Reflecting on Portland - Photo of the Day

Leaves strewn across a puddle at the intersection of W Burnside and NW Park Ave. in Downtown Portland, Ore. (Photo by Bill Lascher)

Downtown Portland, as seen by foot and puddle. Like what you see? Visit my photoshelter page to see more and order prints of your favorite shots. And don't forget that you can always support my work here and follow me on Instagram and Twitter.

Transit Modality Decision Overload - Picture of the Day

A plethora of transit options at the South Waterfront campus of Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland. (Photo by Bill Lascher).

Like what you see? Purchase prints, mugs and other items here. Prefer writing or radio? Browse my portfolio, check out my blog, or learn about the book I'm working on. Want to buy me a coffee? Donate a buck (or more) here.

Notes From The Starting Line

A signed photo from Captain Saunders on the S.S. Melville Jacoby

Today brings a bloom of beginnings from a tangle of endings. Perhaps that's not surprising. I suppose beginnings and endings all occupy coterminous space. And as I write, I'm struck by how my own beginnings and my own endings weave around one another and, often, between two places — Los Angeles and Portland.

But I'm writing today to recognize one simple beginning: the redesigned, relaunched version of my website, upon which, presumably, you're reading these words. I do so hoping to re-introduce the world to my own background as a writer and journalist and as a storyteller, and to re-pique your curiosity about Melville Jacoby, whose adventures, romance and experiences as a journalist in World War II-era China and the Philippines will be the subject of a forthcoming book.

Thinking about Mel, I'm reminded that a year ago today, two friends of mine and I clambered across miles of rocky shoreline beneath the Palos Verdes Peninsula. Despite a cloudless sky, sharp breezes whipped our bodies as we strode along the edge of a continent. In search of history, we found rusted strips of metal that nearly fifty years of waves had torn from a ship once known as the S.S. Melville Jacoby. That day last year when I finally climbed atop one of the oxidized hulks left on the shore, I stared across the Pacific and thought I'd reached the culmination of one of my journeys. I thought I would soon finish a Kickstarter campaign in which I'd hoped to raise $25,000 to fund my effort to tell Mel's story. Unfortunately, my deadline arrived five days later and I hadn't met my goal, even if I did raise more than $13,000 in pledges. Not the ending I'd hoped for, but it turned out not to matter. With many of my backers' support I continued to work on making the book happen. Today, as I'll soon explain, I'm far closer to that goal.

Opening Days

Baseball in tree

But there's a more obvious reason to think about beginnings today. This is Major League Baseball's Opening Day. For baseball fans and players, it's the beginning of a new season full of promise and opportunity. As clichéd as it sounds, for a moment, anything is possible.

I'm a lifelong fan of the Los Angeles Dodgers (and of Vin Scully, their magical announcer of 62 years). Opening Day always brings a sense of renewal to me almost more powerful than does the arrival of Spring in the natural world (though the beautiful weekend that just passed in Portland underscores the marvels of seasonal change). Thus, it seems especially fitting to re-launch my website today.

But it wasn't baseball on my mind when I first started writing this post.

Two weeks ago, I accomplished something that I wouldn't have imagined on that rocky beach last year: I ran the Los Angeles marathon.

This was my first marathon. Despite the sore legs immediately afterward and a certain degree of post-race malaise these past two weeks, the experience was, simply, fantastic. Four hours, 22 minutes and 36 seconds brought me from Dodger Stadium (where else?) to Santa Monica's California Incline. Crossing the finish line brought more than the end of a race. The moment brought the culmination of four long, sometimes painful, occasionally tedious, but often revelatory months of training.

Crowds gather at the starting line of the 2013 Los Angeles Marathon.

Just a week before the race a barista asked me how I felt about this training regime. Without thinking I told her "this has been the best four months of my life." As shocked as I was to hear myself say that, I quickly realized I was speaking honestly.

At first, though, that seemed absurd. Those four months were grueling, even when I felt confident in or energized by my running. Shortly before I began training in earnest, I injured the medial collateral ligament of my left knee. I couldn't run for weeks, but it was early enough that I recovered before my first official training run. My knee protested for some time, but I kept running.

Still, other aspects of my life were far from ideal. The same week I kicked off my training, I got dumped, my apartment flooded into the unit below mine, I froze on stage in the middle of a story for a night of mass transit tales, and I got food poisoning. Meanwhile, rejection letters continued to fill my inbox from agents I'd queried regarding Mel's book.

But I kept running. I kept running through more rejections. I kept running as editors turned down freelance pitches. I kept running as romances fizzled as quickly as they sparked. Through pouring rain, plummeting temperatures, and darkening nights, I kept running.

Then, shortly before Christmas, I twisted my ankle and had to suspend my training again. Home for the holiday, I could barely walk up and down the stairs at my mother's house. For weeks, even a short walk around the block — let alone the miles I needed to start adding to my training regime — left me in tremendous pain. The training had sustained me before the injury, had given me a groove into which I could find solace from personal and financial and professional turmoil, and I was jarred by losing so quickly that rhythm and structure I'd built.

