Monday, June 18, 2012

Day -1 and Day 0, Portland

I flew into Portland, Oregon yesterday a couple of days before the ride begins. I had never been here and thought it would be a good idea to acclimate to the time zone change while checking out the area and visiting an old friend. "Roof" was one of my college roommates at Georgia Tech and I had not seen him for many years. The 'Ride through the Free World' will bypass this large city so this was only chance to see him and Portland
At the Rose Garden in the center of the city




A cappuccino at Stumptours  It tasted
as good as it looked



















Roof and I had major history. The main reason I chose to go to Georgia Tech was the Cooperative Work Study program they offered. For the first 3 years the "Coops" would alternate quarters attending school and working the Coop job. The last two years were completed conventionally, working only the summer between them. The experience, we were told, would make you a more productive employee post graduation and the decent salaries allowed us to cover all expenses during the work quarter, with enough additional saved money, to pay for most of the school quarter. This all sounded quite wise professionally and noble from the responsibility standpoint. Everyone in this program appeared to have a laser like plan for the next 40 years, always looking for the best job opportunity regardless of what hell hole the nuclear power plant, or whatever, was situated. On the other hand I was primarily looking for an opportunity to live in a city where I could have the most fun while free from the choking burden of the never ending papers to write and tests to cram for, which I am sorry to say, ruined the actual college experience. In other words it was location, location and location. I could have cared less what I was doing during the 9 to 5 hours. It couldn't be too much worse than mowing lawns and working at McDonalds, my previous two 'professions'.
Approaching Mount Hood. I'm not a perspective expert but that mountain got to be more than 6 ft wide

Lenticular clouds next to Mount Hood
 Roof was also a Coop and New York City was the place we were going. We had several interviews and were hired by Pan American World Airways. This was richest airline in the World for decades but it sputtered the moment we were hired, sinking into bankruptcy at the end of our 5 years. We blamed each other for this debacle but in retrospect  it was likely not us, but the knuckleheads who hired us. In New York we had some money, a lot of energy and tons of free time. We discovered Broadway, MOMA, the Met and the Mets,  free Shakespeare in Central Park and free concerts there with the new bands at dawn of their careers: Led Zeppelon, Blood Sweat and Tears, Ten Years After, Sly,  Fleetwood Mac and others. We played basketball in the streets, a rough game there where fouls were never called, and we honed our 3 man game well enough to make it to the finals in the 3 man intramural league at Tech, losing to 3 guys on the Varsity Tech team by only 2 points. Freshman year the two of us were asked to play for Tech. They needed two more guys to round the roster to 10 men, in order to scrimmage. Our deal was no road games, no scholarship money and not even a place at the jock dining hall (which was all we really needed), So we said "no". This refusal, we decided yesterday, was very stupid. Telling everyone for the rest of our lives that we played b-ball at Tech would have added gravitas to our CVs.

The culinary experience was not so great. Our favorite restaurant was the Steak and Ale chain. Five dollars for a steak, salad, baked potato and "all" the beer you could drink. We were kicked out of every one of these in Manhattan and told not to come back. Though only a 3 letter word "all" meant something different in New York than it did in Atlanta. 


As opposed to Ga Tech, there were females everywhere.With no extra money, no car, no coeds, and not exactly Hollywood looks, I was having some difficulty at Tech handling the raging hormones of an 18 year old. How did my parents let me go there? If I hadn't had the Coop experience I could have sued them for parental malpractice. One work quarter Roof and I got mixed up with a Mafioso daughter and had to leave town a couple of days early.

The most enduring activity of which I first became passionate at the time was reading novels. Given no obligatory studying we could knock one off a week. During high school we were given a nice reading list for the summer. I recall reading the first 20 pages of Moby Dick, giving up and going to the Cliff Notes, which was too pedantic, and was similarly chucked, then finishing with the Classic Comic Book version. I aced the test and that became the paradigm. While in New York we read all the predictable intellectional and pseudo-intellectual material everyone else was reading in the late sixties and early seventies. Catch 22 was our favorite. We shared a room which was standard at time and some nights we would lay in our (individual) single bed with our own copies reading it out load to each other.
Roof's job is to help move the salmon through these spillways, avoiding the turbines on the Columbia River dams





Pacific Lamprey
Picketed Lead funnels the fish by the counting window



Wild Salmon move through  the counting window. Note the
small fin 2/3 of the way to tail from the dorsal fin. The farm raised
have this removed before release

3 comments:

  1. You're leaving us hanging, with the mafioso daughter. You're getting better at these; I'm finishing them. Succinct, succinct, succinct. Hope you have fun. No, HOPE, you have fun!

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  2. I would like to clarify the "3 man basketball" story. So as not to be forgotten, the third man on the team was yours truly, and having a pure blooded Irish wife, I understand how the facts of a story can take second fiddle to the flow and momentum of the tale. Great photo of you and Roof. You have my full attention for more stories of your big adventure, and know that you are an inspiration to all.....

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  3. Don't fret, Dukester, we certainly haven't forgotten about you and your contributions to our dynamic 3-man B-ball team. You were our enforcer and rebounder extraordinaire, while Tom was the distributor and steals guy and I was the outside gunner. When the Ga. Tech B-ball coach asked us to walk on to the team, I decided it wasn't worth it when I found out we couldn't eat at the training table with the other athletes -- he only wanted us for practice fodder. Plus we would've had to give up our Co-op status.
    Keep on ridin' and writin' Tom!

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