How to walk the Oregon City Bridge and not die (*hack* *cough* *gag*)

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Today's installment of this humble blog's ongoing bridge series takes us south, to the Oregon City Bridge, which crosses the Willamette River down in, uh, Oregon City. It's a bit far afield for this project of mine, but it looked interesting and not excessively unsafe, so I thought I'd go check it out. It's outside my usual haunts and I'd only ever driven over it once or twice, and I thought it might be good for a few photos.







The bridge is pretty, but it's in terrible shape. To my untrained eye, at least, it looks like it's worse off than the Sellwood. I do realize the big trouble with the Sellwood is stuff you can't see easily, but it sure looks like the Oregon City Bridge is in a bad way. There are cracks all over the place, and places where the concrete's fallen away, sometimes exposing the bare metal skeleton underneath.





Updated: As a user comment below points out, ODOT already has a repair project in the works, scheduled for early 2009. Yay! So when I gripe about the current state of disrepair in the rest of this post and complain nobody's doing anything, just ignore that part, ok? Thx. Mgmt.



I wouldn't care so much if this was just another anonymous concrete girder bridge, but this is one of the state's collection of Conde McCullough bridges. There's a lot of those out there, but I think this may be the only one in the Portland area. I could easily be wrong about that. It's an unusual example in that the bridge deck is angled a bit, because the West Linn bank is higher than the Oregon City side. It's not as obvious in my photos as I hoped it would be. I think you may get a better view of that if you go uphill on the Oregon City side, but I didn't do that. Sorry.





Also, a couple of commenters below sort of get on my case for not recounting the long and illustrious history of Oregon City. I'd just like to point out that's intentional, as this post is just about the bridge, hence the title. Also the text and photos. I mean, there already are -- or were -- multiple museums devoted exclusively to that subject. So it's been covered already. And honestly I've never found pioneer history all that compelling. If you really wanted me to write about it, I would feel obligated to make up exciting new facts to make the story more interesting. I'd tell readers about how Oregon City lost the state capitol to Salem due to their rabid Confederate sympathies, a talent for picking the wrong side that persists to the present day, hence the big gold Saddam Hussein statue at the corner of Avenida Manuel Noriega and Kaiser-Wilhelm-Straße. I'd even let people in on the city's dark secrets. For example, the townsfolk used to offer human sacrifices every full moon to appease the great foul kraken that lived beneath Willamette Falls. In fact this practice continued up to the early 1970s, when Governor Tom McCall personally captured the kraken with his bare hands and sent it back to California (where it quickly found a job as a record industry lawyer). Because it just isn't a proper Oregon myth unless Tom McCall shows up at some point. Anyway, you probably see where I'm going with this: Do you really, seriously, want me creating the internet's official record of Oregon City history? Yeah, I didn't think so.





Anyway, another unusual detail about the bridge is that it was designed with public restrooms built into the bridge piers, supposedly. While walking across, you'll come across a couple of wider areas with spiky art deco bits standing up. These were, supposedly, the locations of stairs down to the restrooms. And if you look closely at the bridge from the side, just beneath the bridge deck you can see what look like (and supposedly are) balconies. Balconies! I keep saying "supposedly" because it's such a bizarre idea. I mean, restrooms in the middle of a bridge? Who would dream this up? And who would use it, if someone dreamed it up? And yet, there's a certain appeal to answering nature's call while enjoying a grand view of Willamette Falls and the river. Too bad, then, that the restrooms were closed due to vandalism, way back in 1937. Or so says Wikipedia. I'm still not sure I believe a word of it.



The bridge has all the standard bike/pedestrian hazards. Not enough sidewalk, and too much traffic, going too fast. The bridge is on the narrow side, but this time vehicles bear the brunt of the narrowness. Parts of the bridge are scraped and battered from vehicle collisions over the years. I saw at least one pile of recent debris that looked as if someone had lost a side mirror by banging it against a bridge girder. Driving it in a sensible midsize sedan wasn't so bad, at least. But there wasn't a lot of oncoming traffic at the time, so maybe I was just lucky.



