Portland People

Meet Hamsa Hadad, a lovely Louisiana transplant!!!


1) How long have you lived in Portland?
I have been in Portland for a year and a half. I moved after I graduated from college because of how absolutely beautiful it is here. I live in the lower s.e. Portland walking and biking distance to almost everything.


2) What fills up your days (or nights) in Portland?
 I am going to Western Seminary at the top of Hawthorne for my Masters in Counseling. I work at a small coffee shop called Oui Presse. I love biking, being out in the wilderness, long long walks, reading, playing guitar, listening to good music live, community dinners and fall season.

3)Where are some of your favorite places to go and things to do in Portland?
I absolutely love Mt. Tabor and Laurel Hurst park. Valentines and Mississippi studios are probably my two favorite venues. Salt n' straw....... So good.








4) What are some different things about Portland that make it Portland?
I think it's funny how people complain about the rain and cold of winter. When summer comes they complain it's too hot and long for the winter again. I love the amount of people who love to be outdoors. I love being so close to so many beautiful places.


5) Do you plan on staying in Portland for a while?
I have no future plans except that I want to be a highschool counselor. I have three more years in grad school, so I'm just going to relax and enjoy the ride.

Portland People!!!!

After not blogging for the majority of the summer, IM BACK! Well, kinda. We'll take it slow. I'm at least going to start up doing Portland People again..cause it's my FAVORITE! So to get things going again, let me introduce you to my new friend Elizabeth Tolon. Liz is a recent George Fox University grad, and I met her through my church comminuty group.


1) How long have you lived in Portland?
 I grew up in the Portland area and went to college at a university outside of Portland, bringin the grand total up to 17 years!

2) What fills up your days (or nights) in Portland?
Besides working at a restaurant and interning for the Portland Timbers, I read a ton. I currently have 3 books on my nightstand and alternate between them daily. I love to run or do anything outside -- i.e. sit around a campfire and roast s'mores. But I also love to backpack, hike, kayak, climb and various other things. I enjoy eating good food and drinking delicious wine. This leads me to having a few favorite restaurants where I am known well... Whether or not this is embarrassing is yet to be determined.

3)Where are some of your favorite place to go and things to do in Portland? 
I love live music so I am often trying to check out new groups and/or venues for possible concerts. As I said earlier, I enjoy eating out therefore my restaurants/bars of choice are Papa Haydns (on 23rd), Taste on 23rd, Clyde Commons, Brasserie, Morrison St. Bar, 442 and 24 hour Seasame Donut Shop (Don't you dare judge me). I absolutely love the Alphabet district and you can catch me walking there often. I often run in forest park and enjoy trail running.

 

4) What are some different things about Portland that make it Portland?

Weird things about Portland, eh? Besides the fact that everyone owns a Subaru? or that every other person has a beard or does not shave? Tattoos are cool here - everyone has one. Except me. I love Portland's obsession with being unique. Everyone has to be that much more out-there and organic and gluten-free. What the hell does gluten-free even mean?? I still have yet to have some explain to me coherently. But I love it and I love that Portland holds true to it's motto of "weird."
 

5) Do you plan on staying in Portland for a while?

Portland has a part of my heart. I will be here for a few months longer and then I will go traverse the world. Eventually I will come back to my home of Portland. Who can say when?

 

 

Sauvie Island: Colins Beach

If we are friends on facebook, you might have realized by now that I am quite the fan of Sauvie Island's Colins Beach.  Sauvie Island is located about 10 miles north of Portland and lies in the middle of the Columbia River. It is the biggest island in the river and one of the biggest islands in the U.S.  If you live in Portland, you know Sauvie Island is a VERY popular fall destination for it's pumpkin patches and corn maizes. While the southern half of the island is comprised of farms and residents, the Northern half of the island is a wildlife refuge. In addition to it's sandy beaches on the river, the island is know for it's birdwatching and nature trails.

As you approach the beaches, there is a long strip of parking on a paved road. All of this parking runs along the regular beach. However, once you reach the gravel and drive about a quarter of a mile more, you will reach the forested section, in which the trails lead to the "clothing optional" section of the beach. I find that this section of the beach is must less populated and more peaceful.

The clothing optional section of the beach has a fair amount of small trees and bushes, which is nice for a bit of privacy, as well as getting into the shade on long hot days. The sand is lovely and the river gradually becomes deeper so its perfect for wading of swimming in. Apparently it's also perfect for kite boarding, as I saw about 10 or so of them out there last Friday.

