Portland Twice in as Many Days- Oh My!

And for excellent reasons both times.

Last night I headed down to meet up with an old and dear friend of mine, Zachary.  We caught up on the past few years, ate delicious corn, and best of all I got to meet his long-term lady, whom I liked so well that honestly, I probably spent more time chatting with her than with him.  This is something of a trend with my exes... I have one old flame in particular who married a girl so excellent that I am always hard-pressed not to steal her for pure-girlie-madness times... not that I love him any less but damn that man married a rad chick.

Anyway hanging out with them last night was just so exactly what I needed to sort of regain my chill.  I'd worked myself up into a near frothing-rage during the workday, and it was good to be with people who reminded me that it's just not worth it to to let that sort of thing affect you so much.

This afternoon, however, I ventured down for an entirely different sort of stress-relief: my bike was finally ready!  And so I re-visted Seven Corners, and Corey helped me get everything adjusted Just So.  In fact he is so awesome he helped me (and by 'helped' I mean did it without any sort of interference from me) put it on the new roof rack:

Blue on Blue!

After it was up there I sort of squinted at it and said,

"Huh.  I guess that's going to be a lot more wind resistance than a surf board," to which he replied,

"Yeah- and a lot taller.  So be careful if you go through the Burger King drive through or whatever- I can't tell you how many bikes we've had to repair because people forget and go racing into their parking structure!"

Which, of course, made me totally paranoid about for the first few miles of my drive home, until the Rational part of my brain pointed out that even with the bike on top my profile was still lower than the 18-wheelers next to me on the freeway, so if they could make it through an underpass, so could I.

(Oh Rationality!  So nice to see you again, however briefly...)

Once I got home I immediately took her out for a spin, and discovered that there is a really lovely biking/hiking path not half a mile down the road from the apartment (the opposite direction of work, which is why I'd never seen it before).  All in all I did about four miles, and it was just so much fun!  Especially since I didn't feel like I had to clutch at the handlebars to make certain the wheel stayed attached...

Back home again

I'm definitely looking forward to tomorrow: the morning's commute should be really excellent.  Not to mention the fact that Nathan comes home in the evening...