There's an additional, somewhat exotic hazard to worry about here on top of the standard ones. Wikipedia asserts that the concrete used in the bridge is something called "gunite", which was chosen specifically to resist corrosion due to sulfur dioxide from the nearby paper mills. Ah, the sulfur dioxide. Which brings us to the "not dying" part of this post.



If you've ever been to Yellowstone, or to any hot springs up in the Cascades, you'll instantly recognize the scent of sulfur dioxide. But this time it's a byproduct of making newsprint, not some kind of allegedly-health-giving natural mud concotion. So you've got no reason now to pretend to like it. There is one big advantage here, compared to hot springs in the Cascades, in that there are far fewer unattractive naked people. Which is something, definitely. The really bad thing about sulfur dioxide isn't the smell, though; it's that it forms sulfuric acid when it reacts with water, and there's a lot of water here. Eeeww. Gross.

The whole undertaking was a little gross, come to think of it. The air smelled really bad, something unidentifiable and foamy was flowing into the river just upstream of the bridge, and the bridge itself was practically rusting and dissolving away before my eyes. Ick! When I got back to my car and drove off, the back of my throat was still burning a little just from breathing the air. So I do think I've semi-legitimately covered the "not dying" angle this time around.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those snobby people who hate all things industrial and can't wait for those icky jobs to leave for China. That's crazy, and I don't see how you can expect to have a viable economy based on everyone making lattes for each other. The paper mills at Oregon City aren't pretty, but if you read the Oregonian, this is where your newsprint comes from. Basically I just didn't like the smell, or the subsequent tingling, burning sensation. I can't even imagine what it must've been like before modern Clean Air laws.

But if you ignore all that stuff, the bridge itself sure is pretty. There's no denying that. And a bit surprisingly, the businesses around either end of the bridge aren't notably sleazy, unlike the Sellwood & the Ross Island. So there's that.



Walking across the bridge? Oh, there's not much to that. Just park somewhere close if you need to, and walk across. There's no crosswalk immediately on the West Linn side, but if you feel like turning around, jogging across when there's no traffic is feasible, or at least it was when I was there. The heavy-duty bridge pillars stand between you and traffic, so it's really not all that scary. Relatively speaking, at least, compared to some of the other bridges out there. A bit stinky, yes, but not too scary.



If you park on the Oregon City side of the bridge, note that downtown OC has parking meters. Not the fancy green European boxes like we have in Portland, no, these are the real deal, old-sk00l parking meters. Ok, they're digital, and you don't have to turn a crank when you put the money in. But other than that, they're totally old-sk00l.

Also, there's the municipal elevator, just blocks from the bridge. I could've made it a twofer and checked out the elevator too, but I had other priorities. I've been on the elevator before, way back in my Cub Scout days. I remember back then there was this weird old guy operating the elevator, and it creeped me out a little even then. It creeps me out even more looking back on it.

