Wormy Apple II

This next installment of this humble blog's ongoing, on-again off-again public art project takes us down to Lake Oswego again, this time to tiny Sundeleaf Plaza, a half-acre lakefront park near Stickmen Brewing and the historic Lake Theater. I was either meeting someone for lunch at the brewpub or for a movie, I forget which, and they were running late, and I noticed there was a.) a park where I didn't remember there being one before (it was built in 2011, which tells you how often I go wandering around in Lake Oswego), and b.) there was some public art in the park. So I wandered over for a quick look.

So this is Wormy Apple II (2009), by artist Ed Humpherys (1937-2018), which the city public art site describes thusly:

Purchased as part of the 1 1/2% for art for the lakefront park.

Ed had a religious upbringing and was exposed for many years to the biblical story in Genesis of Adam, Eve, the apple, and the snake. Consequently many of his sculptures have apples, snakes or both. The viewer plays the role of Adam and Eve.

In the beginning Ed Humphreys' intent was to create a series of linear sculptures that visually moved rhythmically around in actual space. Spherical forms were used at the ends of the linear components to visually act as an ending for the movement that was created (similar to using a period at the end of a written sentence). After the first sculpture was completed, Humphreys realized that the sculpture reminded him of apples with worms projecting from them.

Gallery Without Walls 2007-2009

"Gallery Without Walls" is an ongoing city program where the Lake Oswego arts council arranges to borrow a number of outdoor sculptures to exhibit around the city's downtown, usually on a two-year rotation. The art is typically for sale, and the city's walking tour brochure (here's the current 2023 edition) and other informational materials actually include price tags. So if you've ever dreamed of uprooting your favorite public art from a city park and taking it home, this is your big chance to do exactly that. (Athough that's probably not quite how it works in real life.) At the end of the rotation the city often buys a couple of the exhibited sculptures for its permanent collection, which is what happened with Wormy Apple II around 2009. It's kind of a cool program, though I'm not sure it's something many other cities could pull off. A place like Cornelius would probably be thrilled to have ever-changing art exhibits brightening up the place; it's just that the city doesn't have quite so many well-heeled art collectors as Lake Oswego does, and the city probably can't afford to insure the borrowed art, much less buy any of it.

Switching gears abruptly here, the search results I got back when researching this post included a couple of off-the-wall results I just had to pass along.

First up is Bulletin No. 68 from the Washington State Agricultural College's Experiment Station, dated 1905 and titled "The Wormy Apple", specifically page 11. That's an eleven, which looks enough like the Roman numeral II that Google figured there was no harm in sending me this result. So to combat the dreaded Codling worm, page eleven recommends a solution of 1 pound Paris green and 1-2 pounds lime to 150 gallons of water. Paris green being a beautiful and deadly green compound of copper and arsenic that was once used in artists' paint, fireworks, wallpaper, and even womens' clothing, in addition to being an effective general-purpose pesticide. Or to save money you could mix 1-4 pounds of white arsenic with one pound washing soda, and dissolve that in 100 gallons of water, which we're told works just as well for 1/3 the price. The page goes on to say "A grave danger here is over-spraying, i.e. causing the liquid to gather in drops instead of depositing a uniform sediment." (italics theirs), though the next sentence insists that "over-sprayed apples are not thoroughly poisoned", which is a bit less than reassuring.

Secondly, Google somehow concluded that "apple 2 computer" was a related search I might like to perform instead, or at least it's one they'd get more ad revenue from. Maybe it was just because of the "Apple" and the "II" in my actual search, or maybe the "Wormy" contributed too; it seems that four decades ago, way back in the distant year 1982, a Pennsylvania teenager wrote Elk Cloner, a boot sector virus targeting Apple II computers, and it may have also been the very first malware to actually circulate in the wild. Calling it malware is kind of a stretch, honestly; it replicated itself to new disks, and every now and then it performed one of several annoying teen pranks. The second link above actually goes into great detail on how it managed all of this in a few kilobytes of code, which is kind of interesting. I trust, o Gentle Reader(s), that you won't use this newfound forbidden knowledge for anything, y'know, untoward.

