Oh, everything is falling into place.
I started the day by going a Walgreens and picking up an emergency vacation supply of my Gabapentin, which i’d somehow neglected to throw into the bag with all my other meds. The only downside, other than their not being able to clear it through my insurance and thus charging me $25 was that my Segway lock, which had been getting crankier and crankier, finally failed totally. It could have been worse since it failed as i was trying to detach the Segway from an immovable object rather than the opposite. But still, there i was without a lock.
But i continued on and finally got some pretty good pics of the Fremont Bridge. For example:
And another, upon reflection:
Better yet, as i was heading back down to the river to get some morning shots of other bridges i got stopped by a long slow freight train and fell into conversation with a bicyclist nearly as old as i who was headed to the Bridge Pedal point on the east side of the river to pick up his packet and tee shirt. So i joined him across the Steel Bridge, and being in the company of a local, discovered that there’s a bicycle lane across the bridge on the lowest level, a lane i hadn’t even known existed.
And then we rode along the bicycle path on the east side of the river all the way to the east landing of the Tilikum Crossing, where the packets and tee shirts were being distributed. And where i realized that no, i didn’t have my receipt. So back over the Hawthorne Bridge to the hotel, where i gobbled three Gabapentin and an ibuprofen to stave off the pain from my degenerated cervical disks and slept for two hours.
I resumed the adventure by stopping at a bike shop and buying an Arbus bike lock, same $45 price as the comparable Kryptonite but made in Germany rather than China. And then back over the river via the Steel Bridge and the east side bike path to the Bridge Pedal pickup area this time getting a few shots of the bridges along the way. Got in the long line for Will Call and was almost immediately accosted by an expediter who checked my receipt and gave me the entry packet and official entry placard. Not only that, she pointed out that the tee shirts were available Over There without a line, and i got a white large.
Flushed with success, i decided that since i hadn’t got good shots of the Sellwood and Ross Island bridges last year, i could bag them from the east side this year. Alas there were signs saying that the Sellwood Bridge was now closed, and since i’d got a fair shot of the Ross Island Bridge i decided i’d just use it for my return.
And wouldn’t you know, as i was cutting back inland trying to find the approach i blundered onto the Portland Segway shop, went in, and found they had one remaining Segway lock like my old one. So i bought it since it’s so much more secure than the U-shaped bike lock since all it takes to defeat that is a 5 mm. hex wrench to detach the handlebar assembly.
Then came back over to this side of the river via the Ross Island Bridge, snagging a few more pics along the way. Here’s one of the Tilikum Crossing from the Ross Island Bridge.
Dinner again at Baan Thai, tonight the Pad Thai and a different draft micro beer.
And since i’m on vacation, i grabbed a gin and tonic at the hotel bar to sip while i wrote this. Wheee.
Final note: Even though as a retired technical writer i have a Lifetime Exemption from reading user manuals, i’m gonna look into the one for my new Coolpix because i remember that my old one, many years ago, had a feature whereby you could back the Automatic exposure mode off slightly so that your pics were a tiny bit underexposed, which gives a saturation i like better.