Apart from the goofy 50's elevator, Oregon City looks pretty much like your classic, prototypical blue collar town. It's blue collar with a Portland-area twist: There's a homebrew supply shop right next to the bridge, and while I was walking around town I was passed by a Prius with the windows down, blaring country music. Seriously. The whole place is too perfect -- if Oregon City didn't exist, Hollywood would have to invent it. Maybe I'm just one of those dreaded Portland creative types, but when I look around, I see plotlines everywhere. Well, cliches, mostly, but that's about the same thing. Picture our hero, a fresh-faced all-American working class kid here in Oregon City. Daddy works at the paper mill, just like his daddy did, and his grandpa before that. Mama works long hours down at the diner. Our hero knows this will be his life too, but he wants out. If only he could land that football scholarship to State U. Then he meets our heroine, a rich girl from across the river in ritzy West Linn, home to the rich kids' school -- which is, coincidentally, the football archrival of our hero's school. Her daddy's a plastic surgeon, his trophy wife is a former spokesmodel, and they're usually away at the vacation home in Palm Springs. Our young protagonists quickly fall in love, but it's a problem, because he's from the wrong side of the tracks, the tracks in this case being a river. Cue outraged parents on both sides. Cue friends and teammates who all feel terribly betrayed. The bridge is our young lovers' special place, and several touching scenes are filmed there. The standard plot twists ensue, and there could very well be a climactic football game, as there often is. Our hero nails that scholarship, and finally makes daddy proud, for the first time ever. And then, it turns out that our heroine's going to State U. as well. Possibly her father's had a reversal of fortune, or the school has the #1 program in the nation for some obscure academic specialty she's interested in. Or she's merely giving up her own dreams to be with our hero. Something along those lines, anyway. Just so everyone lives happily ever after. Cue the credits.

Ok, it's not a very original plot. Successful movie plots never are. If it got greenlighted, I'd want to film on location (unless Vancouver BC made me a really great offer). To film on location, the bridge would need to be gussied up a little. Maybe ODOT could do it, since they're responsible for the bridge, at least in theory. Or if not ODOT, maybe the studio. Chances are the studio has more money anyway. So, ok, it's a longshot. If you have a better suggestion on how to get this poor little bridge repaired, feel free to chime in.

George Himes Park expedition

Today's brief before-work adventure takes us out to George Himes Park, just south of downtown Portland in the Corbett/Terwilliger area.

George Himes Park is another of your basic West Hills nature parks, a forested ravine with a network of trails. We don't have a shortage of those here. See for example: Marquam Nature Park, Macleay Park, Marshall Park, parts of Forest Park & Washington Park, and probably others that don't come to mind immediately. The park isn't huge, just around 35 acres.

The location's a little unusual, which is what attracted my attention to the place. It's bounded on the uphill side by Terwilliger and Capitol Highway, and on the downhill side it bumps up against the Corbett neighborhood at SW Iowa St. If you've ever stared at a map of the area and wondered why Capitol Highway doesn't connect to I-5 or run through to the Corbett area, the answer rapidly becomes clear once you visit the park. It's just too damn steep to run a road through here. Not a safe road, anyway. At a couple of spots, the main trail turns into stairs. Rustic stairs made with old railroad ties, I suppose because the ravine's too narrow to put in switchbacks. So the trail isn't exactly ADA-compliant or bike-friendly, but I kind of like it anyway.

The main trail through the park is a segment in Portland's numerically-challenged "40 Mile Loop", so the park serves as a thru-corridor as well as a destination in itself. The park's just one link in a longer hike on this page at ExplorePDX. There's a similar loop hike in Portland Hill Walks (highly recommended, btw). The park also shows up in a post at "I'd Rather Be Running". And (less seriously) the park has a cameo in some sort of treasure hunt from a while back.

I wasn't feeling all that ambitious this morning, and more to the point I simply didn't have time for a longer hike. So I just parked at the Iowa St. entrance, took the trail up to the picnic area at Terwilliger & Nebraska, and looped back down to where I started. Then I got in my car and headed off for my first meeting of the day, lucky me.

The general steepness of the park does have an upside. There's a nice view over the Corbett area from the bottom end of the park (top photo), and up top there's a nice view of Mt. Hood from Nebraska St. near the intersection with Terwilliger.

Some unusual or interesting aspects of the place:

• Bridges. Well, viaducts. Or bridges. Technically, we're told, a viaduct is a bridge that doesn't cross over water, for whatever that's worth. If you read this humble blog regularly, you know that I can do pedantic with the best of 'em, but even I think this is a silly distinction. Besides, there is water here. It's just that some misguided(?) engineers channeled it into an underground pipe a few decades ago. That's nothing at all, in geological time.