Pods 15, 16, 19

Here are Pods 15, 16, 19, formerly located in Lake Oswego's Evergreen Park, at 3rd & Evergreen. Lake Oswego has an unusual public art program: Every year, a crop of new pieces is selected to go on display in town for the next two years. Typically they're also for sale, and the brochure even lists price tags. That would never fly in Portland; we like to pretend art isn't a commercial activity, and everyone here just does art purely for art's sake and people live off of grants, or trust funds, or working as baristas, or something, and they certainly don't sell things for cash money, like, eewww.

In any case, at the end of each two year rotation, the citizens of Lake Oswego are asked to vote for one piece to buy for the city's permanent collection; Pods 15, 16, 19 was up for a vote in May 2007, leading to the one terse description of it I can find on the interwebs: "Pods #15, 16, 19 by Kate Simmons, located in Evergreen Park, at Evergreen and Third.". Apparently the voters chose one of the other candidates, since the pods aren't there anymore. Which is a shame, I think.

The only other Pod I've seen on the interwebs is in a 2002 Seattle Times article, profiling someone's artsy Pearl District loft in Portland. In two of the photos, an unnumbered Pod can be seen leaning against a wall.

I was looking at these Pod photos, trying to figure out what they reminded me of. I think I've figured it out, but it's kind of an strange reference. They somewhat resemble birds' nests made of steel rods, which made me think of a car, oddly enough. The 1959 "Birdcage" Maserati Tipo 60/61 has an internal frame made with a ridiculous number of little metal tubes welded together. Which makes the car very light, and also very expensive and labor intensive to produce. Looking at photos of it now, I realize this frame structure looks nothing like a Pod, any more than it looks like an actual birdcage. So it's not really a useful reference or analogy or anything, but it seemed sufficiently off the wall that I figured I'd pass it along anyway, for entertainment value if nothing else. Plus this is going to be a very short post if I don't find a tangent or two to wander off on.

Speaking of which, a quick note on the location. Lake Oswego's parks department doesn't list an official Evergreen Park. This is just the mostly city-owned vacant lot behind City Hall, and "Evergreen Park" is sort of an unofficial term that's sometimes used for it. In 2011 it was considered but rejected as a site for a new police, court & emergency communications building. But the "park" could still go away if the city needs a site for something else that doesn't need quite so many parking spaces, access for emergency vehicles, or have requirements around "blast protection" (as if the Evildoers have ever even heard of Lake Oswego.) Anyway, there's different art there now than what you see here, and either next spring or the spring after that it'll rotate out in favor of something else.

Fortuna

Here are a couple of photos of Fortuna, the fountain in a traffic circle next to Lake Oswego's Millennium Plaza Park. The city arts council's current walking tour brochure describes it:

Fortuna
Simon Toparovsky
The Greek myth of Icarus is used to celebrate the importance of daring and living courageously. (Part of a suite of sculptures throughout Millennium Park.)
simontoparovsky.com
bronze, basalt

Toparovsky is best known for his work on the new cathedral in Los Angeles. Locally, this is one of at least nineteen works of his in or around Millennium Plaza Park. It's not clear if they all went in at the same time or have been added over the years; if it's the latter, a steady stream of return business like that has got to be any artist's ideal arrangement.

Other than the official arts commission site, I haven't found a lot of mentions of Fortuna around the net. I would've thought there'd be at least one blog out there about Lake Oswego arts and the joys of upscale life by the lake, but apparently not. I've seen a number of (possibly auto-generated) mentions of the fountain on Lake Oswego-oriented real estate sites, which is somehow fitting, it being Lake Oswego and all. I did come across a few posts about Fortuna and related pieces at PDXCept, with some decent photos of each of them, so that's worth checking out at least.

Cooks Butte expedition

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A few photos from Cooks Butte, yet another of our fair city's little mini-volcanoes. This is one of the more obscure ones. It's located in an upscale neighborhood on the south side of Lake Oswego, and the surrounding terrain isn't pancake-flat like it is around Mt. Tabor, Rocky Butte, Kelly Butte, and the others closer in to downtown Portland. So until recently I didn't know this place existed.

The city's map of the park shows where the small parking area is located. It's not right at the park, there's a short walk with a grassy field on one side, and expensive houses on the other. Apparently the city bought the meadow a few years ago as a nature preserve, which -- coincidentally -- also preserves the view for the houses here. I'm sure that had no influence whatsoever on deciding to buy the place, nosirree.

