Donnie and I biked three and a half days through the John Day area of Eastern Oregon, along the 184-mile Old West Scenic Bikeway loop. I’ll be writing more about the trip later so I won’t give too much away — but I wanted to share a few pictures in the meantime. Bikes loaded with […]
The party moved outside last Sunday in Washington D.C.’s Adams Morgan neighborhood. Washingtonians block partied international style at the annual Adams Morgan Day Festival, established 29 years ago to celebrate the neighborhood’s cultural diversity. And it was loud. I strolled the neighborhood with my college roommate, who now lives there, and a friend of hers […]
Jeff Leigh makes sure all of his customers read the sign mounted on the counter before he sets to work with any needles. “The tattoo you choose to get will be with you for the rest of your life,” the placard reads. “So before asking how much, ask first about the skill and talent of […]
THE NEW YORKER ONLINE Few days pass during which Wayne Pernu does not buy a book, or several hundred. During the summer, he hits as many as a hundred book sales per day in and around Portland, Oregon, cramming volumes into every inch of his car, stacking them on his lap if he runs out […]
Our climbing experience in Peru’s Cordillera Negra was not a metaphor for anything at all; The fact that we quit not even midway up the rock reveals nothing about the strength of our characters. At least that’s what my sister and I told ourselves as we were being lowered to the ground. About 140 feet […]
The emergency backup horse was tempting. It followed us up each of the passes in Peru’s Huayhuash Mountain Range, enticing us with its empty saddle. But my sister and I resisted the urge to hop on for the climb, opting instead to feel the fullness of burn. The trail through the Cordillera Huayhuash (pronounced WhyWash) […]
Laura, Alexis and I summited Mount Everest the other night under a full moon. Ok, so we weren’t actually in the Himalayas, and the mountain was a few thousand feet shorter, but we saw snow, we saw crevasses and there were ropes and crampons involved. It was basically the same thing. We climbed Vallanaraju, an […]
After straddling the equator for a bit, I chose the northern side — just in time for my third summer in a row. Yes, it’s true. I’ve returned to the United States after nine months living and working in South America. I am living temporarily at my parents’ house in hot, humid Greensboro, North Carolina […]
Many adventures begin in The Dalles, the end-point of the main Oregon Trail, a small city on the banks of the Columbia 85 miles east of Portland. The wide open roads just outside of town, sparsely trafficked and surrounded by rolling farmland, make for some excellent cycling. When it’s pouring in Portland, you can usually […]
Exciting news on the freelance front: Last week, The New Yorker published my story, “An Old-School Book Scout,” about Wayne Pernu, a Portland book scout who makes his living buying books for cheap at yard, estate and library sales and reselling them at Powell’s Books. Relying on his knowledge and intuition (rather than a barcode […]
Five friends and I snowshoed through the dark to the Forest Service cabin in Oregon’s Umatilla National Forest, aware only of what fell within the narrow beams of our headlamps — snow, mostly, and the dark silhouettes of trees. It wasn’t until we woke up in the morning and stepped outside that we really knew […]
Packing the Crystal Ballroom in Portland on Saturday, whiskery men pitted their facial hair one against another at the 2012 West Coast Beard and Mustache Championships. They competed in categories that included natural mustache, chops-style mustache, freestyle mustache, full natural beard and partial beard. In honor of the competition, which the “Portlandia” blog covered here, […]
Ooltewah Middle sixth-grader Price McGinnis feels differently about girls than he did last year. When he gets around girls at school, he said, he feels a weird combination of nervousness and happiness. “When you’re talking to girls, you’re pretty much flirting,” said Price, 12, who has a girlfriend he sees at church on Wednesdays and […]
Portland wears graphic tees and skinny jeans and slings a courier bag over its shoulder whenever it goes anywhere. Its favorite color, by far, is green. The city defies traditional categorization in many ways. But it also has some definite preferences. And here they are, in no order whatsoever: Likes: Riding bikes, listening to indie […]