So both Interstate 5 and Barbur Blvd. pass through the park on high "viaducts". As it turns out, the trail through the park is one of the few ways to cross this dual road barrier on foot, as the trail passes right under both viaducts, and gives you a good look at both.
I-5 crosses the ravine on the "Iowa St. Viaduct", which is just your basic big generic grey concrete slab supported by grey concrete pillars, nothing too special. Or too durable, as it turns out. It seems the current I-5 viaduct is at the end of its useful life, and is scheduled to be replaced some time next year. The replacement work will close the trail through the park for up to a year. Not everyone's thrilled about this. I gather the trail is actually part of some people's daily commute, believe it or not. In any case, if you want to check out the trail through the park, it's best to go do it now before the viaduct construction starts up.
The Barbur viaduct is much more interesting. It's older than its I-5 sibling so instead of a concrete slab it's a large and rather fascinating wood(!) lattice structure. Yes, wood. Now there's something to think about next time you drive along Barbur... And yet it's the "modern" concrete structure that needs replacing. Go figure.


• I've seen a few mentions of a "Newbury Street Viaduct", which carries Barbur, and runs through George Himes Park, and looks a lot like the viaduct shown here. But I'm not 100% sure it's the same one, as it looks like there's a similar viaduct just south of this one. And I've never heard of a Newbury Street around here, and I don't see one on the map, and PortlandMaps indicates it's never heard of Newbury St. anywhere in town. So the name doesn't help narrow it down much. The one further south might be the "Vermont Street Viaduct".

The Iowa St. entrance actually passes through someone's driveway. To get into the park you have to walk between two cars. Seriously. It feels weird to do that, although I understand it's common practice in Europe. Which I suppose makes it sophisticated. Fancy, even.

As with a number of the other parks in the West Hills, the ravine's stream has been diverted underground. I suppose maybe this is good for flood control, but it just seems wrong to me to not have a stream flowing on the surface.

You'll be either amused or annoyed that back in 2004, the state department of Fish & Wildlife dropped by to count chub and other native fish in the stream. Their official report on Portland-area streams indicates they didn't find any here. Not what I'd call surprising.

Like most of the city's official "Natural Areas", the park is pretty much a gallery of invasive plant species. English ivy, Himalayan blackberries, and unusually, Norwegian Maples. It seems that a few of these nonnative maples were planted along Terwilliger as a decorative part of the Olmsteads' parkway design. Before long the maple trees started producing maple seeds, and began an all-out helicopter assault on the park. So now they're bringing in neighborhood volunteers to root out the invading maple spawn. So far, offenders have been marked for removal with prison-orange tape. Note that the doomed maples are surrounded by a thick carpet of invasive English ivy. Maybe that gets removed next, if they have really ambitious volunteers. If you just went, "Ambitious volunteers? Hey, that's me!", there's more info on the ongoing restoration effort here.

An account of an innovative trail maintenance project at ExplorePDX.

A couple of other pictures I took that I liked. The place is full of spiders, and before long it'll be full of blackberries. Invasive blackberries, but hey.

what it's like when it rains in august

phototuesday

A few more recent photos, which (except for the top photo) fall into two broad (and very familiar) categories: a.) flowers, and b.) reflections of stuff in other stuff. The "reflected stuff" photos (and the top photo) are from around Old Town & Chinatown here in Portland. I don't usually do a lot of Old Town / Chinatown photos. The area presents kind of a dilemma to me. I'm not really big on doing gritty "Ooh, look, poverty!" shots, which seems exploitative and doesn't help anyone. And if, instead, you focus on the cool old buildings and ornate architectural details and so forth, and generally make the area look attractive, it plays into the hands of the gentrifiers - the PDC and the upscale condo tower crowd - and if five years from now the place is nothing but wall to wall doggie day spas and snooty martini bars and luxury SUVs, it'll be partly your fault. And either way, taking photos there involves walking around that part of town with a very conspicuous and expensive camera, without dying. Which is not to say I don't or won't do it, it's just that there's kind of a dilemma about the whole thing.

