Topped out

December 31, 2024

Sometime during the day today - I think not until around mid-afternoon - I realize that there’s been yet one more significant change, but of a different nature. Sometime today the almost pysochotitc euphoria that I’ve been experiencing for over a solid week in which a succession of one miraculous improvement after another left me regarding so much of what I was experiencing with an awed and intense appreciation, seems finally to have ended. I’ve topped out.

You’ll remember I was just saying something about this, and that I must be about at the top of the staircase because I couldn’t see much room for improvement, and I think I was right. It really does feel like I’ve plateaued again now, blessedly on a much higher mesa than ether of us ever dared hope for. There’s no noticeable improvement today over yesterday that I’m detecting, and I think I’m starting to know what my new normal is going to be like.

In the background though there’s been this other question both Rachael and I have been speculating on throughout all this: how long will this euphoria last, and how soon am I likely to revert to norm: back my calmer, steadier, more rational, more prosaic, less poetic, less extroverted personality we’ve both lived with ever since we met? When will I stop looking around in wonder, when will I stop waking up with this revelation and experience that I want to capture in the moment so I won’t forget what it was like, when will I stop writing all these long, personal, probably oversharing posts and comment responses and emails to the so many friends who have helped us come through?

I think that happened sometime today too. I’m starting to feel that that final missing piece of the puzzle of my former self, my personality, suddenly snapped back into place.

Snap. Done. Penthouse level, final stop, please exit the elevator. It’s going down, but I’m stepping off here and staying awhile, thanks.

And to be honest, Rachael and I are both a little mentally exhausted and ready for it. I imagine some of you are too, and are ready for me to just go take a ride and shoot some pictures and tell you how it went. And that’s probably what would be happening tomorrow, if Bruce and Andrea weren’t still up here and Roddy wasn’t still down in the back of the Raven a thousand miles away and if my Bike Friday weren’t packed away in his suitcase in the bike storage locker and if it weren’t so cold and damp out here in mid-winter Portland. It wouldn’t take much change though for me to want to hop on Roddy and bike out to Kelly Point and see if I can score a red-bellied sapsucker again this year.

Well - as Jack Benny might have turned to the camera and said with an exclamation point decades ago - so maybe I’m not quite all back to my old normal personality yet - but I’m getting close. There’s been a definite change. And just in time, too. Its New Years Eve. Let’s take a cup, sing the round, hold whoever’s close to you and sway to the music we’re all singing together, toot those horns and blow those whistles, and usher in the new year with a clean slate. Happy New Year!

__________

I wake up in the middle of the night, open the good eye and the iPad, and check the weather. Good news! The wet day that has been forecasted for today looks much changed and now it looks like most of the day could be fine for an outdoor activity. I open up the RideWithGPS app next and start sketching out candidate walks out along the Columbia Slough, thinking today I’ll catch an Uber out to Kelly Point and walk east along the Columbia Slough. I’m surprised to see it’s something like eight or nine miles, so it’s really two different walks with my legs or knees. But something like that is going to happen, I’m resolved.

It still looks the same way when I wake up, and when I return from Umbria a few hours later. its still quite cold though so I put an MJQ disc in the CD player and then Rocky and I wait around another hour or two for warming to occur and then we’re shortly both out the door.

Not quite yet. There’s time for the day to warm up some first.

When the time comes, Rachael sets off on a random sort of walk she makes up and improvises as she goes - a loop north through town, across toward the river and then back toward home through Old Town and Chinatown where she’s as surprised as I am by how much cleaner and safer so many parts of downtown suddenly feel. And when she’s back home she adds on an out and back north toward the river until she’s turned back by the railroad tracks.

No pics come home with her camera, but we can at least remember where she went:

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I’ve got an eye appointment over at Kaiser Interstate at 4:00 to get back for, and it’s late enough in the day now so that a ride out to Kelly Point doesn’t really fit any more. Instead I head south, Ubering my way down to the Sellwood Bridge so I can walk back toward town down the west side of the river, through The Willamette Park and on to the south waterfront by the OHSU tram. From there maybe I’ll grab a snack or lunch somewhere before hopping on the streetcar for a ride to my Kaiser appointment.