But enough snarkiness. The map I just linked to shows a bunch of trails around the butte, which unfortunately aren't signed or otherwise marked. And to make it more confusing, that trail map is incomplete. A brochure from the city shows a few more that aren't on the first map. One of these, the first right after the park entrance, is a ruler-straight trail that has to be the shortest path to the summit. And, as a result, is not very long but is ridiculously steep. So when you get to the first trail intersection inside the park, turning right sends you straight uphill, while going straight also sends you to the summit, via a more winding route with several switchbacks. It was nice of the city to provide multiple options, I guess. How they keep the straight-freakin'-up-the-hill trail from eroding into a muddy gully in the winter is an open question.

If you go, I'd encourage you to print either of the maps, or bookmark them on your phone if it speaks PDF, because it's easy to get lost here. Not extremely lost, since the park's not all that big, and you can still orient by the slope of the hill, but I usually don't get lost at all and I was briefly confused a couple of times.

There's a small clearing at the top, surrounded by trees, and there isn't exactly a grand view of the surrounding countryside. There's a sort of porthole in the trees facing east so you can glimpse Mt. Hood. It seems a bit underwhelming, but then you realize that to see Mt. Hood you're actually looking through the backyard of a house adjacent to the park. This being a fancy upscale part of town, no doubt there were lawyers involved in arranging this, and there's an official signed easement in place, and this is absolutely the most majestic view that could be arranged under the circumstances.

The clearing also sports a small bench with a view of Mt. Hood through the porthole, and a small boulder inscribed with what are described as philosophical sayings. Make of that what you will.

Other links at OregonLive, PDXTrail, Summit Cheese and ILoveLO.

I've found it's usually a recipe for trouble to visit somewhere for maybe half an hour and then try to describe the "feel" of the place. That always seems to attract people who tell me I got it all wrong, the place isn't like that at all, etcetera, and when that happens I'm generally not in a position to disagree. And this time around I'm sort of deriving the "feel" from the handful of people I ran across in the park, far short of a statistical sample or anything, even if I'd really talked to any of them in depth rather than the standard smile and nod. So now that I've provided enough caveats to negate anything I say next, let's get down to the glibness. As far as I can tell, everyone who lives around here is extremely rich, happy, insular, and apparently immortal. The average resident, as far as I know, is a 58-year old cardiologist with 1% body fat, who ultramarathons in his spare time, is a patron of the arts, has a 60,000 bottle wine collection stashed in climate-controlled long term storage (and doesn't drink the wine, because it's an investment), also collects vintage 60's guitars (and doesn't play them), also has a 23 year old ex-Playmate trophy wife, they spend their winters skiiing in Aspen when they aren't busy luxuriating at a spa in Tuscany, or ultramarathoning their way across the Andes. I'm quite convinced he's the average resident here, even if he doesn't actually exist.

But enough snarkiness. I go on and on and gripe and complain as I always do, but I have to admit there was something a little refreshing about the place. If I run into the aforementioned Type A cardiologist on the trail, and he sees my camera and starts prattling on about his Leica collection, well, I'll roll my eyes, because I can't not roll my eyes. But compare that with, say, Kelly Butte, where you'll likely be killed and eaten if the natives catch you -- well, in that regard Cooks Butte has a lot going for it. The, uh, "feel" of the place suggests that here, nothing bad has ever happened to anyone, nobody's poor, nobody's depressed, no one ever gets sick, no one ever gets old, nobody dies, and never will. Which I don't actually buy for a moment, of course. But I admit it's a lovely illusion for a while, just so long as they let you leave when you've had enough.

But then again, I could be wrong about the whole "feel" thing.

Lake Oswego Railroad Bridge

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The ongoing bridge project takes us south again, to the often-overlooked Lake Oswego Railroad Bridge. Rail-only bridges are pretty much always overlooked, since nobody uses them except the railroad itself. On top of that, this particular bridge is in an out-of-the-way location, is fairly unremarkable-looking, and is very lightly used even by the railroad. That all adds up to "destined for obscurity" -- although it does have its own Structurae page, which I guess is something.

If you took a local survey and asked people if they'd ever heard of this bridge being here, I'd guess the answers would be split between "No" and "Who cares?". And really, why would you care? You can't drive over it, you can't legally walk or bike over it, and the few trains that use it don't carry passengers. In my case, I'm kind of running low on bridges, and I figured I'd go check it out for the sake of completeness, along with a measure of idle curiosity.

