Lot going on lately (long post)
Yesterday, the friends I got from Lily (Jesse, Cat, Victor) and a new friend named Jenny went shopping for some garb stuff, because we're all going to go to Canterbury Ren Faire. When we get there, we're gonna get more stuff for Shrewsbury Ren Faire. The reason for this is we're not just going as tourists, we're going as volunteers, and Jenny and I need period-appropriate stuff for them. Canterbury isn't nearly as strict about it as Shrewsbury is.
Canterbury is in two or three weeks. Shrewsbury is in September. Oh, and we're also going to Fairy Worlds, I think. That's in August.
Anyway, we did some shopping. Then, thanks to a series of events I couldn't properly explain, we ended up going on an unplanned trip to Seaside, Oregon. We ate at a place called Finn's Fish House. It's a seafood place, and Jesse was paying for it. I feel slightly silly about getting a burger there, but seafood has about as much staying power for me as Chinese food does for most people, since my body digests seafood protein WAY too fast, so the only seafood I had was a cup of clam chowder, which was pretty good. (I didn't used to have this problem. I think the years I spent on a vegetarian diet fucked up my metabolism where protein is concerned.)
It was late, but we still went out to see the ocean after the meal. It was interesting. The beach has this super-fine grained sand, like you might see in an hour glass. And even with the powerful lights shining on the beach, we couldn't even see the ocean at all until we walked toward it for several minutes. We got just close enough to let some of the waves wash over our feet, which felt like a walk of about a mile or two.
Funny thing: on our way back from the ocean, I found buried in sand a lost toy mermaid. About the size of a Polly Pocket, it is. There was nobody in that immediate area (everyone on the beach was scattered about here and there, which you could tell from the small campfires) and was likely lost hours before, so it was finders keepers. Yeah, I went to the ocean and came back with a mermaid! The mermaid is now sitting on my altar.
When I first got there, what I saw was... well, it looked like the beach went on for a mile or two, and then just stopped. It might have been the edge of the world, where you could step off into outer space, except that there was just darkness. No stars.
This image is pretty accurate of what I saw when we first got there: https://drive.google.com/file/d/14KwSj7rZEkVv-b5JtriSukfKptpuDoYL/view?usp=sharing
Oh, on the way to the ocean we stopped into a couple shops. One of them had pretty stones in it, and a couple pink stones caught my eye. One looks like it might be rose quartz or similar. The other would look like turquoise if it wasn't pink.
Here's the image of the rocks: https://drive.google.com/file/d/14N3BYXOKrYpka99-VwzHsh0llgX37xuO/view?usp=sharing
Oh yeah, and it was on our way to Seaside that I saw those horrible clear-cut forests that looked to me like the battlefield of a genocide.
Anyway, on to today:
Went riding on my new bike. Started out with Springwater Corridor because I thought it would be easy. I thought it was flat, once one got over the one hill. It seems flat, when walking it. But IT IS NOT FLAT. There's just enough of an incline that I was having to stop every couple minutes to take a break. Sure, I'm out of shape, but trust me, it is not flat. Even out of shape, I can do flat surfaces on bikes. This was an incline.
I gave up just past the offshoot that goes down to the MAX station, doubled back, and coasted down to the MAX station. Took the MAX one stop to Milwaukie, biked from that stop to the one for the 75, and took the 75 to the trail head at Harney and 45th. For you see, I was thinking "If it's uphill heading east, it'll be downhill heading west."
Spoiler alert: THIS WAS NOT THE CASE. That bloody bike path is literally, no shitting around, uphill both ways! More accurately, the section going east from the bridge over McLaughlin and the bridge over the MAX is uphill. Everything west of that McLaughlin bridge is downhill. And the section from the Harney trailhead to the bridge over the MAX is uphill. So yeah, literally uphill both ways.
I stopped at this one spot where there's an offshoot leading from the trail to Sherret and walked the bike up a massive hill (so big I struggle on it even when walking) because I was looking for this one geocache. But, as it turns out, that bloody geocache would have been easier to get to from the trail. I don't have a lock for my bike yet, and I didn't want to go out of sight of it for long, so I gave up on that geocache.
