Along for the Ride: Line 14

Sights | Tweets

Listen: [audio:http://lascheratlarge.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Line-14.mp3|titles=Along for the Ride Line 14]

For my latest edition of the Along for the Ride series of transit chronicles I rode Line 14 from Downtown Portland to Lents, and back again. Along the way I stopped for lunch at a taqueria I'd once visited on another spontaneous journey, met a man well-equipped for his trip to Vancouver, Washington, and learned why a young couple preferred to head all the way to Downtown Portland to shop at Buffalo Exchange. Listen above, then follow the jump to get a glimpse of what it looked like or follow my ride in "real time" by viewing my tweets from the bus.

Sights from the 14

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Tweets aboard the 14

If you feel like re-living the trip, you can even peruse the tweets I made while I was aboard. To come along for future trips and other adventures of mine, follow @billlascher. You can find other ways to keep tabs on me or get in touch here.

12:10 PM - 16 Dec 11

At City Hall getting ready to board the next @trimet 14 for this week's Along For The Ride. Follow my path here: loqi.me/hsrc9hy #AFTR

12:38 PM - 16 Dec 11

On the 14 finally. Ran into a friend. Now stopped for a boat to pass under the Hawthorne Bridge. #AFTR

1:01 PM - 16 Dec 11

I wonder if people look at me - with huge headphones, camera and iPhone - as just another odd bus rider. #AFTR #transit

1:09 PM - 16 Dec 11

Driver on the 14: "I'm a half hour late. It's the best I've been since 5:30 this morning." #AFTR #transit

3:09 PM - 16 Dec 11

Just interviewed a couple headed to the Downtown buffalo exchange because they expect better stuff than other locations. #AFTR

3:13 PM - 16 Dec 11

It amazes me when I interview regular riders how thoroughly they understand a transit system and its frequency and service cuts. #AFTR

3:13 PM - 16 Dec 11

It makes sense though that #transit dependent individuals would be so well informed about their transportation modality. #AFTR

3:15 PM - 16 Dec 11

It delights me that almost every @trimet rider, even the high school boy who just disembarked, makes a point to thank the driver. #AFTR

Along for the Ride: Island Time Aboard the 85

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Welcome to the second week of Along for the Ride, my series of weekly chronicles of Portland, OR-area transit lines. If you haven't already, check out the first edition and if you like the series, please spread the word, or even cover my bus fare.

This week, I woke early Wednesday morning intending to ride Line 85 commuters travelling to work in the warehouses and distribution centers of Swan Island. Transformed into a peninsula in the 1920s after a multi-year dredging effort, the island once housed Portland's airport and was an important shipbuilding center during World War II. It's now a major industrial area.

I visited a touch too late in my morning (boarding my first bus a little after 8 a.m.) to experience the daily commute. That just means I'll eagerly anticipate a future "Along for the Ride" entry about the Swan Island Transportation Management Association's free evening shuttle. For now, though, it's time to come along for the ride:

Moments in Transit

8:12 a.m.: Arrive at the Rose Quarter Transit Center. Watch a couple fight. Wait with a man clad head to toe in red clothing and a woman in a green dress chatting energetically on a cell phone. Get disappointed when they all board a different bus. Finally board with six other passengers seven minutes later.

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8:21: Realize I violated a central tenet of multimedia journalism. My audio recorder battery dies just as the ride starts. Silver lining: Next week I'll have a better, easier to use recorder and, more importantly, more familiarity with the ABC - Always Be Charging - rule.

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8:30: The bus gets lonely as three passengers leave. [shashin type="photo" id="185" size="320" columns="max" order="user" position="center"]

8:36: Disembark at Fathom and Basin while watching UPS Drivers start their morning dance. [shashin type="photo" id="187" size="320" columns="max" order="user" position="center"]

8:37: Begin wandering aimlessly. [shashin type="photo" id="192" size="320" columns="max" order="user" position="center"]

8:59: Take obligatory cliché photographs of abandoned rail line.

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9:09: Make a gruesome discovery.

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9:12: Heed warnings at a boat launch.[shashin type="photo" id="195" size="320" columns="max" order="user" position="center"]

9:13: Wait, maybe the warnings were unnecessary.

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9:14: See, they're fishing. [shashin type="photo" id="198" size="320" columns="max" order="user" position="center"]

9:17: Lust for a life at sea. [shashin type="photo" id="197" size="320" columns="max" order="user" position="center"]

9:28: Wait for the next bus along Basin Blvd. Wait ten more minutes. Finally decide to actually, you know, look at schedule. Start walking again. Wish I'd taken Daimler's suggestion earlier. [shashin type="photo" id="199" size="320" columns="max" order="user" position="center"]

9:50: Hit the beach! [shashin type="photo" id="200" size="320" columns="max" order="user" position="center"]

10:01: Return to the real world. [shashin type="photo" id="201" size="320" columns="max" order="user" position="center"]

Along for the Ride: Going Live on the 75

[shashin type="photo" id="202" size="320" columns="max" order="user" position="left"] Today marks the public launch of "Along for the ride,"* a new series of mass transit adventure chronicles on Lascher at Large.