Since I didn't walk over the bridge, I don't really have an adventure story to tell this time. I just drove to Rivervilla Park, at the foot of the bridge on the east bank, took a few photos, and went on my merry way. So pretty much what I've got to offer this time are the photos, plus whatever info about the bridge I was able to dredge up on the interwebs. As a result, this post is somewhat overreliant on bullet-point lists full of links, as you'll see shortly. Literature snobs tend to sneer at bullet-point lists, so this post is unlikely to win any awards for its eloquent and skillful use of the English language -- assuming those awards still even exist -- but that's just how the post wrote itself.



This bridge is the only bridge over the Willamette between Sellwood and Oregon City, which is a pretty substantial gap, so it seems (to me) like kind of a waste that it's only used by a few freight trains now and then. I'm not the only person who thinks so, as I've seen occasional discussion about using it for commuter rail, streetcars, and/or pedestrians/bike access, but as of right now there aren't any firm plans for any of those things. One idea is to run commuter rail across it, similar to the upcoming Beaverton-to-Wilsonville WES line. A line like that could run south from downtown Portland all the way out to McMinnville, possibly as a snooty, upscale "wine train", like the one down in Napa Valley (which some locals have dubbed the "swine train"). This line could even be extended and run to Spirit Mountain, which would make it a total geezer magnet. Every last old guy in the country would insist on making a pilgrimage here, to come ride the casino train. I'm not sure that would be a good idea, but it sounds like a very lucrative idea. Oh, and it'd serve actual commuters too, apparently.



Other ideas include adding overhead wires and turning it into a streetcar bridge, or removing the tracks and making it bike/ped only, or cantilevering an additional bike/ped walkway off one side of the bridge, similar to what was done with the lower deck of the Steel Bridge a few years ago. I kind of prefer the last idea, if it can be done safely. Rail traffic could continue, while also allowing me to walk over the thing and take some photos without dying, which is the main thing of course.

Some people (who I guess aren't down with our fair city's anti-car policy) think there ought to be a vehicular bridge here. It's not a terrible idea, but after looking at the current bridge it's pretty clear to me that you couldn't modify it to carry cars. It's just too narrow for that. You'd have to build from scratch, and maybe right here is the best place for that, and maybe it isn't. Either way, you'll need to get in line behind all the other expensive bridge proposals currently on the table. So don't expect to see this any time soon.



A few semi-recent examples of the on-and-off discussion and handwringing about the bridge:

• The Lake Oswego Trails Master Plan envisions a "Willamette Crossing Trail" someday, with an estimated cost of about $5,670,000, in 2003 dollars.
  
• This City of Milwaukie Transportation System Plan Update mentions in in passing, while brainstorming about future commuter rail options.
  
• A doc from Metro's Lake Oswego to Portland Transit and Trail Study mentions the bridge as an "issue", as in, what to do about the bridge if the westside Portland-to-Lake Oswego rail line is turned into a trail.
  
• The City of Beaverton mentions the bridge a 2006 info packet for city council members, which mentions the possibility of using some Metro bond money to renovate the bridge.
  
• A thread at Portland Transport discusses the streetcar option, because they always love the streetcar option over on Portland Transport. One commenter explains why streetcars and freight trains can't coexist on the same tracks.
  
• A RailroadForums thread about the proposed eastside streetcar and Milwaukie MAX projects mentions the L.O. bridge briefly, as in, why are we building all this other new stuff when this existing bridge is practically sitting idle?
  
• A BikePortland thread about the Portland-to-Lake Oswego rail line gets a couple of comments about the bridge. One poster has ridden the bridge a few times and explains what a hassle it is in its current form.
  
• A commuter rail page on Trainweb calls it "the Forgotten Bridge", which sounds about right.
  
• In the August '08 meeting minutes of Oak Lodge Community Council, the bridge is once again described as the "forgotten bridge", but also as a "major asset". Figuring out what to do with this major asset is the hard part, it seems.
  
