DOWNTOWN! Things Will be good when your when DOWNTOWN!

What next!? I will tell you, it was time to “Come on, ride the train, hey, ride it, woo woo” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gEdQ5KpY8Y). We decided it would be fun to give the Portland transit system a chance to impress. We took the short walk down to the TriMet station, the Portlandian tram system!

Taxi cabs can be fun if you can squeeze an epic story out of the driver. Cab drivers have a tendency to cross paths with some real characters all in a day’s work. I once rode in a cab with a guy who moonlighted as a professional boxer while in South Africa. He told me that he had a guy try and skip out on paying his fare by running away into his house.

The cab driver did not take too kindly to it so he jumped the fence of this guys compound (they tend to live in compounds due to the safety issues in Cape Town) chased him down and threatened to kick the guys ass if he didn’t pay. The runner obviously did not recognize the driver from his televised boxing matches shown on local cable, and definitely underestimated his athleticism and desire to recover the money he was owed. I quite enjoyed that one J.

We arrived at the station at the same time as the tram. Our initial reaction was to hustle up and get on that train. We soon realized that was not a great plan since we had yet to purchase our tickets and, furthermore, had no idea where that particular train was heading. As tempting as it was to take that train just because it was there, we resisted the urge for the greater good. Instead we let it pass and turned our attention towards figuring out how we were going to get where we wanted to go.

It ended up being a good call for us not to throw caution to the wind and jump on the first tram that we laid eyes upon. If we had, we would have not only been headed in the wrong direction, but also on the wrong line....it turns out there are several benefits to how we handled our business.

Once we had our tickets and the knowledge we needed to get where we wanted we were in good shape to take on the rest of the night. Our first stop was in fact one step in the wrong direction but a necessary one in order to get on the right tram line. This step backward took us across the bridge, over the river, towards the downtown core.

After arriving at the station we realized it was not the first time we had been there. On our last trip to Portland, Shannon and I had done an unofficial walking tour of downtown Portland. In search of a restaurant or pub with a view be headed in the direction of the river. We soon realized that in the area that we were such an establishment did not exist. Instead we ended up in the “bad area of town.”

This was not a big deal since it was mid morning on a bright and sunny day. Not to say that bad things can’t happen in the light of day, but the threat seems much more serious in the dark of the night. We saw some interesting looking people in that area including a fellow wearing a tiger striped onesy unzipped to below the belly button (talk about a deep v.... http://vimeo.com/68421532). I did appreciate his style, but being around people that appear unpredictable is not an appealing thing to me.

This is how I felt while being at the station at that time of night. It is not a feeling of fear but rather a feeling of edginess. I have noticed that in these environments the people always seem to enjoy talking loud. It is not necessarily that they are in some kind of conflict, but you are never sure because you are used to associating elevated voices with some form of trouble. The combination of all these makes for a circumstance of hyper-awareness not dissimilar to how they train police officers to always be alert, and always have an exit plan.

Of course nothing bad happened to us while we waited, we didn’t expect that it would, we were just thankful to get on our way once the right tram arrived in the station. We eagerly hopped aboard and began our journey....along with the Goth couple a few seats over aggressively making out.

It was more of an adventure for me because I had never been on the tram and I had never been to that area of the city. Shannon had, but she did not remember as well as she could have, Bachelorette parties tend to be that way. I was impressed about how good her memory was in spite of all the stories I had heard about that weekend.

A quick look at the map and we decided that we had just a few more stations to go before we had to make a switch. Just before we were about to arrive at our stop we got up out of our seats in anticipation of disembarking only to look at each other in confusion when the tram, without slowing, blew right by our stop. We could see out the window as we passed the station that it was under construction and was “out of order” at the present time. Fair enough. What followed was that feeling that you get when you miss your stop and are hoping beyond all hope that you will have a chance to get off and turn around sooner, rather than later. In this case it was not too far to walk back.

I do have a funny story about a time that I was not as lucky though. About a year ago today, I was finishing up the training program at my new job and in celebration my fellow students and I decided to go out for dinner at a restaurant literally across the street from our office. I’m talking less than a 5 minute walk....but I decided to drive instead. My reason for this was two-fold. One, it was pretty chilly and two, I figured it would be easier to leave right from the restaurant rather than walking back to the office to get my car.

What happened on the short drive over was I got confused, thinking that I could park closer if I turned into the second drive way, instead of the first. Well considering there was only one drive way in the end, I made the wrong choice. Instead of finding this second drive way that didn’t exist I ended up merging on to the highway. The next exit ended up being a solid 10 minute drive east. Then, instead of turning around and getting back on the highway, I thought it would be a better idea to take the back roads back to the office. Nope, it wasn’t. It was just another bad decision. In the end it took me close to half an hour to get to the restaurant that I could have walked to in less than 5 minutes. “Where were you?!” my friends asked....”you don’t want to know” was my response. So embarrassing lol!

So the situation on the tram....not that bad. We walked back through the dark and deserted streets, another area that could create some fear in the minds of travelers. I have never really felt afraid in Portland and this situation was no different. Once we got back to the stop we had wanted, we found what appeared to be another abandoned tram stop for the train we needed heading south. Usually, we would have walked right up to the stop and looked to see if there were any notices of closure, but this time we chose not to. The reason for this decision was the pissed drunk homeless guy ranting and raving in the direction of anyone that he could see.

I did not fear for our safety but I still chose to avoid any interaction with this dude. I, once again, refer back to my feeling on unpredictable behavior. Instead we kind of just hung out on the other side of the street figuring we would have enough time to cross if we saw the tram coming.

We waited and tried our best to avoid the attention of the drunk fellow. As we waited we saw a girl walking her way over to the station. At this point we decided to make our way over to the station as well. We did this for two reasons. One, she might be able to help us determine if we would be able to catch the tram we wanted from that stop and two, power in numbers. We should not leave one girl to deal with the drunk dude on her own.

It turns out that we were in the right spot, as the young lady was able to help us determine using the transit app on her phone. It was very kind of her but also very naive and stupid. Don’t flash your new Iphone in front of strangers you just met...for all she knew we could have been thieves who would beat her up and take her phone! Lucky for her we are not that kind of people. Don’t get me wrong we definitely stole her phone....we just didn’t feel the need to kick her ass in the process. Is he joking??

No we did not steal her phone. Instead we allowed her to keep it if she could help us figure out the stop that we wanted to get off at, and she did. This was helpful since Shannon had it down to two choices but could not say with any certainty which one was better. We also learned that she was new to the area. She moved all the way from DC to move in with the boyfriend she met while working in the Peace Corp. We continued to chat and traded advice of things to see and do while in the city.

One interesting thing that happened while we were riding this tram was when the drunk guy did eventually try and come over to talk to us. He started stumbling his way over to where we were sitting and then he stopped dead in his tracks. We didn’t quite understand why until we looked down and realized that in his state he did not trust himself to navigate the two stairs it would have taken to get up to our level. He stood there looking confused for a short while before he decided it just wasn’t worth it and turned around and went back to his seat. I would be void of truth if I said it was not a humorous situation J.

A short time later our friend from DC left us, and a short time after that we left the tram. This was the start of a whole new adventure!