Handwringing aside, I'm not actually out of blog material, believe it or not. Not anymore than I usually am, at any rate. There's yet another bridge post in the works (the St. Johns this time), but those always take a while to put together. So for now, enjoy the flowers. And the reflected stuff. And the top photo.

Pics: Portland Twilight Criterium '08

A few photos from last Friday's Portland Twilight Criterium. My, uh, "race report" this time around is even less extensive than last year's: We just sort of hung out and watched the races, and I tried to take a few sports-action type photos that didn't utterly suck. I'm not sure I succeeded, but just trying was kind of fun.

I'm afraid I don't know who the various riders here are, so I can't add any helpful captions. I think the guy in the top photo went on to win the main event, but I'm not totally sure. If it wasn't him, it was a teammate, I know that much.



There was one decent-sized crash pretty close to where we were standing. I took one photo of the pileup and started feeling guilty. I suppose if you're a pro at this you have to get over the feeling that you should be helping somehow instead of taking photos or whatever.



The rest of my photos of this year's criterium are on Flickr here. FWIW.

wandering around first thursday

Took a few First Thursday photos yesterday, and here are a few of those few. I though I'd try something a little different. I'm not usually into street photography, and I'm never entirely convinced it's a good idea. But I figured, First Thursday is an art(sy) event, so cameras (and Cartier-Bresson wannabes) are to be expected, and people go to these things to see and be seen anyway. I'm certainly not going to argue that I created any Art yesterday. I approached it primarily as a technical exercise, actually. I'd been reading a bit lately about the hyperfocal technique, in which the right combo of focus and aperture ensures that everything beyond a certain distance is in "acceptable" focus. Then you can just wander around clicking the shutter, point-n-shoot style. You could, conceivably, do that without looking through the viewfinder. Which is what I did, partly to be unobtrusive, and partly for the sake of serendipity (more about which in a minute). Without practice (i.e. like me yesterday), most of what you get with this technique is feet. Which I guess would be great if you're doing a series on the feet of Portland, or I suppose if you just have a thing for feet, or whatever. To try to complete the effect, I used a vintage 60's Super Takumar 35mm f3.5 lens, switched the camera to monochrome, and cranked the ISO up to 3200 to try to simulate grainy film a little.

So I think I got a handful of photos this way that don't completely suck. As far as I can tell. Which I admit isn't very far.



I figured it was past time to try something different, because I've been in a rut lately, creatively, and in life in general, nothing but work, sleep, work, sleep, with weekends devoted to the endless demands of clingy elderly people. Photography and blogging are my usual escapes (which is why I so rarely write about work, for example), but those have suffered too. I've been running on autopilot for some time now. My formula, of late, has been "add more of the same, rinse, repeat". More photos of flowers, usually. Some of them aren't too terrible, I think, but they're still basically more of the same thing I've been doing for, oh, for several years now. And the blog, don't get me started about this humblest of humble blogs.



Now, ok, trying a slightly different photo technique isn't really the path out of staleness. Sure. And if I suddenly discover what the real path out of staleness is, I'm there. Until then, enjoy the photos, or whatever.

Elowah Falls expedition

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So here are a few pics from an all-too-brief daytrip to Elowah Falls, out in the Gorge. Actually "daytrip" is far too generous. I woke up early; drove out (on I-84 all the way, no time for the Gorge Highway); scuttled up the short (0.8 mile) trail to the falls, muttering under my breath about how long it was taking; took a few hurried second-rate and uninspired of the place; scuttled back to the car; dashed home; and then dashed off to an Important Morning Meeting.