Watch an Audio Slideshow | Explore the Map | See the Photo Gallery

The concept: explore Portland as seen from the metropolitan region's transit lines. Each week, through a highly scientific selection process (in other words a combination of my mood, any errands I may have to run, suggestions from the peanut gallery and other such extremely formal criteria), I'll be riding the full length -- each direction -- of one of Tri-Met's bus or rail lines (and perhaps those of surrounding transportation authorities, like Clark County's C-Tran). Who knows what I'll experience along the way or what I'll observe, or even what form my storytelling will take? Learn more about the project, how to support it, or how to come along for the ride at the end of this post.

For this inaugural week, I rode Line 75, a megaroute running from St. Johns through much of North, Northeast and Southeast Portland, all the way to Milwaukie (for the non-Oregonians among you, that's a city immediately south of Portland, not the alternately-spelled lakeside Wisconsin metropolis). For a taste of the route, check out the following audio slideshow. The speaker was a slightly counter-culture, late middle-aged man who identified himself as Robert. Reflecting on Portland's public transit system and his regular commute to and from St. Johns, this afternoon, Robert, who refused to give his last name, accompanied family on a trip from Portland's Woodstock neighborhood North to Burnside Blvd.

Before you read the rest of the story, listen to what Robert has to say about riding the 75, check out some images I snapped along the route, and even enjoy a moment of riparian pleasure, all brought to you by the 75:

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4zCJR3l6OE

A tale of two Wunderlands

You ride, And ride, And ride, Only at the end do you know the purpose of your trip.

One of twelve current "Frequent Service" Tri-Met bus routes -- those designed to run every quarter-hour -- the 75 averages intervals of about 17 minutes, according to the Portland Afoot Wiki.

I didn't time the 75 when I rode it this week. I happened to arrive at its door just before it left Pier Park in St. Johns. Such details will have to be saved for Portland Afoot, or perhaps for future installments of this series. Anyhow, though I originally envisioned "Along for the Ride" as a series of journalistic accounts of individual transit lines, this first trip devolved into more of a solitary journey, albeit one in which my commitment to my profession was redeemed by the discoveries I made along the route.

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My ride along the 75 started quietly. I barely made it on board. I don't live by either end of the line, and my path to Pier Park, the route's northern terminus, will remain a closely-guarded secret. What I can reveal: It involved an unidentified second transit line and a pedestrian meander to throw off would-be followers. I can, however, say I saw the biggest dog I've ever seen in my life along the way.

Anyhow, when I arrived the bus was empty aside from the older woman grilling the driver for details about how to make her connection. Despite the driver's insistence that there would be plenty of warning before the woman's required stop, she didn't seem convinced, and the full-speed run I made to board the bus started to seem unnecessary. But I made it.

Before long we were on Lombard. A bunch of teenagers boarded at the first stop. One sat in the seats across the way from me. He was easily too cool for school. Every few seconds he'd erupt with smirking mirth. That wasn't minimized by my donning of gigantic headphones as I slowly moved a cheap, underwhelming Radio Shack microphone around to pick up ambient sound (read, cacophonous static roughly reminiscent of rattling windows and engine noises). Already too shy for a journalist, I decided that wasn't the time for an interview, and packed everything but my camera away.

This was the first instance of a dilemma that persisted throughout the day. People rarely want to be spoken with on buses, even less so than on the street, or so I led myself to believe. They don earbuds, they stick their noses into books, they sigh after a long day at work, they text friends, they flirt and gossip and stare intently out the window. Perhaps, at least for this first trip, the best way to experience transit in Portland was to do just that: experience it, fully.

So I took in the city as it passed. St. Johns' mid-century downtown brimmed with summertime pedestrians. Friends met for coffee. Photographers ducked into a camera shop. Moms and dads pushed strollers. I saw one of two fencing halls I'd see along the 75.

It was the first of many pairs. The camera shop -- Blue Moon Camera and Machine -- also boasts typewriter repairs, and only a few blocks southeast, we'd also pass Ace Typewriter, possibly one of the only full-service typewriter maintenance businesses left in the entire country. Eventually, the bus passed two Trader Joe's locations and two bowling alleys and not one, but two Wunderlands.

