoos in this way is just going to cause their anti-social feelings to pop out in some other area. Maybe we need some outlaw race courses, places where people can drive like maniacs but without any of the safety precautions you find at legal racetracks. Make them extra dangerous and don't allow any ambulances into the area. You want to be an outlaw? Go ahead, be an outlaw. If they survive, maybe the experience will knock off some of those rough edges.

Hillsboro to South Waterfront

Hillsboro to South Waterfront

We've got a doctor's appointment at OHSU this morning. Checking with the Waze smartphone app shows that Highway 26 (the yellow line running diagonally across the above map) is all red indicating traffic is like totally jammed up, man. So we're thinking we'll take Evergreen for a bit and then switch over to Cornell, but that means going through Tanasbourne, which is always the pits, so I think we'll skip Evergreen and just take Cornell. Cornell is usually slower, but at least it doesn't cross the main routes of people commuting from Portland to Intel Corporation.
    We're sitting at the light at Arrington and I see big flash of white light out of the corner of my eye. What the heck was that? It was like aircraft landing lights, but it was only there for a second and it illuminated the buildings across the street as well. Whatever it was it's gone now. The car in front of me goes and then I, thinking the light had changed, go. Light hadn't changed, traffic light is out. A little confusion, but I was halfway into the intersection, so I just went on ahead.
  Now we're driving down Cornell and we see another big, bright flash of light. It's a transformer on one of the power poles. Now we notice that the power is off at all the businesses here. The traffic light at 25th is out as well. People are coping.
    Driving along Cornell, the smartphone is still showing Highway 26 as all red, so we decide that maybe we should go ahead and take Cornelius Pass over the mountain to Highway 30. That is way out of the way, but sitting in traffic for an hour doesn't sound like much fun, so we say okay and head north. I probably take this route once a year for some reason or other, but this is the second time I have taken it in the last couple of months, and in both cases it has been because the Sunset was clogged.
   Usually I take Cornelius Pass all the way to Highway 30. This time we turn right on Skyline and then left onto Newberry. It seemed much shorter than just continuing on Cornelius Pass, but looking at the map, it looks about the same. Newberry is a very winding road, so you can't go that fast. You come out a couple miles down Highway 30 from where Cornelius Pass comes out so you save a couple of minutes, but unlike the intersection at Cornelius Pass, there is no traffic light, and no extra lane, so you are jumping right out into high speed traffic. You just have to wait for an opening. We saw hardly any traffic on this road, but when we got to Highway 30 there were half a dozen cars sitting at the stop sign, all waiting to turn right toward Portland.
    It was smooth sailing down Highway 30 until we got to Germantown Road and the St. John's Bridge. Once past that traffic cleared up until we got into town and now we've got normal heavy traffic. Now it's across the Fremont bridge and then merge onto I-5 South which is crawling along. I get over to the left lane which is moving along quite well. Everyone in the right lane was waiting, queued up for some exit. Now it's back across the river on the Marquam Bridge . . .

South Waterfront

and duck under I-5 to get to the South Waterfront area. This place is almost completely cut off from the rest of the city by the Interstate.
   Our appointment is on the top (16th) floor. The reception area has a wall of glass windows giving a grand view of the downtown. They have the shades all pulled down to just above eye level. I am tempted to raise one, but then I would have to put it back and I really don't want to get into a fight with the window blind Nazi, not that there necessarily is one, but you know, someplace like this is there is liable to be one. And what would raising the blind get me anyway? Just more gray sky. Why do I even care? I don´t know, but I really want to raise the blind so I can see more of that gray sky. That's just weird, man. Outside the windows is a walkway that extends the length of the building. It is separated from the railing (that is made of more glass panels) by a strip of garden about three feet wide. I didn't go out. It was raining, and besides the door was probably locked.

Zidell Marine (left), Tram (center), OHSU Office Tower (right)

    I have some time to kill so I go for a stroll around the neighborhood. Not much has changed since the last time I was here. Still massive construction projects, still only a few retail establishments, still a small shipyard building a barge, hemmed in on all sides by modern development.
    Time to head back to the top and I decide to get some exercise, so I take the stairs. I have to stop to catch my breath a couple of times, but I make it only to find I can't get out; the door is locked. No biggy, just go down one flight. It's locked too. I have to go all the way down to the 12th floor before I find a door that isn't locked. So we've got blind Nazi's and door Nazi's. Ain't that just typical?

Power guys replacing the blown transformer

P.S. Later on I'm running errands and I see the power crew hard at work where I saw the big flash of light earlier.

Good News from Africa

A picture of Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, the recipient of the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize, is on display at the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo, Norway, on Oct. 11. STIAN LYSBERG SOLUM/NTB SCANPIX/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Whenever I go to St. Johns to work on John's house, I stop at the 7-11 for coffee and a donut. The donut is my reward for driving over the west hills via Germantown road, and donuts require coffee. The guy at the cash register in the 7-11 is from Ethiopia, and when I ask about how things are over there, he tells me that the Prime Minister has just won the Nobel Peace Prize for ending the 20 year old war with Eritrea, so things might be getting a little better.

This is the second time an immigrant from Ethiopia has made it to this blog.