Welcome to Portland! Creative Itineraries for Visitors

by Laura Oppenheimer,
The Oregonian

Thursday May 22, 2008

Ah, Memorial Day.

Time to stash the parka until next year. Coffeehouses prop open their doors, festivals descend on Portland's waterfront. And weekend visitors arrive at our doorsteps, determined to experience Oregon before the rain returns.

Our first summer here, my husband and I hosted so many friends and relatives, we felt like we ran a B&B. Each guest flew into PDX armed with guidebooks and Internet research. "We've gotta see Multnomah Falls!" "Saturday Market sounds so cool!" "Is the Rose Garden still in bloom?"

We happily obliged. Multnomah Falls, Saturday Market, Rose Garden. Multnomah Falls, Saturday Market, Rose Garden. Lovely places. By September, though, we thought we'd puke if we had to visit any of them again.

We vowed to devise more-creative itineraries for guests -- and not just because we could lead Multnomah Falls tours blindfolded. There's an art to showing visitors what it's like to live in Oregon. To shop here and hike here and bike here, to eat here and hang out here. Now, visitors leave with a deeper understanding of our adopted home.

Read on for weekend agendas to suit three types of guests: friends, the family clan and parents.

Nothing wrong with mixing and matching these if you're hosting young-at-heart parents or a precocious 12-year-old. And you're welcome to squeeze in classic Oregon attractions. After all, they're famous for a reason: We're lucky to have them.

Keep reading for all the juicy details: Creative Itineraries for Visitors

Sunrise Yoga, Friday Morning, July 18th

Friday morning, before the craziness of the actual wedding begins in earnest, I would like to take a moment to breathe and be calm. So, at the Wedding Meadow Friday morning (specific time TBD), we will have a special yoga session with friend, realtor-extraordinaire & certified-yogini, Chelsea. It will be gentle and accessible for all-levels and I would love it if you would join us.


"The practice of yoga helps us experience inherent union, and building it into your wedding can help you return the focus to the deep meaning of your union, rather than the externals of wedding planning or anything else." ~ Julia Mannes, Yoga for Weddings

A note regarding the request for your attendance…

We love you. We want you to come (we wouldn’t invite you if we didn’t!) We are planning on a great celebration and a fun party. Also, Portland is pretty darn beautiful in July and this is a rare opportunity for friends and family to come together at the same time and place. And it is a really important day for us – a once in a lifetime event in fact! So it would be really wonderful to have you join us.

But we understand if you can’t make it. Gas is expensive. Flights are expensive. Hotels are expensive. We know money is tight and time is even tighter. We are genuinely trying to make this wedding simple, easy, fun & not break the bank – anyone’s bank! So if you can’t make it, or it is just too hard for the whole family to make it, don’t worry. Do what you can, and maybe that means you just send a flower and think of us on July 19^th.

(A preview of Brooke & Chris at the Wedding Meadow - site for the ceremony.)

The chi of Portland: High weirdness in Nirvana

(former Portland mayor Bud Clark pictured below!)

By JOSEPH B. FRAZIER

updated 10:00 a.m. PT, Mon., May. 5, 2008

PORTLAND, Ore. - Acupuncture is not just for people. It's also for cities — if the city is Portland.

Adam Kuby has stuck a 23-foot needle into the ground down by the Willamette River and hopes to plant more, choosing locations where he figures the city's "chi," or vital energy, needs some help.

Unusual? You bet. Unusual for Portland? Not really.

For several years, Portland has been reaping praise from lifestyle magazines, from Men's Journal to specialty publications, as one of the nation's more livable cities, listed among the best places to have a baby, grow old, go for a walk, ride a bike, take a jog, breathe clean air, own a dog, take public transportation, start a business (green or otherwise), go out for dinner or not get mugged.

The praises don't stop. Swing a cat and hit 10. On second thought, don't. Portland is rated the third-most humane city in the nation.

But the magazines skim over Portland's quirkier qualities. They aren't bandied about, but they're not hidden either. To some, they make Portland even more endearing.

There's what's left of the 24-Hour Church of Elvis (online only these days), the Voodoo Doughnut Shop, nude bike festivals, the 5K Bare Buns Run in Forest Park and what was billed as the world's longest drag queen chorus line.

Public nudity is illegal in Portland, but in a state where live sex acts are protected as free speech, police involvement generally is limited to keeping order...

Read More!

