blood’s a rover

Last month, my sister Amanda moved to Portland, Oregon. I promised to help her get here, but only on the condition that we take a scenic route, one that meandered through the south and southwest and hopefully would give us more to see than corn and wheat fields. It did.

Also, it wasn’t just the two of us- Amanda’s maltipoo Ginger was along for the ride. The trip ended up taking exactly 7 days, we covered exactly 5,014 miles, and I took over a thousand photographs. Below are my favorites with commentary.

5014 miles/167 photos=30 miles per photo, by the way.

DAY ONE: West Haven, Connecticut to Dickson, Tennessee

 
Here we go…

WESTWARD HO!

As we headed out of Connecticut and into New York, Ginger began barking incessantly and refused to stay leashed to her custom made puppy chair, and I became very concerned that she was going to act that way for the entire week. Luckily (for her) she eventually calmed down and I didn’t have to throw her from an overpass.

 
Amanda doesn’t know this, but I tolerate Ginger mainly because
she reminds me of Falcor from The Neverending Story.

Within an hour, we had left New England.

Then we did this for 12 hours straight.

Early on in planning the trip, I researched a number of famous barbeque places that weren’t too far from our route. The one I was most excited about was Ridgewood Barbeque near Bluff City, Tennessee- there seemed to be a clear consensus that it was in the running for best Barbeque in the country, and based on our first look at their smokehouse, I couldn’t have been more excited to try it.

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As soon as dawn broke, hundreds of Japanese tourists swarmed Buda castle like fanny-pack wearing, camera-wielding ants. I wandered around the perimeter of the hill while locals walked their dogs and the morning sun did its best to warm the day.

Whatchoo lookin’ at?

Eventually I stopped into a small restaurant to warm up and enjoy an early lunch. I ordered a beef and paprika stew that really hit the spot.

After that I began descending the hill. Nearest the top, everything was old and beautiful…

…but the architecture gradually became more modern, and by the time I reached the river I had returned to the present. It was a little like time traveling several hundred years in fifteen minutes. 

Now, about that bridge…

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It was just after 5 a.m. when I arrived in Budapest, and I was even less prepared than I’d been in Prague. I basically knew the address of my hotel and the fact that it was located across from the central museum. I was suprised at how packed the bus station so early in the morning, and after consulting a large wall map and exchanging €20 for some Hungarian Forint, I found my way to a shabby but pristine subway station and waited for my train. I had yet to go outside, but I could tell it was much colder here than anywhere else I’d been so far.

The subway station closest to my hotel was located directly beneath a major intersection, which created a sprawling underground plaza. It took a few tries to surface at the correct street corner, and when I did it was via a gigantic meat grinder that someone had refitted for use as an escalator.

Reaching my hotel, I pressed the door buzzer at street level, which woke up the attendant, which caused her to glare at me all during check in. Her mood lightened, however, when realized that she was about to ruin my morning in exchange for ruining hers.

“You may leave your bags here,” she said, “and check into your room when it becomes available at 2 p.m.”

Ugh. All I wanted to do was sip tea, read, and stay warm, but when I asked if there was an cafe open nearby, the woman balked. “Most places open at 10 a.m.” So once again, I found myself wandering around an unknown city at dawn.

The biggest problem with writing these posts almost 6 months after the fact is that although I can easily remember itinerary details and place names, the corporeal sensations have mostly been lost- I can say it was cold, sure, but I can’t tell if my hands were colder than my feet, or how the air smelled in each city, or just how it felt to cloaked in thick black wool as I walked through an ancient city that was itself cloaked in thick blue fog.

It’s like trying to remember a dream-the further in time from waking one gets, the less tangible those potent-in-the-present experiences become, and the more frustrating it is to try. Particularly so for a post like this, where nothing really happens, and what I felt is so much more important that what I did.

So: it was really cold. I found a small market and ducked inside to buy a few local pastries and a cup of vending machine hot tea, which was almost too sweet to drink.

Eventually I wandered towards the Danube River and the Erzsébet Bridge, a pretty, monochromatic suspension bridge named for a pretty, monochromatic Bavarian princess.

I was colder than those trees.

It was an exceptionally strange and beautiful morning. Everything seemed so immaterial that I began to imagine that I was a living person haunting the ghost of a city. It certainly felt that way.

Further north along the Danube sits the Széchenyi Chain Bridge, an engineering marvel that I’ll talk about more in a later post. Wanting to get a better look, I decided to walk across it.

Near the east foundation of the bridge I spied two homeless people asleep beside a heart-breakingly sparse Christmas tree. I shuddered to think of how painful it would be to spend a night exposed to winter in Budapest, and left the change clinking in my pocket on the table- more out of respect than pity. 

While walking along the Danube I had noticed several long, flat boats moored to each shore, but as I walked across the chain bridge one of them silently slid into view while I was peering down at the water below. For a moment, I felt like I was falling.