While I find Colins Beach to be absolutely delightful on a weekday, when beach goers are sparse, polite and your "to be expected" hippie nudists....I would NEVER go to the beach again on a weekend. I went to the beach this past Saturday (grant it was the hottest day of the year) and every inch of the beach was packed, as well as the shore covered with anchored boats, blasting their terrible music. Even with so many belligerent beach goers, the water was still refreshing on such a hot day. I just prefer the beach when I can hear the water and the wind blowing through the leaves.

One last note; parking passes are required at the beach. They can be bought at either of the 2 convenience stores on the island. And don't forget the sunscreen ;)

WILDwood Trail

Earlier this summer, a co-worker of mine told me about told me about the Wildwood Trail in Forsest park here in Portland. Wildwood is a 30.25 mile trail that winds through much of the 5,100 acres of Forest Park. This lush park is largest forested natural area within city limits in the united states. Hiking 30 miles in a day seemed like quite a feat, but in my foolish mind it still seemed quite doable, and that is where this harebrained idea began! Over the summer I have mulled over the idea and read up on it here and there, but I haven't been able to find much info on it. In fact, out of all the blogs and hiking forums, I've only been able to find 2 people that have actually hiked this in a single day. (most split it up into 3 or more days). I figured that only because most people didn't write about their experience...I think I may have been wrong:)

So, this week, 2 illy prepared friends decided to challenge our minds and bodies and spend a day hiking the Wildwood Trail. After trying to figure out where the exact start and finish to the trail were, and how to bus out to one of these locations, I figured that'd be the hardest part, as there isn't a lot of concrete info on this. After getting a general idea of where we needed to be an how to get there, we set a day, and yesterday James arrived at my apartment on his bike, bright and early. After preparing sandwiches and filling water bottles, we set off to park downtown and hop on a bus. This whole portion took longer than expected, but we were finally on the right bus and headed down highway 30, looking for the vague spot that we knew signaled it was time to get off the bus. The bus driver was nice enough to drop us off on the side of the road, right before the Sauvie Island bridge, at a place where there was no official bus stop. We then hike 2 grueling miles up a steep hill in the sun to find our trailhead. (There was also another guy who got off the bus with us. We saw him on and off throughout the day, but I'm pretty sure he is dead somewhere in the forest, because we picked up our pace and got miles ahead of him I'm sure. and we barely made it out by nightfall).

The First 8 miles were pretty great! We felt awesome! We were out there, keeping a good pace, conquering this big feat!  After a while though, the forest seemed to make us feel claustrophobic. This is a THICK forest. You cant see any horizons, barely any sun creeps through the trees, and it starts to feel like there is only forest for miles and you will never see anything other than trees ever again (this could have been true for us!).  Its definitely a beautiful trail; lots of bird songs, no sign of the city, mossy nw trees, and shade from the cruel sun. But many miles into this trail, you realize that every square inch of your body is sticky from sweat, and the mosquitoes do not take too kindly to you taking a sitting break.





With naive hopeful spirits, we felt a second wind coming on after our sandwich break, and we continued on. We began quickening our pace a bit, as we started calculating how long it had taken us to get as far as we were. Our finishing time was looking a couple of hours later than we expected it to be. Around mile 13, the stupidity of our journey started to sink in, and we wanted nothing more than to reach the halfway point. By the time we reached mile 15, signs that blister were forming were getting very hard to ignore. I'm pretty sure we took a couple of breaks for food over the next few miles, and aired out our blistered feet.  We trucked through the next few miles pretty well and started seeing more and more people on the trail, as we go closer to town (they had all parked at various trail heads and come down to the trail to hike a few miles of it like normal people do). And no, there are no bathrooms along the trail. I peed a great many of times and as the day went on. As I got more exhausted I peed in the middle of the trail, as this trail doesn't really have places where you can walk off the trail, since you are mostly winding around thickly forested gullies. As we got closer to town, I realized that peeing on the trail is probably not as common, but these joggers didn't know what it felt like to have been walking for 20+ miles!!! So yes, I did get caught in the act once.

