Hello dear readers! Thank you for dealing with my absence as I healed from a sprained ankle! That’s right….someone who blogs about walking sprained their ankle! Let me tell you…it was a real shit show! On an average run in my beloved Lone Fir I took a tumble. Chris stopped to read a weird looking tombstone and the overachiever that I am, I decided to jog in place for maximum step count…one step to the right and I fell full (and I mean FULL) body weight on my ankle. While Chris ran to get in the car, I was stuck sitting in the mud, cold… in pain…and questioning life. I came to the conclusion that running is awful. CHANGE MY MIND!

On my first walk back since the injury, Chris and I had a very full day. We decided to take an air tram across the Willamette river. This is the river that splits the city of Portland in half. We live on the Southeast side (aka the cooler side) and the actual downtown is on the Northeast side. When on the tram we could see two mountains and it was really epic. I still haven’t adjusted to living in a city where on my drive home from work I see the sun setting behind a majestic mountain. It’s the kind of beauty that words just don’t describe. The airtram that we took, and is popular among tourists, is used as a hospital commuter rail…what a commute! It was short and fun, but the entire tram shook at times and was a little scary. The beauty of the trip made up for it though.

Afterwards, Chris and I shared a pitcher of margaritas and then walked across the Tilikum Crossing Bridge, which is a bridge built for for pedestrians/bicyclists only. At the time we crossed 835 bikes had ridden across it that day.At one point we noticed a bunch of logs stacked at the base of the bridge pillars, and wondered if it was done on purpose or by nature. On our way home we walked by the Oregon Rail Heritage site where they had old train cars parked and a brewery (because this IS Portland) inside a bunch of old train cars. We decided to stop for a drink and went on to bake in the sunshine. Portland in the Spring is magical!

From there we met my friend, Sarah, for drinks. She showed up and we were literally wearing the same outfit. Great minds, amiright? What followed was happy hour daiquiris. tiki drinks at a soccer bar, and many laughs. I ended up finishing my hour walking home tipsy, and as the sky was turning pink and twilight was setting in. I realized it was 8:30pm and sun hadn’t set yet. Living up North, the sun sets so late here and I love it. I remember how resistant I was to moving to Portland and now I could drunkenly wax poetics about how magical of a city Portland is. Instead I’ll leave you with the words of a native…Matt Groening “You’ve got to embrace the future. You can whine about it, but you’ve got to embrace it.” Portland has just made it so easy to embrace and never let go.

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Airtram views of Mt. Hood

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I wasn’t kidding when I said the exact same outfit!