All the World is Green - A Walk on Victoria's Lochside Trail

The desert sits and ponders
how it will murder me.

I lay no claim to the title of Outdoorsman.   Some people, my good friends Scott & Rose, for example, are at home in the natural world.  They run for fun (for fun!) and voluntarily spend time sweating under that awful orange ball in the sky photographing savage, toothy things whereas I am most comfortable somewhere quiet and air-conditioned where the most savage thing I’m likely to encounter is a poorly-made daiquiri.

The most vivid memory I have of the hiking trip Scott & I made in Joshua Tree National Park last spring is the sound of a rattlesnake communicating his displeasure at my proximity.  Scott grew up in the desert and so being used to these kinds of things said only, “That’s a big snake”.  I am a child of the mountains, where the things that can kill you are much larger and more easily avoided so my response to standing directly over a predator was one that came naturally:  bowel-loosening panic. 

Helser's on Alberta | 1538 Northeast Alberta Street | Portland, OR

Flying is idiotic.  Not all flying of course, I'm well aware that without the power of flight bumblebees, herons and the like would have a hard time getting around.  Human beings however were not born with the benefit of wings and are not particularly aerodynamic so we've spent the better part of our history tottering about on two legs, trying not to fall from high places and doing just fine.  A pack of maniacs who women tend to avoid decided that their free time would be best spent trying to defy nature and eventually, after much tribulation, we had the aeroplane.  The start of the airline industry meant that ordinary folks like you and me got to experience the immediacy of mortality courtesy of a flimsy metal tube hurtling across the sky at 500 miles an hour.  Because government bodies thrive on misery the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 was passed, which gave airlines & passengers carte blanche to stop caring about anything. 

From then on ordinary folks like you and me still got to experience the glory of the Skycoffin but now with two hundred other people dressed in sweat-pants, all with whooping plague, enjoying the same level of comfort offered in a cattleyard.  Add in turbulence and the looming possibility that some resentful virgin who spends too much time on the internet has hidden explosives in his underpants and air travel for fun makes as much sense as trying to kick a bear in the testicles.  The only time I will consent to air travel is when time is short, such as this weekend past when Nicky & I visited our friends Rose & Scott in Portland. 

Flying in the Dash 8 aircraft used by Air Canada for short hops like Victoria-Vancouver & Vancouver-Portland is to feel like you've been packed into a Port-a-John and launched by catapult.  I'm not normally a religious man but but if the almighty has an answering machine then by the time I got to PDX I'd filled the tape.   It was all worth it though, to see good friends, have good times and eat good food.  Portland eateries have almost never disappointed me and Helser's comes in at the top of what was already an esteemed list.