Once we had around 10 miles left, things started taking a pretty steep decline. Our pace had reached an all out speed walk, and we were now taking a jog when we came to downhill portions. The idea of racing through the trail for 3 or 4 more hours seemed alot more bearable than going at a comfortable pace for 6 more hours. By the time we had 5.5 miles left though, try as we might, what felt like a racing pace to us, was probably a fairly slow pace, as the last 5.5 miles took us over 2 hours. There was a point where I painfully felt a blister rip, and I spent a while limping down the trail. After a while longer though, the pain in my joints (particularly my hips knees) were so distracting that I was able to start putting normal pressure on my feet again and start racing towards the end of the trail...to get out of that God FORSAKEN FOREST that we were now trapped in, as the sun was disappearing. (whenever things got real bad, we just remembered the poor guy that was hiking this alone, and had surely laid down to die miles behind us by now). As we neared the end, we spent our last few miles doing nearly all uphill climbing. (and to think, i had done JUST this portion of the trail, as a hike to Pittock Mansion before).  Part of me was thinking "it really is amazing what the human body can do!" and the other part of me was thinking "the human body SUCKS! it can't even walk all day without crumbling!" 

When we finally got out of the forest, our joy quickly turned to concern as we realized it was dark and we were not sure of where we were in the Washington Park area. We began hobbling down the street hitchhiking, until we came across a bus stop (never been so happy to see a bus stop).

Unfortunately the journey didn't end when the bus came. After sitting on the bus a bit, getting up was very difficult and we still had about 8-10 city blocks to walk to get to the car. At this point, my knees couldn't straighten because of the swelling, and we were both hobbling down the street like crippled homeless folk (or like Forrest Gump before he got his leg braces). Arriving at the car, we were so thankfully to sit and be done with our journey. It was hard to tell at this point if I was more sore/tired or more hungry. An ice bath with a bag of cheeseburgers was how i ended my day.

Over all, this was a VERY long day. We managed to do the hike at a pace of 3 miles per hour. We didn't train and we obviously weren't very prepared, but it was a good experience and (i think) a pretty big accomplishment; something for us to both be proud of!

Exhausted and unable to hold the camera steady on the bus at the very end.

Portland People

I've been a little lazy about the blog lately. oops. I've got a Portland Person to share this week though. I hope you enjoy meeting my rad friend, James!

1) How long have you lived in Portland?
i have lived in portland for a year and a half. i currently live in southeast portland, close to reed college.

2) What fills up your days (or nights) in Portland? 
 what fills up my days is work, commuting, biking for funzies, hanging out with friends, watching movies, listening to music (usual do that and biking at the same time), when i have a chance to be a lazy bum i take it, daydreaming.

3) Where are some of your favorite place to go and things to do in Portland? 
i like going to various food carts like brunch box, i like thai food. whole foods, the ace hotel to eat my whole foods food and charge my phone an take naps, sweet here after, night light, prost, bar bar, and so many other bars. its portland...it would be impossible for me to break it down for you what places, how many, and what i do. i do so much in a day it all gets lost in the ether. i like sitting on the steps by baja fresh on 11th and burnside and people watch. especially on a friday or saturday night when all the drunk chicks spill out of aura. theres nothing like seeing drunk chicks fall down in public. pure gold. i love dancing. i like going to the goodfoot and 80s and 90s dance night at the crystal ballroom. i especially like going with my black friend jeff. he does a mean bill cosby.

oh and portland is making me fat. my days consist of stuffing my face every chance i get.

i also go to ground kontrol and get top score on ms. pacman. ok i think thats about it.

4) What are some different things about Portland that make it Portland?

just the whole hipster cliche and of course anything thats on portlandia. portlandia portrays portland so perfectly. and of course i am the "hipster" "fixster" cliche, and the icing on the cake is that i've been on portlandia. but hey...at least im not vegan. that would definitely be the final nail in my hipster coffin. omg...hipster coffins...i think i may be onto something. hmmmm...ill come back to that later

5) Do you plan on staying in Portland for a while?

i plan on staying in portland as long as God intends me to. id love to work at one of the prestigious coffee shops and become a famous fixed gear bike rider, but who knows. before any of that i want to be a professional christian. i should probably practice more...im a little rusty.

 And here is a link to the scene from the Portlandia episode that James was in. He is wearing a plaid shirt and playing the pipe whistle thing.  This is one of my favorite scenes!

Horsetail Falls

I've been going out to the Columbia River Gorge alot lately to go hiking on all the great trails along the river. I say alot, because since the Angel's Rest hike (which wasn't even 2 weeks ago) I've done 3 more hikes. I chose a fairly easy loop trail to do today, because I had a time limit and wanted it to be my first solo hike (with Steve of course). However, my friend James, who always works, had the day off, so I let him tag along (just joshin' with ya, james! WINK).  We headed out fairly early and after finally figuring out how to get out of Portland from his end of town, we were off into the wilderness and arrived at the trail head, which is probably a mile past Multnomah Falls, around 9am. The trail is a 4 mile loop....supposedly. It was definitely a loop, but the bottom of the loop was a bit disconnected. When we go to the bottom of the loop we had to walk along the highway to get back to the starting trailhead where we left the car. This was only maybe a half mile walk or less, so nothing too terrible. Plus, we founds some CRAZY animal bones along the road...fairly substantial in size, yet it looked like there were turkey waddles connected to the jaw area, but also fur found on some of the carcass. Conclusion: a turkey wearing a fur coat!!! Too bad it go hit by a car. 

 

(I'm not sure what the name of the fall on the left is. The fall on the Right is Horsetail Falls, and is visible from the highway.)

This hike only has an elevation gain of 560ft, but there are still a couple of decent viewpoints along the way (nothing as thrilling as other higher elevation hikes though, like Devil's and Angel's Rest). With the lack of elevation, it's nice that this is still a 4 mile hike, which makes it more worth it for me. If I'm going to do an easy hike, I still want there to be a bit of distance.

Like the other hikes in the area, this one has a bit of a rocky trail (as my hipster friend quickly noticed in his thin soled fashionable shoes:) The forest is lush and beautiful, lots of moss on the trees and slugs on the ground.

I let James in on a little secret; if you lick this slug your tongue will get numb. Yes, I have tried it before and it does work, but I couldn't remember what kind of slug. This one had leopard spots. Perhaps it's the right kind, perhaps I poisoned James! Either way, he spit about 30 times and caused quite a scene, but then licked it again when I said a photo would be a good idea. The slug left his hands covered in gluey goop and we decided to use this glue when the apocalypse happens and we need to build a forest home.

 We found this monument in the woods near a whole slough of lookouts. We don't know the exact cliff that poor little Glenn fell from, but I asked James to feel out the different ledges and he said that this one felt like a pretty legit place to fall and die from. Poor James was REALLY uncomfortable out there.

Halfway through the loop there is a fall that the trail goes right behind. There is a big cave-like cove cut out from the huge rock under the waterfall, where the trail goes. Quite cool! I think this might be Ponytail Falls.

Like most of the other hikes in this area, this hike has forks where you can follow trails that connect to other trails, thus making this hike as long as you want really. Maybe next times I'll take one of the trail offshoots and see what kind of beautiful things I find. Alone as a loop, this is a very nice relaxing hike.

Sweet Hereafter

Yesterday I met up with Ellen for afternoon happy hour. She suggested the Sweet Hereafter, which was an EXCELLENT suggestion since it's on the block of Belmont that I live on (well, I technically live on the back side on Morrison, which run parallel), but I've never been there. 

First off, I LOVE my little block on Belmont. The block between 33rd and 34th is probably the best block on SE Belmont St. Lots of great bars, lounges, restaurants, cafes, and shops all packed into one great block. There is everything from gourmet cupcakes to NY style pizza. Sadly, I haven't tried many of these adorable establishments. (its easy to get used to going to the same place, day after day...where everybody knows my name!)

The Sweet Hereafter only serves Vegan food. While I didn't eat anything, I smelled and saw a number of tastey looking dishes, and according to their many Yelp reviews, even non-vegans will enjoy these healthy dishes (which include things like mac n cheese and a tofu bhan mi sandwich). Ellen and I grabbed happy hour well drinks ($3.00) and grabbed a seat on there large patio.

   The inside of the bar is really nice. Very spacious, a long bar, lots of chunky dark wood, and nice dim lighting.
   The patio is quite large, with a couple of long lines of picnic tables. Its covered, but the covering is very high, with air flow at the tops so you still feel very much outside, in this year around functional outdoor seating area. The only downfall is that they don't allow smoking in the covered portion of the patio, which is why most people in Portland are on the patio in the first place!

 
   Beyond the covered area, there is on picnic table, open to the elements  (which is nice in the sun) and smoking is allowed at and around this one table...because whats a drink without a smoke!?


Overall, my drink was well made, the bar tender was very friendly (and patient with out indecisive drink choosing), and the atmosphere was pleasant both indoors and out. I'd like to go back to try some things off of the all vegan menu sometime! Thanks Ellen and Sweet Hereafter.  It's so great to have to many different types of places to choose from, so close to home!