But still, I kept running, and the pain subsided. In its place emerged a renewed focus that spilled over from the running into other areas of my life, perhaps most notably into my writing. Indeed, it already had. All those other changes as I began my training — I'd even sold my car in November — coincided with a new focus on my book. Soon I'd re-written my literary proposal, and by the beginning of February — as my long training runs pushed 16, then 18, then 20 miles — I'd found an agent for my book. After four months of rejections, here was someone who recognized how great Mel's story is, and someone confident I'm the one to tell it.

The Cover Page from the first draft of Melville Jacoby's Book

My race isn't over with the book. My agent and I still need to sell the idea, and I still need to write the book. But as we prepare to submit the project to editors, I realize that while I kept running, I also kept writing. Through the disappointments and heartbreak and injuries (not to mention a horrendous allergic reaction I suffered just over a week before the marathon), I kept writing, first in snippets, then in longer stretches. Perhaps it's no coincidence that I signed my agent just as my training reached its peak. Perhaps the proposal revisions and sample chapter overhauls I've just finished are the long runs in the training cycle of writing a book.

One race has ended. Perhaps another starting line is approaching.

Willing to help nudge me along with a dollar or two?

Buy Me Some Typewriter Ribbon

No Exit - How Low Car Life Will Save Portland When The Big One Strikes

The eastside approaches to Portland's Fremont Bridge are among the many pieces of transportation infrastructure vulnerable to a major earthquake.

This story originally appeared as the cover story for the December, 2012 edition of Portland Afoot, Portland's 10-minute news magazine about buses, bikes & low-car life.

Very, very slowly, about 29 miles beneath you, 50 quadrillion tons of bedrock are bending toward the day when low-car life in Portland ceases to be optional.

Someday, maybe tomorrow, a 700-mile stretch of Northwest coast known as the Cascadia Subduction Zone will rupture with a quake equal in strength or stronger than the one that struck Japan last year. Such a temblor, or even a more moderate one centered on one of three faults under the city, will likely shatter Portland’s brittle infrastructure.

Even the bridges and overpasses that aren’t immediately damaged by swinging counterweights or sliding soils (which are likely to hit every major bridge except the Burnside and Marquam) will be shut down for inspections, shutting off food and fuel deliveries to much of the city for at least two days. And the blockages may last a long time if inspectors can’t reach the structures, or if aftershocks start the whole process over again.

That would be bad.

Interstate 84, Interstate 5 and the Willamette and Columbia rivers may all be impassable, city documents report. But those damages would only deepen the problem that is likely to follow even a moderate earthquake near the city: a crippling shortage of motor fuel.

Broken lines

Superstorm Sandy forced New Yorkers to wait in line. A Northwest quake could shut off Oregon’s energy and fuel supply almost completely.

Oregon is one of 16 states that processes no oil of its own. Ninety percent of its refined petroleum arrives by either an insecure pipeline or a tanker from Puget Sound. A quake could fracture the pipe, a tsunami could block the shipping channel and shaking could destroy the vulnerable storage facilities that serve the entire state.

All fuel that makes it to Portland arrives in a six-mile zone of tank farms and terminals built along the wet soils of the Willamette River, between Sauvie Island and the Fremont Bridge. This critical energy infrustructure hub also houses electric transmission stations and natural gas terminals, and the entire area is at risk of damage from even a moderate quake, let alone a cataclysm.

Pipelines, piers and fuel tanks there – storing, on average, 3 to 5 days of fuel – were all built in a liquefaction zone, before codes accounted for the area’s seismic dangers. Only three storage tanks have been prepared for liquefaction.

“Western Oregon will likely face an electrical blackout, extended natural gas service outages, liquid fuel shortage, as well as damage and losses in the tens of billions of dollars in a future major Cascadia earthquake,” a report from the state Department of Geology and Mineral Industries warned in August.

MAX trains will go offline, their overhead electrical wires useless. Highways are likely to be blocked. TriMet buses will run on new, improvised routes until their garages run out of diesel. City officials will ask Portlanders to stay put for at least five days in their broken city.

And that’s when we’re likely to discover that Portland will be better off in an apolocalypse than it looks.

Biking to resilience

It turns out Portland has been preparing for disaster for a generation. We just didn’t know it.

“Portland’s thriving alternative transportation and food networks, including cargo bikes and food carts, will be recruited to assist with the delivery of food, fuel, water, medical supplies, etc., to each of these neighborhood hubs,” says an April 2012 appendix to the city’s emergency operations plan.

Nobody’s told the cart owners yet. But since carts can become rolling mess halls and their pods are well-known gathering spaces, Portland Bureau of Emergency Management spokesman Randy Neves says it makes “perfect sense” for carts to help if they’re able.

Another tool in Portland’s disaster arsenal has drawn more attention: its robust bike culture.

Indeed, the earthquake appendix says bicycles may be the “most practical” way for anyone to get around if a quake damages pipelines.

Ethan Jewett, a leader in the official neighborhood emergency team (NET) for the Woodlawn area, noted that bike sales skyrocketed in Japan after its 2011 quake.

“Many of the functions in a response, of going to get supplies, of carrying communication equipment, of doing the NET mission, of residents doing supply runs – they all can be facilitated by bikes,” Jewett says.