• An Oregonian story from January 15, 2004 says "Walkway Over Willamette Gains Favor". Favor, that is, with everyone except the railroad. They think it's way too dangerous, describing it as a "very scary bridge". Even if people behave themselves and stay off the tracks, they say, there's a danger people will be hit by stuff falling off the train -- lumber, sheet metal, stuff like that. They do like the idea of commuter rail, though, so that's something. They lease the bridge, I think from Union Pacific, and their lease runs through 2015. So maybe something will happen after that. This article generated a couple of letters to the editor.
  
• A PSU student project, "Milwaukie to Lake Oswego Willamette River Pedestrian Bridge", looked at the feasibility of adding a walkway to the bridge, and they even have a design mockup. The railroad wasn't interested in talking to them, though.
  
• In related news, the Pacific & Western Railroad (which operates the bridge and leases it from Union Pacific) is pushing a new proposal for a Hillsboro-to-Forest Grove commuter line. It's not hard to see why they like commuter rail: When the Beaverton-Wilsonville line gets going, P&W will be contracted to operate it on TriMet's behalf. They also received a bunch of needed capital improvements to the line, paid for with taxpayer cash, so their freight business benefits too. This is either cronyism or a win-win situation, I guess, depending on how you feel about commuter rail.
  
• And the handwringing about safety along the WES line has already begun.
  
• The bridge is also mentioned in an Aug. 5, 1996 Oregonian article, "Metro Revives 1994 Study On Willamette River Crossings". This is from the early stages of our endless "What to do about the Sellwood Bridge" handwringing, when there were options on the table besides just replacing the Sellwood with a new bridge nearby. In passing, it mentions people have been crossing the railroad bridge for years, despite the lack of a nice, public-friendly walkway.
  
• A blog post and a couple of forum threads discuss cyclists using the bridge.
  
• A 2004 post on foldedspace discusses "The Future of Oak Grove". One commenter claims to have seen people walking across the bridge.
  

If you look closely at the bridge, you can see there's a narrow walkway, more of a catwalk really, on the north/downstream side of the bridge. I thought about taking it, but I was dissuaded by what I thought were a few good reasons.

1. I couldn't get onto the bridge from where I was. I think you have to go find the end of the trestle, and I'm not sure where that is.
   
2. It doesn't look very safe. It's pretty spartan, and looks like it was designed for the exclusive use of maintenance people who know exactly what they're doing, and are paid very well to do it. Not much in the way of solid handrails up there, so I have a hunch my rare, occasional fear of heights might kick in, especially if it's windy.
   
3. Nonzero chance that a train might come while I'm up there. I realize it doesn't get a lot of use -- I've seen the figure of about 2 trains a day bandied around -- but I also know what my luck is like. The walkway's pretty close to the tracks, and trains are substantially wider than their tracks, so I'm not sure how much space that leaves you. The maintenance people this was designed for are bound to have a schedule and know when the next train's due. Me, not so much.
   
4. Nonzero chance of being arrested or fined for trespassing. The bridge is railroad property, and railroads aren't too keen on random members of the general public wandering around on their property, if they catch you. It turns out that, thanks to robber-baron-era laws governing railroads, a railroad doesn't just have security guards, it can actually have own Railroad police force. Seriously. Railroad police can operate with the same legal authority as local or state police, they can make arrests, they can even shoot people if the need arises. As is usual with all things railroad-related, your state and local authorities have no jurisdiction or regulatory authority over railroad police. They answer only to Uncle Sam and the shareholders. So it's not too surprising that the Union Pacific Police Dept. had a turn as Willamette Week's Rogue of the Week a couple of years ago. I'll grant that they have legitimate concerns about trespassers, and a real need to keep people off their tracks and out of their equipment. Since it's, you know, dangerous and all. Also, there was a
   pipe bomb incident at the bridge back in 1993, so there's wannabe-evildoers to worry about too, I guess.
   