Roll Call – the Bridal Party

All the official “make your own wedding website” platforms have sections for bios of the bridal party. This seems like a pleasant thing to do and really, the other details we are dealing with (tux styles, finding an officiant, wording of invites, etc.) aren’t quite interesting enough for a blog post... So, here goes!

Vaidya (aka “Sweet pea”), Maid of Honor. Hailing from Hyderabad, India, Vaidya and Brooke met during University of Rochester’s freshman orientation a decade ago. A few days later they found themselves in the same section of “Quest Calculus,” where Brooke impressed Vaidya by remembering her name. The two have been dueling at Scrabble ever since. Vaidya enjoys peas, hot weather and human rights. Though sojourning to Portland for the main event in July, the Vaidya-creature will prove elusive this summer. A newly minted Harvard Law School grad, she will be studying her brains out for the New York State Bar Exam, a few short days after the wedding.

Haley, Bridesmaid. A Florida native, this southern girl was drawn (by destiny) to Alaska the summer of 2006. While working at Denali National Park, she was stalked by the weird, yet somehow attractive, young HR man who helped her check-in. That fall she was lured to Portland by this same young man, who turns out to be Adam, Brooke’s brother. In Portland she has become acquainted with all-weather footwear, seasons and mastered the art of dressing for a sleety winter day. Her main qualifications for the roll of bridesmaid include a sparkling personality, dazzling good looks, general fun-ness and a wealth of creative ability (mad painting skills in particular.)

Alicia, Bridesmaid. Alicia was once put in the clothes dryer by big brothers Christopher and Buzz. The dryer doesn’t seem to have done any damage (she is currently enrolled at Sierra Nevada College), but we sort of had to make her a bridesmaid to atone for it. She is a serious volley-baller, a fan of the German language and Germany, and if you happen to catch her at the bar, dash that drink from her hand - she is only 20.5 years old!!!

Travis, Best Man. At 6’ 4” and 250ish fairly trim lbs, Travis is the biggest person in the bridal party, and will probably be the biggest person at the wedding - or that you meet this year. Travis is also a Marine (and a corrections officer), but seems more like a big friendly teddy bear than anything else. Or rather, a gigantic, friendly teddy bear. Chris and Travis played football together in high school and have been close friends ever since. Freshly married to the stunning Andreana, Travis leads the party in current “real-wedding” experience and will be on hand to make sure rings are not lost and beer is readily available.

Buzz, Groomsman. Actually named “Harold” (who wouldn’t ditch that one?) Buzz acquired his nickname before becoming a beekeeper. Seriously, he has an apiary business, “Buzz’s bees.” Brother to Chris, Buzz is also father to 2-year-old Max and the soon-to-be-newest member of the family, whose ETA is early June. Buzz also has a small-plane pilot’s license, an easy going personality, and is our #1 supplier of unfiltered, black-market honey. Okay, so it isn’t black market, but it is good enough for it!

Bart, Groomsman. Though an engineer by trade, Bart is the rare one of his field (like Christopher), in possession of social skills. He is also a strong proponent of tequila, a stand-alone qualification for entrance into the bridal party. Bart and Chris met post-college in Grass Valley when they were both working at Vector Engineering and Bart is honorary uncle to puppy-dog Samson. Sharp and witty, Bart is also a major sports fan, fairly new home-owner and overall nice guy. And ladies - he’s not just single, he's straight too!

Adam, Bride Dude. Brother-o-the-bride, Adam is an International Man of Mystery in Training. He studied political science and history at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, and followed that up with a year in exotic Bialystok, Poland. There he ate jellied carp for Christmas dinner and would smear his visage with protective bear fat before venturing outdoors in the winter. He is currently trafficking in woolen goods here in Portland, so will be around to crack heads (if they need cracking) and be the generally calm, go-to person the day of the wedding making sure all which needs to get done, in fact, gets done.

Keith, Bride Dude. Step-brother-o-the-bride, Keith is a bona fide mason and aspiring electro-cardio-gram-er (the person who runs the electrocardiogram machine thingy.) A devoted student of kung fu movies and football, this background knowledge will be invaluable as he aides his fellow bride-dude in herding the masses, mobilizing the cadre of chair movers and making sure a good time is had by all.

Many others are contributing to the success of our summer party, but to list everyone would result in an overly verbose posting. Blogs are supposed to be snappy!

