The Saturday Run

Went for a 9 miler this morning with Janice. It was a drop dead gorgeous day and we ran the loop in downtown Portland (featured in Runners World as the Rave Run of the month with none other than Lance Armstrong as our guest runner). This loop takes you south of the city on a bike path that runs through a wetlands area so depending on the time of year you can see some really great stuff. An osprey couple return every year to nest right next to the path and it is wonderful to hear the baby Osprey cry for food in the spring. Really a unique and cool sound.

One day I was biking home from work on this same path and saw a bunch of folks with spotting scopes. Thanks to my mom I know this means one thing – rare bird sighting! So I stopped and asked what everyone was looking at. It was a shore bird that had gotten of course and had landed itself to eat and rest at Oaks Bottom. The birders were kind enough to let me have a look through the scope and he was a beauty of a bird.

Back to this morning’s run – there is still some color here and the trees along the shores of the Willamette were especially bright. I’m thinking they are alders but I would need a naturalists help with that identification. We had both had a busy week and had not run for most of the week so we went slow and it ended up being an enjoyable run.

The other lovely sighting this morning was the occasional crew team – cutting the glass-like waters of the Willamette with their sculls. No sound other than the creak of the oars, the slap of the water and the occasional shout from the captain of the boat. Lovely.

We continue to monitor the progress of the tram which for non-Portlanders is this very controversial idea to tram workers, doctors and patients (?) from the waterfront area (itself being developed) up to our research hospital at the crest of the west hills here.

The tram has been controversial, expensive and frankly an eye sore and most doubt it will be a success. Stay tuned to see how this turns out. Most OHSU (Oregon Health Sciences University) employees I talk to won’t ride it either out of inconvenience or simple fear of dangling hundreds of feet in the air (put me in that group). I’ll try and get a picture so you can get the idea.

So south on the east side and back north on the west side – we ran through another little development on the waterfront – a pleasant area where on a nice morning lots of people are wandering around sipping coffee, going for a row or just a nice stroll on a nice morning.

One woman yelled out at us “You have more motivation than I do!” at which I yelled back “Oh we are stopping for a latte any moment now!” Which was mostly true since we were about a mile from the finish.

A great morning, a great friend and the two of us on a great run.