I suppose I could just call up the railroad and ask for permission, if I really wanted to walk across the thing that badly. I considered doing that before I actually got a look at the bridge, and now I'm not sure I really want to. I won't rule out that I might try it at some point, although I kind of suspect they'd say no. Maybe if I spun it as "I want to explain to the public why it's so dangerous", with lots of photos illustrating the point. I dunno. I've come to realize that I'm more easily dissuaded than most people by the threat of getting an expensive ticket (or worse), even when the actual likelihood of it happening is probably quite low, as it is with this bridge. I'm not usually big on blaming things on parents, much less grandparents, but in this case I really think it's my maternal grandmother's fault. Where some people use "the bogeyman" to scare kids into behaving, she used "the policeman", so as a small child I got a lot of "you be good, now, or the policeman will get you". I'm not kidding. The evil terminator in Terminator 2 spent most of the movie in the form of a cop, and that's a pretty good approximation of what I thought "the policeman" was like when I was a kid. I still don't think I've entirely gotten over that. You walk over the bridge, you might get speared through the eye with CG liquid metal or something. I've never figured out where Grandma picked up this attitude. Was it just a generic Scots-Irish thing? Or did she have a more exciting youth than she led us all to believe? We may never know for sure. And maybe that's for the best.

As you might expect, the bridge shows up on various railfan websites, where we learn (among other things) that the long, curving trestle on the east bank is called the "Menefee Trestle", after a lumber company that used to be next to the tracks a bit further north. The Brooklyn railyard in SE Portland is home to the historic SP 4449 locomotive, which seems to use the bridge regularly when they take it out for a spin. For example:

• Photos from a rail excursion from Albany to the Brooklyn Yard in Portland, including one from on the trestle.
  
• 
  
• A thread about a different excursion on the same train, including a great photo of it crossing the bridge.
  
• Another photo, same train again, crossing the bridge going the other way.
  
• Another page about the SP 4449, with a few more photos of the train on the bridge.
  

Other assorted photos of the bridge:

• an old photo looking across the bridge
  
• And a photo from the air
  
• And a two photos taken up on the bridge itself. If you want to see what it looks like up there, those are your best bet, because I didn't hoof it across the bridge this time.
  
• Some photos and info on a page of Milwaukie sights.
  
• Some great moody infrared photos of the bridge.
  
• And a few other photos, including one of a steam train crossing the bridge.
  
• These two might be of the L.O. bridge too, but it's hard to tell.
  
• And these three, and probably this one.
  
• photos of various local bridges on Pixelmap
  
• More on Webshots
  
• to willamette falls by kayak. While taking panoramic photos every so often. I'm really curious how this was done.
  
• The Lake Oswego Library has a collection of old photos of the area, and they have old pics of the bridge (such as this one) in several of their categories: "Willamette River", "Railroads", and "Bridges".
  

Nansen Summit expedition

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Here are a few third-rate photos from Nansen Summit, a tiny park at the very top of Mt. Sylvania, down in Lake Oswego.

Sometimes I just say "third rate" to be self-deprecating, but I really am disappointed in how these turned out. The view is supposed to be the main event here, and I showed up on a glum, foggy morning. It was sunny the day before, and I might've gotten some glorious shots then, but I just didn't have any free time that day. It's doubly disappointing because I was motivated to go track this place down after seeing a number of cool photos of the place. So I'm sure it really is photogenic if you're lucky, and/or know what you're doing.

Here are some selected images from across the interwebs, so you can see what I mean:

• An amazing fogbound sunset (Ash Creek Images)
  
• Doug Arnold has a bunch of photos, including a great rainbow
  
• Photos of Comet McNaught from Nansen Summit, on Amanda Fritz's blog
  
• Multiple meteors (Abraham Online)
  