Registry

I was vaguely aware of how registries work, but have never actually bought something off a registry before. I remember looking at Joe Montana’s wedding registry in William Sonoma years ago, but before this whole wedding thing, that had been the extent of my “wedding registry” experience.

I’m not a big present person or into shopping (unless it is food!), but now that we are home owners, I’ll admit there is a lot of stuff we need. I also understand that many of our friends and family want to give us a gift in celebration of this fantastic event and a registry can be a useful tool for gift-givers. So now we are officially registered at Macy’s and REI.

If you are so inclined as to give us a gift (by no means required!), feel free to wander through our registries:

MACY’S: Macy's Gift Registry
You can search by either of our names in the "find" box. You can also shop off the registry in any Macy's or over the phone.

REI: REI Gift Registry

Same deal as Macy's - you can search by either of our names and shop on line, in any store or over the phone.

Or, if you aren’t a shopping type of person, but still want to give us a gift, feel free to think outside the registry! Here is a quick brainstorm of non-registry “gifts” that would delight us:

• Services: Yard work, take care of the puppy or kitty when we are on our honeymoon, make us dinner, clean our house, etc.
• Art work (your own, your friend's, something from a gallery, something from a fair.)
• Classes (cheese making, welding, pottery, astronomy, wine tasting, glass blowing, etc.)
• An experience (a weekend at the beach or take us camping somewhere really cool!)
• Vases, candle-holders, picture frames, etc. These things can be found at Macy's, but tend to be way too expensive and not very interesting.
  
• Books - or a gift certificate to Powell's!
• A membership to the Japanese Gardens, Art Museum or something really neat we don't even KNOW about.
• Gift certificates to the Bike Gallery!
• Gift certificates to Home Depot (or other such home improvement type places)!
  
• Massages
• Barbecue
  
• Food dehydrator
  
• Donation to the Oregon Humane Society in our name (if you have another foundation in mind, please check with us first!)
  
• Pay our mortgage?? Maybe just one payment? He he he...
  

The Honeymoon - Cycle Oregon!

For our honeymoon we toyed with the idea of a beach vacation in New Zealand, hiking the Fjords of Norther Europe or exploring the jungles of Costa Rica.

It just wasn't working though.

First off it was all way to expensive (we did just buy a house, have a wedding this summer and on top of it I might need some wisdom teeth yanked out.)

It also didn't quite feel like us. Even if we had the cash, a kick-ass stereo is more up our alley. Also, I always have qualms about the environmental impact of world-wide jet-setting, and while we would be bringing cash into the places we are visiting, how exactly to be a globally responsible tourist? Even "green" hotels are far from sustainable and it is hard to know how much of the money you spend in a place actually goes toward the local economy and/or benefiting the people who live there. I've definitely traveled far and wide and thoroughly enjoy it, but I'm more of a purpose-driven traveler than a vacationer.

Still, we want to go on a honeymoon. But where???

Then a brilliant notion was suggested - Cycle Oregon!

We will spend a week in September biking around Oregon - this year it is through the stunningly-gorgeous far NE corner. No TV's, no phones, no cooking, no cleaning, no dishes. They handle your meals, your snacks, your camping, your luggage, give you a ride if you get tired, your entertainment, they even a beer garden set up at every camp site. You don't have to think about a single thing other than riding to the next food stop!

AND Cycle Oregon is a non-profit with all the proceeds from the ride (and its giving fund) going to support social, health and environmental projects across the state and in the small towns we ride through.

I'm really exited. And I don't even have to plan anything for it (other than training all summer and then packing properly.) All you need to do is show up and they handle the rest!

Some quotes from other riders that jive with my thoughts on it:

Chris Milan and Lori Saylor Milan of Boring, Oregon:
"As an adult, it's one of the rare times when your only responsibility for a week is to show up and ride, show up and eat, show up and be entertained and then go to sleep. (And be kind to others!) And you're outside, all day, for a whole week. You see the sunset and the sunrise and all the stars in between. Plus we're helping out the many small towns CO raises funds for. We consider Cycle Oregon one of our favorite charities."

Dave Anderson of Glide, Oregon:
"To have a truly relaxing week of vacation. No TV, no phones, no distractions, no cooking, no dishes. It's like being a kid on summer vacation again. And you can eat pizza and drink beer every evening for 7 days and go home in better shape and 5 pounds lighter than when you left! You meet 2,000 really nice, positive people. OK, 1,990 really nice people and a few grumps."