As it turns out, the two places I decided to get off the bus -- in Portland's Belmont neighborhood and Downtown Milwaukie -- brought me a short stroll from two Wunderland Arcades. Sadly I lacked in nickels and competitors for air hockey, skee-ball, and scads of ticket-spewing games. Beyond the Wunderlands, which also feature second-run movie theaters, Line 75 passed, or stopped within a few blocks' walk of, multiple cinemas, including the Baghdad, the Hollywood Theatre, and both of St. John's movie houses.

Even more plentiful than movie theaters were parks. Big parks, little parks, dog parks, boring parks, fun parks, ugly parks, pretty parks, the 75 stopped near them all (actually, I don't recall any particularly ugly or boring ones. They're parks, after all). Parks too constrained for you? Why not take the 75 to the Springwater Corridor trailhead at Johnson Creek? Or head out on the water? Though I didn't realize it at the time, my trip on the 75 was taking me to the river.

Summertime, and the Living is Easy

Upon arriving at the route's terminus in Milwaukie, I headed out for a stroll. The day was far too beautiful not to do so. Of all the ways I'm nerdy, I'm not a comic-book reader. Were I so, I might have been thrilled to pass the headquarters of Dark Horse Comics (though the Darth Vader posters on the window were enough to excite the Star Wars nerd within). But my nerd-dom lies elsewhere, so I continued on toward a glistening shoreline I spied from Milwaukie's Main Street.

I soon forgot about it all -- the storefronts, the bus, my frustration with not interviewing anyone -- when I reached the shores of the Willamette. There, dogs played, boaters launched, office workers strolled in khakis and button-ups and old men surveyed the landscape from recumbent bicycles flying hot pink banners. Summer surrounded.

It only continued. On my way to the water I'd passed the Main St. Collectors Mall and Soda Fountain, and I stopped in before re-boarding the bus home. Like any antique mall, its shelves were stuffed with pan-decade nostalgia -- Star Wars Toys, World War II memorabilia, old record collections -- but it featured an extra treat: the counter of a former Rexall Department Store -- also known as Perry's Pharmacy -- where a family laughed over phosphates and hot dogs and an elderly mother treated her adult daughter to an ice cream cone. It was as if no one had ever moved. My only regret: not shooting the scene when I first glimpsed it through one of the store's aisles. I did, however, enjoy my lunch and my dessert of chocolate peanut butter ice cream in a sugar cone.

This was no longer a bus ride. This was a journey. With a $4.75 day pass, I'd wandered across a metropolis, stopped for snacks and a stroll in a hip neighborhood (I'd grabbed a bite on Belmont Ave.), run an errand for a friend, and found myself on a quiet shoreline, where water lapped at my feet, dogs played fetch, kids laughed from inner tubes pulled behind motorboats and the world slowed down, if only for a moment.

More Transiting Portland Each Week

What's "Along for the Ride?" It's my evolving series of Portland-area mass transit chronicles. For the next, well, for the next long while I'll be riding a new Tri-Met operated transit line. By new, I mean new to me. I'm beginning with lines I've never ridden, then I'll move on to riding other lines I have taken, until I've ridden every bus, railway and shuttle operated by Tri-Met (and possibly routes on other public transit systems near and far, should the situation arise). Expect stories along the way. What kind of stories? I can't quite be certain. Some newsy. Some reflective. Some only possible in the moment. Expect guest stars too. Perhaps expect to even come along yourself.

I expect Along for the Ride to also be a laboratory for new (to me) storytelling practices and a chance for me to hone audio recording, photography, videography, interviewing, mapping, writing, editing and other skills. Don't be surprised if different forms are used to tell stories from week to week, though it's conceivable the series will find its own rhythm, just as transit has its own pace.

You can help set that rhythm, however. You can start by getting involved. Tell me about your reflections of transit or via a tweet to @billlascher. If you use public transit, what do you use it for? What transit lines do you ride and why? If you don't use public transit, explain why not. What might change your opinion about using transit, whether you currently use it or not? I want to know about transit in any city -- after all, my love affair with transit writing started in LA, where transportation policy became the focus of my graduate studies -- so why not reflect on your town's best or worst routes?

For those of you familiar with particular Tri-Met lines, why not suggest in the comments what lines I should try next? Do you know of great stops along the way? If so, enter them on the map. Do you have a favorite transit story? Why not share some here, though I don't want to step on the toes of Michael Andersen, and the great stories in each edition of his incomparable Portland Afoot (By the way, if you need something to read on the bus, or anywhere else you happen to be, I bet your $5 subscription or other support will be well worth it).

*By the way, special thanks to writer Christina Cooke for devising this series' title, "Along for the Ride." Check out Christina's work at christinacooke.com.

Click on any image to enlarge:

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