• Flickr photos from Ar'alani and Daneski
  
• A series of paintings titled The Four Seasons of Nansen Summit
  

A curious thing about Nansen Summit is that it's not a city park, or any kind of public park. Instead, the Mountain Park Homeowners' Association owns and runs it, as part of an extensive network of parks and trails. Mountain Park is an exceptionally large subdivision, primarily developed back in the 70's and 80's. (Their website has a slideshow of groovy "vintage" photos from when the area was under construction.) The fact that this is part of a subdivision also explains the heroic-sounding name of the place. Since this is the extra-swanky part of Mountain Park, all the streets are named after heroic historical figures: Hidalgo, Garibaldi, Juarez, Bolivar, Becket, Masaryk, with Nansen at the very top. Nansen being Fridtjof Nansen, the famous polar explorer, humanitarian, scientist, diplomat, and winner of the 1922 Nobel Peace Prize. It's unclear how being the rich guy with a house at the top of the hill equates with heroism, but there you go. I do think it's kind of ironic that so many of the streets are named for heroes of Latin American history, so that the neighborhood's groundskeepers, maids, and nannies are far more likely to get the historical references than the residents themselves are. Go figure. So anyway, the whole area is private property, but it's not a gated community, and there aren't any big scary signs saying "Residents Only, Violators Will Be Waterboarded", like some of the more fierce subdivisions out there do. Someone put Nansen Summit on their list of 5 Best Places to Picnic in Portland, When It's Not Raining, and they don't seem to have gotten a cease & desist order over that. So you'll probably be OK if you decide to visit, unless you get lost among the winding suburban streets, or you try to put up any political signs, which is Seriously Frowned Upon. I've never really understood why homeowners' associations are so big on banning political signs. I can't see how they reduce property values or otherwise lower the tone, and as "clutter" they're quite temporary and not really unsightly (except the ones for Republicans, obviously). I suppose they just do it because they can. Mountain Park did have a UFO sighting last year, which I guess just goes to show that even the most control-freak homeowners' association can't control everything. If UFOs actually existed, I mean.

Ok, so forget about UFO's, that's not the only excitement to be had here. Being the top of Mt. Sylvania, it turns out Nansen Summit is the business end of a large "dormant" shield volcano, one of many volcanoes and lava domes in the amusingly-named Boring Lava Field (Others include Mt. Tabor, Kelly Butte, and Rocky Butte.) An article titled "The Catlin Gabel Lava Tubes of West Portland, Oregon" (which first appeared in the September 1974 issue of The Ore Bin, a journal run by the state Department of Geology & Mineral Industries) describes the area thusly:

The Catlin Gabel lava tubes occur among a cluster of cinder cones and associated lava flows of Pliocene to late(?) Pleistocene age (between about 5 and 1 million years old) that occupy an area of approximately 25 square miles on the west side of the Portland Hills (Figure 1). Lava tubes have not previously been described in Oregon lava flows older than Holocene (last 10,000 years). Mount Sylvania is the largest of the Pliocene-Pleistocene volcanoes in the map area, but at least four and possibly as many as eight other volcanic vents and associated lava flows lie to the northwest as far as Germantown Road, 12 miles north of Mount Sylvania, and one other lies to the southeast. These volcanoes are probably the westernmost of this age in Oregon. The area covered by lava flows and vents was first mapped by Trimble (1963), who assigned these rocks to the Boring Lava, a geologic unit first named by Treasher (1942) after a cluster of volcanoes around the town of Boring about 10 miles southeast of Portland.

While we're at it, the summit, or perhaps just the northeast corner of the summit, is the top end of the Arnold Creek Watershed, from whence the creek flows until it joins Tryon Creek, which flows into the Willamette, then the Columbia, then the Pacific Ocean. Which you can't quite see from here, even when it's sunny.

Oswego Creek Bridge

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Ok, time for another bridge. This time we're looking at Lake Oswego's Oswego Creek Bridge, which carries Highway 43 ( == Macadam Ave. ) over, uh, Oswego Creek on its brief journey from Oswego Lake to the Willamette River. I don't usually bother with bridges over mere creeks unless the bridge is especially unusual or interesting somehow. The previous one was a (sorta) covered bridge. This one is a 1930-vintage Conde McCullough bridge... I think.

It's taken me a while to post this, because there's a bit of a mystery going on. If you look at the Bridgehunter & Structurae pages for the bridge, or this old photo from the City of Lake Oswego, the bridge you see there doesn't look quite like my photos. At first I thought maybe I'd gone to the wrong bridge, but that didn't seem possible. Then I thought maybe the bridge had been replaced in recent years, since the photo shown there is dated 1991. Although in that case you'd think there'd be some mention of the fact somewhere, and there isn't.

This painting of the bridge might explain what's going on. Assuming the artist didn't take extreme liberties, it sure looks like the bridge was widened at some point, so that the northbound lanes are old, and the soutbound ones are new, and I just happened to be on the southbound side. The bridge railing looks kind of old, much older than the visible supports, so I expect they either reused the original, or made a new one to match the other side. If that's what's really going on here, I mean; I haven't seen the other side, so I don't know for sure. I suppose I could go back and take another look or something. And while I'm at it, maybe try to take some better photos than the ones you see here, which I'm not entirely pleased with.

