Milwaukee Bay

January 10, 2025

In what counts for a relatively calm day in the middle of all this insanity, today goes more or less as planned and hoped for. Let’s take advantage of it and zip through the day and maybe get caught up since I’ve gotten about two days behind - always a difficult spot for me, trying to remember back to what happened so recently without losing the details about today in the process. This is exactly the point at which my hand-written journals in the past tended to break down and prompted me to put down the pen early.

So today’s plan and aspirations when the day begins are busy and probably on the edge of being too optimistic. It begins early with one of the two fixed agenda items - my third trip down to Sunnyside to see Dr. Torres, my ophthalmologist: and a deep dish pizza date with Jonathan back at The Star. In between the weather looks marginal with no great prospects for a real walk or ride in. Instead I’ll try to fit in two errands, my last chance since this is Friday, the last business day before our flight. If I’m going to finally make it to to my storage locker, it’s today or wait until March; and it’s the best day to make it back to the optometrist’s office in Hillsboro to see if my left behind blue Pendleton is in their lost and found waiting for me. That could wait until tomorrow, but tomorrow’s forecast is more hopeful and I’d like to leave my options for a possible hike.

It ends up an interesting enough day that several candidates come to mind when I’m trying to come up with a title for the day’s post: Third trip to the the optometrist, The a return of the Pendleton, Pie Wars, Got Those Safety Deposit Box Blues all seem reasonable, but let’s go with the one that produces nearly all the photographs for the day and nets me a new bird: my stop off at Milwaukee Bay for a short walk along the waterfront. We’ll keep them all, but using the also rans to serve as internal organizers.

Third trip to The Ophthalmologist

So what is there to say about this one? For one, it’s at an awkward time: 8:15 AM, with check-in 15 minutes prior. That’s really early to be seeing who’d like to wake up about 5:30, so I figure if I can drive to the HAC meet it’s only about another 15 miles past that to Sunnyside.

There’s some concern and extended discussion amongst the members of the team as to whether I’m safe to drive and shouldn’t I really be happier investing another $100 In Uber. I talk my way into it, promising that if it feels unsafe I’ll just stop and call Uber from wherever I decide it’s necessary. It’s fine though - I avoid the Clackamas Highway by sticking to a very quiet side routes and leave before 6:30 to avoid the rush hour.

The appointment goes fine, with some real evidence of improvement over two weeks ago. When I leave an appointment is made for when we return in mid-March, during which I plan to raise the subject of our hopes to fly to Europe in April.

Afterwards I move on to the eyeglass shop and pick a pair of glasses for my new prescription: one with impact resistant, shatterproof,darkening progressive bifocals; and a second identical one if something somehow happens to the first. They’ll take about three weeks, so they’ll get mailed down to Tucson. And after that I drive across the road to the Medical Center and pick up a three month prescription for prednisone so I won’t have to refill on my own $$ by doing it down in Tucson. We’re good to go.

I haven’t had breakfast yet other than a first coffee back at home, so I start driving to the nearest Starbucks thinking I’ll hang out there while the morning traffic eases and this surprisingly heavy rain passes. When I get there though I’m surprised to see that the rain suddenly stopped and the sky to the west is clearing. So a new plan emerges: I’ll drive to Milwaukee, check out the waterfront scene there, have breakfast there somewhere, and then start driving to Hillsboro in hopes that the Pendleton was found rather than stolen.

Milwaukee Bay

There’s a small waterfront at a Milwaukee where Kellog Creek enters the Willamette. It’s the site of an wastewater treatment plant that services this town and several nearby villages, but four or five years ago significant changes were made to upgrade it and control its odor problems, and to make beautification improvements to the waterfront there. Rachael and I often biked there on rides down to an Oregon City. I liked it for the waterfront and its birds, she liked it for the public restroom.

I didn’t bring my Canon with me today because I had expected rain through late morning. Still it’s nice to just walk along the shore remembering and admiring the views as I walk south to Elk Rock Island and back, and I’m elated when a belted kingfisher chatters his way across the sky directly above me.

The Willamette River from the Milwaukee Bay boat launch.

Milwaukee has big trees too, Bruce. No need to drive down to a California to see them.

Another view upriver. The hills straight up are probably in or near Portland.

Well sure, easy enough to tell they’re the Lesser ones if they’re going to just swim up near the shore like that.

A candidate State Bird for our latest acquisition.

So the bird in the lower right is a belted kingfisher (#42), a pretty difficult bird to misidentify but a hard one to get a shot of.

In the Hello Cafe. Nice that breakfast comes with an invertebrate for someone to puzzle over.

It’s nearly noon when I make it back to the car and drive into old Milwaukee looking for a lunch spot, a modest place named Happy Cafe. What’s not to like in a place with a name like that, I think, so I stop in for a quiche and a cup, chasing it with an amazing chocolate scone.

The quiche was fine, but I should have shown off the chocolate scone.

Got Those Safety Deposit Box Blues

This is my third attempt at getting access to my safety deposit box. I’ve got more than one reason for being here, but the main one was to be able to order a replacement for my lost drivers license. You can order one to be delivered to you through the DMV website, but only if you can positively. Identify yourself to it. Paradoxically, the primary identifying document is your old license, which isn’t available under the circumstances. The backup, if you’re a vehicle owner, is information from the car title. Ours is in the SDB, so soon after we got back in a Portland I went down to try my luck. I wasn’t too lucky on the first attempt because my key wouldn’t open the box. Puzzling, but later I’ll learn that I was presented with someone else’s box. Inspires confidence.

On my second attempt they matched me to the right box, but now I need to positively identify myself to them - but I hadn’t thought to bring my passport along.

Today’s the day though. I no longer need in for the sake of my lost driver’s license, since thanks to Andea it’s no longer missing. I’ve got that other need I’m dealing with though, so this is a relief.

But that’s not why I’m even mentioning this little errand. It’s to brag on myself. I’ve been a reasonably competent parallel parker ever since dad had his way with me over sixty years ago. My situation has changed now though, and I wondered whether I still had the touch. Below is my evidence. The scenario is that I have cars behind me and I think a second about my chances with this marginal gap before deciding to tackle it before proceeding. I think I did OK, considering. First, there’s traffic behind me. Second, I nail it - perfect the first time, with no jockeying back and forth between the other cars trying to nudge mine curbward. And third, I’m blind on the curbside and still manage to get the distance right.

Next, I’m off to Hillsboro to pick up my blue Pendleton, buoyed prepaid by the fact that I know where I am going this time, and buoyed by the fact that I expect success because Rachael called while I am eating lunch to let me know that it’s been found and is there waiting for me. Not much else to say about that other than I feel enabled by the fact that I’m fine to drive again.

Nice to have them both back. The plan is that I’ll travel with one and Elizabeth will keep custody of the other, keeping it safe from moths.

Pie Wars

Finally, Rachael and I head off to The Star, the dueling ground for the deep dish pie eating contest Johnathan challenged me to over coffee when we met at Cafe Umbria several days back.

Jonathan gave it a game try, but it was an easy win as I out-ate him four slices to three. He was probably unaware that I was a sleeper, and was know back in high school as the the Potato Chip Champion of Roosevelt High, having earned the title and a bet by downing fifteen bags of barbecued potato chips in the cafeteria during lunch break in under the allotted time. I still remember an ally, a shot put hurler from our track team, sitting at the table next to me pounding bags of uneaten chips into barbecued dust so I could pour them down my throat. Sorry, Jonathan. No way you could have known. Rachael didn’t even know before proofreading this post.

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