And as a part of this I’ll take advantage of a lesson learned on yesterday’s walk south. Until my blind right eye stabilizes and the brain finally figures out there’s nothing to see there any more and filters it all out, it’s tough walking into the sun. The light seems to activate and excite that eye, I start seeing hallucinations again, and it affects vision in the other eye too. In fact there was a time on that walk yesterday when I was fearful I might be regressing again. It’s a feeling that went away though soon after I turned back and headed north again.

So today it’s straight north with the sun at my back the whole way. It should be, and it ends up being, a fine walk. And a beautiful one, as I enjoy the impressive panorama of riverside scenes as I approach town. Not many birds though still, and I feel lucky to at least come away with one new one for the day.

That’s not quite correct though. In fact there are tons of birds accompanying me the whole way up the river, but they nearly all look the same. And it’s noisy as I walk through a corvid cacophony up through Willamette Park.

The drive south, shooting into the sun from the passenger seat of my Uber lift, getting a shot as we approach the OHSU tram.

Willamette Park. I’ve biked through here many times, but I’m not sure I’ve ever walked it.

My favorite waterfront birch. There must be a half dozen shots of the Rodriguez leaning against it I’ve taken over the years.

And it’s not all crows either. The cacklers graze down here too.

So strange. He was upright a second ago. I guess he just felt like doing a quick barrel roll. Maybe he’s itching his back, like a horse rolling in the dust would do.

OK, Portland. I’m starting to get that old feeling back again. Thanks, Uber! Thanks, Samsung S24 SE! Thanks, Rocky!!

I reach the south waterfront around two. There’s still time for lunch before heading to Interstate, so I drop in to check the specials board at the Daily Cafe. Nothing appeals though so I hop on the streetcar, tap my $1 senior fare when I get on with the new Hop Card Rachael’s set up for me, and head downtown looking for something better.

I get off when I come to the park blocks and walk across to the Park Kitchen, a place Rachael and I have gone together to many times - especially when the film festivals were on and we’d hustle over for a quick lunch between two pre-screenings at the art museum.

I do like the looks of this specials here though so I order one and a cup of coffee and sit down to start scrolling through and picking out photos on the phone. When I look around though I’m surprised by the look of the place, which has been remodeled with a more open spaced floor plan since I was here last.

And while I wait I pick my brain to remember the last time I was here and decide it was over seven years ago in the autumn of 2017. I was down here to visit with CycleBlazer Robert Ewing, aka Western Flyer, to probe his experience and get his advice for our upcoming planned circuit of the Big Island after the first of the year. And two months later we’ll take that tour, the only time either of us has been to Hawaii, and while we tour we also start planning our great escape because just a few days earlier on New Years Day we had decided to sell our home and go vagabond. That was another pretty significant New Years Day in the Team Anderson story too, but in the long run maybe less so than this one.

The French dip was a temptation, but I went with the chorizo.

And then I walk down to 6th Avenue to catch the tram to my Interstate appointment, continuing to admire all the positive change that’s occurred in Portland just since last winter as I walk past one uncluttered street scene after another. It’s quite remarkable, really.

Looking north down the South Park Blocks. If you’d seen what this looked like in any of the recent winters we’ve been here, you’d find this hard to believe too.

And north through the PSU campus and the site of the Farmer’s Market.

It’s not all good quite yet though. In the interest of full honesty and disclosure, the homelessness problem hasn’t gone away. But it’s so much improved that it’s easier to skirt around it, walk past, give thanks and maybe feel some survivors guilt, and move on. Here’s one now, a small camp to take note of on Clay as as I walk down to my next tram stop.

Four o’clock finds me waiting for my name to be called at the eye imaging department. It gets called, I have my appointment, and then catch one last Uber lift afterwards to get home again. And that’s the day, except for the appointment itself. Surprisingly, there’s one last tale to be told for the year before turning over a new leaf.

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Karen PoretYour cliffhangers are just that..
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