From there, it would have been simple to coast back to the trail, but instead, I decided to go somewhere to refill my water bottle. Thus, I walked the bike up a second huge hill. Once there, I biked over to this shawarma place at 32nd and Johnson Creek Blvd. called The Corner Market. It's got a convenience store attached to it, and I could see my bike from inside, so I got some bottled water, and - because it'd been a while since breakfast - ordered a chicken shawarma. (Which is fucking delicious, by the way. Also has huge chunks of meat in it! If you're ever in the area and you like shawarma, try it out!)
While waiting for my shawarma, I checked Google Maps for the best route home, because I was done. I just wanted to get home and eat my shawarma. The route it showed me seemed obvious once I saw it - up Tacoma, turn left onto 21st, ride to the end of 21st, and there you are. But while Tacoma is downhill between the shawarma place and the MAX station, it's uphill after that. VERY uphill. So instead I decided to go down Tacoma to the MAX station, take the 99 to as close to 17th as possible, and go down 16th.
Well... going down Tacoma was far more interesting than I had anticipated. It's pretty busy, especially during the day. And uh... it's such a large hill that about 1/4th of the way down it, I was already going as fast as the cars were. The wind from this speed plus the cars going past me made me almost lose my balance to the point I felt like I was almost blown into traffic several times. I don't think I'll be going that way again. Too intense for me, and too potentially deadly. But I got to the MAX station, and I did take the 99 to 17th, and I did ride my bike down 16th (because 17th is insanely busy during the day, whereas most of the other parallel streets are practically dead at all hours of the day). Once I finally managed to get past 17th, the easiest part of the entire ride was from 17th to home. Didn't even have to petal once I got moving, just coasted lackadaisically all the way home.
And I was so hot and sweaty from all that activity that I took a shower, even washing my hair (which I only do a few times a month usually, because I rarely have the spoons to manage it.) And now we're all caught up.
TL;DR version: Went shopping for garb yesterday, also went (unplanned) to Seaside Oregon yesterday with friends and saw the ocean at night. Today, went biking and nearly got sucked into traffic on Tacoma from the wind.
This was cross-posted from https://fayanora.dreamwidth.org/1457547.html
You can comment either here or there.
Canterbury is in two or three weeks. Shrewsbury is in September. Oh, and we're also going to Fairy Worlds, I think. That's in August.
Anyway, we did some shopping. Then, thanks to a series of events I couldn't properly explain, we ended up going on an unplanned trip to Seaside, Oregon. We ate at a place called Finn's Fish House. It's a seafood place, and Jesse was paying for it. I feel slightly silly about getting a burger there, but seafood has about as much staying power for me as Chinese food does for most people, since my body digests seafood protein WAY too fast, so the only seafood I had was a cup of clam chowder, which was pretty good. (I didn't used to have this problem. I think the years I spent on a vegetarian diet fucked up my metabolism where protein is concerned.)
It was late, but we still went out to see the ocean after the meal. It was interesting. The beach has this super-fine grained sand, like you might see in an hour glass. And even with the powerful lights shining on the beach, we couldn't even see the ocean at all until we walked toward it for several minutes. We got just close enough to let some of the waves wash over our feet, which felt like a walk of about a mile or two.
Funny thing: on our way back from the ocean, I found buried in sand a lost toy mermaid. About the size of a Polly Pocket, it is. There was nobody in that immediate area (everyone on the beach was scattered about here and there, which you could tell from the small campfires) and was likely lost hours before, so it was finders keepers. Yeah, I went to the ocean and came back with a mermaid! The mermaid is now sitting on my altar.
When I first got there, what I saw was... well, it looked like the beach went on for a mile or two, and then just stopped. It might have been the edge of the world, where you could step off into outer space, except that there was just darkness. No stars.
This image is pretty accurate of what I saw when we first got there: https://drive.google.com/file/d/14KwSj7rZEkVv-b5JtriSukfKptpuDoYL/view?usp=sharing
Oh, on the way to the ocean we stopped into a couple shops. One of them had pretty stones in it, and a couple pink stones caught my eye. One looks like it might be rose quartz or similar. The other would look like turquoise if it wasn't pink.