Anyway, I think that's what's going on here. If it turns out that I'm totally off base, I can always come back and rewrite this post if I have to.

If it turns out this is another McCullough bridge (which is pretty much the only reason I came to check it out), that brings us to at least 3 in the Portland area, even though sources often claim the Oregon City Bridge is the only bridge of his anywhere in town. But the McLoughlin Bridge and this one appear to be his too, and I've read that he designed a couple of Hwy 99 bridges nearby (over the Tualatin River near Tualatin, and over the N. Yamhill near McMinnville). So there may be at least 5, depending on how you define "Portland area".

The obligatory "not dying" angle, this time: Take care to not crane your neck out too far while looking for the damn bridge arches that aren't there, thereby losing your balance, falling off, and plummeting to an untimely demise somewhere in the ravine far below. Also, don't learn the hard way that the bridge is probably not quite high enough for bungee jumping (or base jumping, for that matter), and the creek isn't anywhere near deep enough to dive into from the bridge. Not that I expect people to listen to little ol' me out here on the Interwebs if they're inclined to try any of that stuff. But hey. Whatever.

photo friday, rattled edition

So here are a few photos I took earlier today while I was wandering around Lake Oswego, wearing a suit and sipping some kind of fruity mango smoothie. That's all highly out of character for me, but I was on my way to a funeral and was pretty rattled about it, so I thought I'd stop and chill out for a bit.

Most of the flowers you see here are at George Rogers Park on the Willamette, and all the water & sculpture ones are at or near Millennium Plaza Park, right on the lake in downtown Lake Oswego. Well, "right on the lake" is a bit misleading. The lake itself (which is a reservoir, actually) has a unique legal status: It's privately owned, and lakefront property owners own shares in the company and pay dues to maintain the thing. If you aren't part of this elite club, no lake for you. You aren't supposed to even touch the water here. No doubt something unimaginably terrible and gruesome will happen to you if you do, more than likely involving an ancient Egyptian curse, or a radioactive monster, at the very least lawyers.

Quite frankly I didn't need any convincing to stay out of their precious lake. I'm told the thing stagnates and gets really icky algae problems in the summer (not that we've had much of a summer this year). I'm sure it's the better sort of algae, the ultra-upscale imported kind, not the tacky stuff they have at Blue Lake out toward Gresham. Or at least that's what the locals probably tell themselves over and over again, so that they don't feel they're getting a raw deal. I guess it's sort of the aquatic equivalent of a stinky French cheese, one that only a true connoisseur can appreciate.

You might have gathered that I don't really feel like talking about the funeral itself. That shouldn't be surprising, as I've always said this isn't the most personal of personal blogs, and deliberately so. For the same reason, I'm not going to get overly detailed about why I've been heading out to the Columbia Gorge so much lately, but I will say it's been therapeutic. Oh, you thought I was doing all that just so I could blog about it? Well, no, no I wasn't, not exactly. Although the blogging part was kind of therapeutic as well.

When you work in an obsessively casual industry like mine (software), you tend to forget how people react when you wear a suit, versus the usual shorts + t-shirt. I could probably have gotten away with just about anything (other than jumping in the lake). People see the suit and assume you're authorized to do whatever you're doing. I'm not sure why, certainly not after Enron, but a suit still grants you the benefit of the doubt. Mass quantities of benefit of the doubt. It depends a lot on where you are, though; just try walking down Mississippi Avenue in Brooks Brothers, or Men's Wearhouse for that matter. You might as well be wearing a Klan robe so far as the hipster contingent's concerned. They'll figure you're a greedy developer, trying to put in a condo tower or a Starbucks or something. They'll probably assume you drive a gigantic SUV that runs on kittens.

And they'd have a good point. The first couple of minutes when people start acting all deferential toward you it just seems weird. Then you realize it's the suit, and for another five minutes you feel like you've acquired magic powers of thought control, and it feels kind of good. Then -- at least if you're me -- you get alarmed by the whole idea. People will apparently do just about anything to make you happy, just because you're wearing the right clothes. It doesn't speak well for the human race, if you ask me.

The other, far less likely, possibility is that it had nothing to do with the suit. People were recognizing me, realizing I was an Important Local Blogger Of Note, and bowing and scraping because of that, hoping I'd put in a good word for them out here on the Interwebs.

As I said, far less likely.