Prior to 1873, Budapest was two distinct cities- Buda and Pest. Today, Buda is considered more historical and scenic, while Pest is more commercial and has more to do.

Looking towards Buda

Looking towards Pest

Once I arrived on the Buda side I found hotel with a bar facing the street where I spent an hour warming up and drinking tea. It was amazing how long the morning seemed to be lasting- even as the time neared 8 a.m., the streets remained mostly empty and the fog remained thick over the river.

The city stayed that way as I climbed the hill towards Buda Castle, which afforded me some serene and spooky photo opportunites.

After the sun finally crept over the horizon, it didn’t take long for the spell I had been under all morning to be broken. If a city could be said to have cheeks, Budapest’s were soon flushed with the color of thousands of its tiled roofs. Finally able to see the whole city at once, I surveyed it with the eye of someone plotting a daring, two-day cultural campaign… which, of course, I was.

Once a year, the City of Portland allows its large population of bicyclists to take over for a Sunday morning and essentially arrest car transportion by taking over most of the major bridges, including interstate highway bridges that bikes are never allowed on during any other times.

Even though I’ve lived in Portland for almost a decade and been actively involved in bicycle culture the entire time, I’d never participated in the Portland Bridge Pedal until last weekend. Here are the pics:

Rise and Shine!

Approaching the Fremont Bridge

I love my pretty city.

On I-405

Climbing the Marquam Bridge

Another view

Pit stop #1

Better than a Powerbar

Yeah!

On the Sellwood Bridge (Portland is in the distance)

Hmm. Canadian?

Crossing the Hawthorne Bridge

The Fremont Bridge, free of cars

Crossing the Broadway Bridge

Speed Racer Emily

I’m no slouch, either. My maximum speed was 37 mph.

Second time across the Fremont

Slug Mobile

While riding down Highway 30, everyone’s blood sugar dropped simultaneously and people starting snapping at each other: pleasant “On your left”’s became snappy “Watch it!”’s, and nobody was smiling on the climb up to the last bridge, but we made it.

Crossing the St. John’s Bridge

After the St. John’s Bridge I headed home because it was a shorter ride than going back downtown again. For some reason, the ride back was the hardest of all- just when I thought it was over, I had another 5 miles to ride. Oh well.

Totally accidental, and my favorite picture of the set.

Born in Valencia, Spain in 1951, Santiago Calatrava represents a rare breed of structural designer- he was educated as an structural engineer and went on to study architecture. To me Calatrava represents the ideal builder- a person who combines the technical knowledge of a structural engineer with the aestetic capabilities of an architect. Plus passion, lots of it.

I give architects a lot of crap, but had I been born a couple hundred years ago (or longer), I probably would have been one. The thing is, architects used to be the master builders of the world. They used to have to understand the physical limitations of building alternative and materials. An architect could come up with the most beautiful design in the world but if they couldn’t figure out how to make it work- it wasn’t getting built.

Times have changed. Now, engineers crunch the numbers, architects worry about sellable floor space, and interior designers pick out the wallpaper. Calatrava is one of the few people working today who has succesfully bridged the gap between architect and engineer.

In that way you could say that Calatrava is “old school”, even though his work all looks extremely modern. His iconic, innovative, expensive designs have been built all over the world, and that’s another reason to admire him- he gets paid to turn his dreams into reality.

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The morning after I noticed the bridge from the top of Seville’s belltower we set out north towards the river to find it. With nothing else to do that day, we stopped for lunch, shopped, and Brianne got a haircut while I read The Onion and commiserated with a horse.

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On the morning we left Vigo, we took a train painted up like something out of Wild Style south across the Spanish border and into Portugal. It was still dark when we began moving, and gazing out at the tiny, nameless towns still slumbering as the sky turned fifty shades of blue over the course of an hour was almost as relaxing as still being asleep.

I was interested in seeing Portugal, though I couldn’t exactly explain why. Maybe because, with the exception of a brief period several hundred years ago, it always maintained a cultural and political independence from Spain that seems unlikely during a time of so much border shifting and conquest. What would the people be like? And the food? And the wine? The closest to Portugese food I’d ever had were Portugese rolls, and those are indistinguishable from regular bread rolls except notable only for the twist of dough on either end. I was looking forward to trying something a little more interesting than that, and I didn’t have to wait long.

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Click Here For All The Sydney Pics!

We spent almost a week with Rob in Manly, a cozy and scenic beach town a few minutes north of Sydney, exploring the city and its surroundings.

On our first day there we took the ferry from Manly to Sydney harbor, an inexpensive and gorgeous means of introduction. I took about hundred pictures as we pulled into the harbor, wanting to be sure I got some good ones of the opera house and the harbour bridge, both stunning works of engineering and architecture.

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