Here's the image of the rocks: https://drive.google.com/file/d/14N3BYXOKrYpka99-VwzHsh0llgX37xuO/view?usp=sharing
Oh yeah, and it was on our way to Seaside that I saw those horrible clear-cut forests that looked to me like the battlefield of a genocide.
Anyway, on to today:
Went riding on my new bike. Started out with Springwater Corridor because I thought it would be easy. I thought it was flat, once one got over the one hill. It seems flat, when walking it. But IT IS NOT FLAT. There's just enough of an incline that I was having to stop every couple minutes to take a break. Sure, I'm out of shape, but trust me, it is not flat. Even out of shape, I can do flat surfaces on bikes. This was an incline.
I gave up just past the offshoot that goes down to the MAX station, doubled back, and coasted down to the MAX station. Took the MAX one stop to Milwaukie, biked from that stop to the one for the 75, and took the 75 to the trail head at Harney and 45th. For you see, I was thinking "If it's uphill heading east, it'll be downhill heading west."
Spoiler alert: THIS WAS NOT THE CASE. That bloody bike path is literally, no shitting around, uphill both ways! More accurately, the section going east from the bridge over McLaughlin and the bridge over the MAX is uphill. Everything west of that McLaughlin bridge is downhill. And the section from the Harney trailhead to the bridge over the MAX is uphill. So yeah, literally uphill both ways.
I stopped at this one spot where there's an offshoot leading from the trail to Sherret and walked the bike up a massive hill (so big I struggle on it even when walking) because I was looking for this one geocache. But, as it turns out, that bloody geocache would have been easier to get to from the trail. I don't have a lock for my bike yet, and I didn't want to go out of sight of it for long, so I gave up on that geocache.
From there, it would have been simple to coast back to the trail, but instead, I decided to go somewhere to refill my water bottle. Thus, I walked the bike up a second huge hill. Once there, I biked over to this shawarma place at 32nd and Johnson Creek Blvd. called The Corner Market. It's got a convenience store attached to it, and I could see my bike from inside, so I got some bottled water, and - because it'd been a while since breakfast - ordered a chicken shawarma. (Which is fucking delicious, by the way. Also has huge chunks of meat in it! If you're ever in the area and you like shawarma, try it out!)
While waiting for my shawarma, I checked Google Maps for the best route home, because I was done. I just wanted to get home and eat my shawarma. The route it showed me seemed obvious once I saw it - up Tacoma, turn left onto 21st, ride to the end of 21st, and there you are. But while Tacoma is downhill between the shawarma place and the MAX station, it's uphill after that. VERY uphill. So instead I decided to go down Tacoma to the MAX station, take the 99 to as close to 17th as possible, and go down 16th.
Well... going down Tacoma was far more interesting than I had anticipated. It's pretty busy, especially during the day. And uh... it's such a large hill that about 1/4th of the way down it, I was already going as fast as the cars were. The wind from this speed plus the cars going past me made me almost lose my balance to the point I felt like I was almost blown into traffic several times. I don't think I'll be going that way again. Too intense for me, and too potentially deadly. But I got to the MAX station, and I did take the 99 to 17th, and I did ride my bike down 16th (because 17th is insanely busy during the day, whereas most of the other parallel streets are practically dead at all hours of the day). Once I finally managed to get past 17th, the easiest part of the entire ride was from 17th to home. Didn't even have to petal once I got moving, just coasted lackadaisically all the way home.
And I was so hot and sweaty from all that activity that I took a shower, even washing my hair (which I only do a few times a month usually, because I rarely have the spoons to manage it.) And now we're all caught up.
TL;DR version: Went shopping for garb yesterday, also went (unplanned) to Seaside Oregon yesterday with friends and saw the ocean at night. Today, went biking and nearly got sucked into traffic on Tacoma from the wind.
This was cross-posted from https://fayanora.dreamwidth.org/1457547.html
You can comment either here or there.