Enter the Dragon

Now that I'm settled into my new job http://www.markowitzherbold.com/showattorney.asp?Show=73, they've decided I need to start marketing myself. In my case, that means meeting as many people as I can in my new city. To that end, I've gotten involved in several organizations, including the Oregon Women Lawyers.

As it turns out, the Oregon Wowen Lawyers sponsor a dragon boat team. A what? A dragon boat looks like a long canoe in which paddlers sit two abreast on a bench and paddle on their own side of the boat. I'll let Wikipedia help me with this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_boat

I love it! As I've mentioned, Portland is divided by the Willamette River, which is where we paddle. It's a different way to see the city and it seems like a very Portland thing to do. There are lots of teams in Portland.

Our team, called the Dragonflies http://www.owlsdragonflies.org/ competes in several races a year. I've just signed up to participate in a race in Tacoma, Washington. We race in these big boats:

Here's a head shot for you:

And a couple of tails:

By contrast, these are the boats in which we usually practice:

Ok, that's it for now.

My First Visitor from Another Time Zone

My law school friend Melanie traveled across three time zones to visit Portland (and me) over Easter weekend. (Family: flights also leave from Michigan!) She is not my first visitor (that was Angela http://alladither.typepad.com/ from Seattle), but she does hold the honor of farthest traveled.

We spent some time in the city one afternoon:

There are lots of cool bridges in Portland across the Willamette River http://www.portlandlogue.com/bridges/ , so we checked out a couple. We walked across the Hawthorne Bridge:

We also visited Cathedral Park underneath the St. John's Bridge http://www.portlandonline.com/parks/finder/index.cfm?PropertyID=97&action=ViewPark :

Even though she really seemed to enjoy Portland, I'm guessing she was homesick for NYC. You may not be able to read it, but one of those directional signs informs you that Times Square is 2,443 miles away.

Deciding that I wasn't going to impress Manhattan Mel with the "cityness" of Portland, I took her to visit our waterfalls the next day.

Here we are all soggy at Multnomah Falls:

Here's another waterfall (I've no idea which one):

Finally, here's a shot that shows some falls (again, no idea). You can also see the Columbia River in the distance -- all of these falls are in the Columbia River Gorge.

I think I won her over with the waterfalls.

It was great to see you, Mel! Come back anytime.

Snowshoes!

Long ago, I made a pair of snowshoes. I was on a class-taking binge at the time (also learning to scuba dive), so spent a few evenings at Woldumar Nature Center http://www.woldumar.org/ learning to weave some snowshoes that I'd never use. They look cool. They are the old fashioned kind you see hanging in lodges with wood frames and long tails. They were fun to make, but they've never been in the snow. In fact, until recently, I had never snowshoed.

Lots of people snowshoe here. My friend Margie and I decided we should join them. We bought matching snowshoes and matching hats (!) and on a sunny January afternoon, my beau David took Margie and I to Trillium Lake to try out our new gear.

Here is a group shot of all of us: Me, Murphy (David's dog), David and Margie. For good measure, Mt. Hood is in the background.


Here's one of me and Margie:


And, finally, an action photo: