Vacation Fatigue
It's a pretty good sign that a vacation has been long enough when I come back from a day's outing, and can't formulate an entry for Get Up 8.
Went here. Went there. Did this. Did that. Portland is nice.
Blah blah.
It's a good sign, too, when I'm excited about the trip home. Even when the weather is predicted to be three inches of snow on top of a quarter inch of ice. (What the hell is up with that?)
I realized I haven't updated once since arriving in Portland. I'm sitting in the airport, early for my flight, and I'll say this about Portland: there's free wifi in the airport.
How civilized.
The Bluebird Guesthouse was a great place to alight at the end of the day. Having a kitchen available was a plus, thought we didn't take advantage of it. We though we might, but we didn't. Our room was comfortable, and the rate was excellent. The bus line downtown was just outside the door, and there's a local coffee shop half a block up the street, not to mention pubs, restaurants, a patisserie. (There was a highly recommended Thai streetfood stand across the street too. It was disappointingly authentic: nothing vegetarian on the menu.) We probably could have stayed right in the area of the guesthouse, and had a plenty good time.
Instead of having a good time staying near our accomodations, though, we had a great time gallivanting all over the place. We went here. We went there. We did this. We did that. Highlights included:
- Torii Mor Winery
- SakéOne (aka Momokawa) Brewery tour and tasting. (They call it a
sakery
.) - Powell's Book City and Powell's Book City again.
- The Latourelle Falls and, to a lesser extent, the Multnomah Falls. The Multnomah Falls are grander and more accessible from the highway, so commeasurately more crowded, noisy, overrun, developed. Seeing Latourelle required a short hike. The fog lying on the mountain added something extra and unusual.
- Resting our weary feet, but stimulating our weary brains in the library.
- Brunch with our new friends, Joan and Emilie.
- The Gardens.
Et cetera. It seemed like we packed a lot in.
On days when we did use a car, we paid the little bit extra for a GPS navigation system. Honestly, I don't know how we got a long without one in the past. If I didn't know my way around Lincoln so well, I'd be tempted to buy one for Barbara (ahem) for Christmas. The downside: you'd never get lost anywhere. That's also the upside. I want this for my phone. (Along with a good camera and ogg player. Or just a tricorder, like I've always said. Oh, now, I also want an ebook reader built in too, with an e-ink display, but only if it has wifi built in and DRM-free content I can swap with my friends. Authors, please: I want to read your books. I'll pay you for them! Then I'll give copies to my friends to read, and they'll pay you for your other books! But I digress...)
Here's a newsflash: with the internet, cell phones, email, and social networking sites, I felt more in touch with the goings-on back home than I ever have on a vacation. I know, I know: is that a good thing or a bad thing? Being gone this long, it made be feel more in control and more comfortable with being physically not-present. I was able to coordinate plumbing work and snow removal (thanks Darren and Amren), and knew within hours when Lorenzo had torn into the bag of dry cat food and made a huge mess (sorry Shannon). I was also able to share my pictures and blog entries, when I bothered to write them, in a timely fashion, and won't have a huge pile of stuff to deal with when I get back to the office.
This whole idea of disconnection
? Overrated.