Elowah Falls has always been one of my favorite spots in the Gorge, and I didn't do it justice this time around. Ok, it looks not entirely unlike a lot of the other waterfalls in the gorge. Granted. It's not the tallest, or the widest, or the most accessible, or perhaps even the most picturesque. Also granted. I do have a soft spot for the place for a couple of reasons. First, it's somewhat obscure. There's no "Elowah Falls" exit from the Interstate. There isn't even a stop or a sign on the Gorge Highway that says "Elowah Falls". To find it, you have to know it's there, do a little research to find it, and go a little out of your way to get there, so right there you've excluded the casual, uninterested types. If you do find the trailhead, the falls aren't visible from the road, so anyone who needs instant gratification is bound to be disappointed.

The second reason I have a soft spot for Elowah Falls is that, unlike the more famous falls in the Gorge, I first went there as an adult. A young adult, mind you; I was in my early 20's, footloose, somewhat aimless, with far more free time than I do now. I have somewhat vague memories of driving out to the falls in midwinter and writing horrendous poetry (since shredded) about the experience. And I have rather more vivid memories of driving out to the falls in midsummer with my kid brother, goofing off on the rocks, slipping, landing on a rock, and breaking a rib. Which was even less enjoyable than you might imagine. But still, there once was a time, long ago, when I was able to go out to the gorge on a lark and goof off and not worry about what time it was and where I had to be in an hour.

So perhaps you can forgive me for feeling a little aggravated by the recent "expedition": Now, lots of people need my attention practically 24/7, and basically my every waking moment belongs to someone else. There's always another meeting, and another opportunity to synergize proactively outside the box on a go-forward basis, and maybe monetize some eyeballs in the process. The money's good, certainly. You won't catch me complaining about that part. I remember being poor, and I'd rather not do that again, thanks. And professional respect is nice too, I guess. But I can't help thinking, you know, all of France is on vacation the whole month of August. How do they do it? And would the world really, truly end if we did the same thing here? Seriously, would it?

I'm sure I sound awfully crabby about this, but I just finished up one run-run-run gotta-be-done-yesterday project, and immediately started in on another. Gotta port a big Unix app to IBM's highly-non-Unix minicomputer OS. That would actually be kind of fun and interesting on a normal human schedule, but it's gotta be done by the end of the year or else the roof falls in, or the ogre under the bridge eats us, or the Earth collides with the antimatter Earth, or something horrific like that.

Call me psychic if you like, but I have this funny feeling that come next February, I'll be posting more photos of bare trees and whining about the weather and demanding to know where my damn summer went. Well, since I'm in the middle of it right now, let me tell you. Most of the greenery I've seen recently has been on a tn5250 screen. And somehow it's just not the same.

Cue the same answer when I'm 75 and trying to remember exactly where my 30s went.

But enough about me.

A few links about the falls, from around the interwebs:

• An informative page with good photos at OregonHikers.org.
  
• A good hike report at NWHikers.net, with tons of photos.
  
• A mid-June pos about the falls at "movement, movement"
  
• "Next ... Elowah Falls..." at "Photography and Life in General", with a nice photo of the falls.
  
• A page with more photos at dlmark.net.
  
• A post with lots of photos at "Adventures in Washington". Ok, strictly speaking this is an adventure in Oregon, but Washington is visible across the river when there's a break in the trees, so I guess it counts, technically, sorta.
  
  
• The "Elowah Falls" Flickr pool. Which I've just joined. I may even add a couple of my photos, if I feel the other members won't make fun of me.
  
• The rest of my photos are here. FWIW.
  
• On Amazon, you can buy an Elowah Falls mousepad. So I could see the falls without ever leaving my desk. No, no, must.... resist...
  
• A set of VR panoramas of the falls and spots along the trail. It's almost just like being there... no, no....
  
• An interesting page from Gresham High School with a photo of the upper falls. Did I mention there was an upper falls? There's a spur off the main trail to the upper falls, which adds another mile or two to the hike. It's worth seeing if you have time, which I never, ever, seem to have anymore.