With maybe 5% of pedal trips in the city already happening on bikes that can haul cargo – that’s the rough estimate from Clever Cycles‘ Eva Frazier – Portland is unusually ready for action.

It’s a good reason to own a wrench, a patch kit, and more tubes than you think you need, says Jewett.

After all, your neighbors might need a tuneup, too.

Source: Portland Afoot (www.portlandafoot.org)

Chipping in

But Jewett also admits that not everyone can ride a bike, and that Portlanders are far less prepared for a quake than the Japanese were.

He said it’s also important to get to know your neighbors, their needs, and who’s been trained in emergency response. The city’s official plan estimates that its NETs will triple in size after a disaster as uninjured survivors look for ways to help.

And that’s the final way Portland’s low-car culture will be useful in a disaster: It’s helped us build a city whose citizens interact. And as prepared as people like Jewett may be, many of us struggle to put food on the table, let alone in a disaster kit.

“There are a lot of people over here in this neighborhood for whom tonight’s meal is an emergency,” said Jewett. “They’re not going to be buying extra batteries. They probably don’t have a flashlight, so these are our neighbors and I think that we’re going to be taking them in.”

Find this story and other coverage of all things related to low car life at portlandafoot.org. More tips on how to prepare your home and family for a quake are available at pdx.be/Resilience.

The Thinkingest Heads Home

[audio:http://lascheratlarge.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Episode-3.mp3]

In what may be boring or may be genius, I serve as my own guest on the latest edition of the Thinkingest podcast.

This week's topic is "Home." Listen in as I discuss with myself what home means to me, and all the different ways I can identify home. Find out just how much I'm thinking about what might be my next home. It's an amorphous topic, but take a listen for a peek at all the little gears turning around in my mind.

And listen all the way through to find out what kickball, content vending, apartment hunting, books and my love life have in common.

Thanks for listening. Don't forget to check out past episodes of the Thinkingest here at Lascher at Large, subscribe to the feed at Feedburner or iTunes. Like it or hate it, why not leave me a review on iTunes? And if you like it, please share it. My apologies if you hate it. I'll try not to think too hard about it.

Introducing the Thinkingest Podcast

Ladies and gentlemen, introducing: The Thinkingest.*

[audio:http://lascheratlarge.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/The-Thinkingest-Episode-1.mp3]

What's The Thinkingest? It's my new podcast! Every other Wednesday the Thinkingest will feature me and a special guest star doing what I do best: overthinking some element of modern life. Subscribe on iTunes or with your favorite podcasting tool.

This week's launch edition features Michael Andersen, the publisher and janitor of Portland Afoot, Portland's 10-minute newsmagazine on buses, bikes and low-car life. In this week's conversation, Michael and I discuss crowdfunding projects (Watch the video below or check out this link to support the campaign to make Portland Afoot free), creativity, craps, video games as a metaphor for life, and other digressions.

Meanwhile, each podcast is a lighthearted discussion of the ways I overthink oh-so-many situations in this world. I suspect this isn't a unique trait, so each issue will also feature guests doing something related to or interested in a topic I'm overthinking. They might be fellow over-thinkers, or they might have all the answers that will help me silence my mind. Subjects to expect include careers, style, food, romance, social graces, holidays, travel, finances, fitness and anything else that might be on my mind. But don't expect strict adherence to these topics, and conversations could wander any which way.

Like what you hear? Say so in the comments here and review it on iTunes. Also let me know what you're overthinking and if you'd like to be a guest on a future edition of the Thinkingest.

Oh, also, I'd love a logo, though I have nothing to offer for one at the moment but my appreciation and a constant tip of my hat.

Here's Portland Afoot's video. I heartily endorse this awesome project!

*Possibly tentative title. Have something more palatable? Like "Thinkingest?" Any other comments? Let me know in the comments.

Along for the Ride: An Interstate Commute

It's been far too long since I produced an Along for the Ride post. Chalk that up to one of my failings. Lately, though, I've been teaching multimedia journalism three days a week at Clark College, in Vancouver, Wash. Occasionally, as I did today, I take public transit there instead of driving (and I hope to bike some day). Today, I took some video and audio equipment along for the ride so I can show you a sliver of what it's like to commute by transit across the mighty Columbia River. Enjoy.

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

[shashin type="photo" id="20780,20781,20782,20791,20783,20784,20786,20788,20789,20795,20790,20793,20794,20792" size="small" columns="4" order="user" position="center" crop="y"]

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: Streetcar Music Festival

[shashin type="photo" id="156" size="320" columns="max" order="user" position="left"]

Guitars, cellos, saxophones, toy pianos; how could I not include the Streetcar Mobile Music Fest as this week's Along for the Ride?

Click play to listen: [audio:http://lascheratlarge.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Along-for-the-Ride-Portland-Streetcar-Mobile-MusicFest.mp3|titles=Along for the Ride - Portland Streetcar Mobile Music Fest]

Hosted by PDX Pop Now!, The New Rail~Volutionaries, Women's Transportation Seminar and Portland Streetcar, Inc., the event featured musicians performing aboard various streetcars throughout the night. As Art Pearce told Portland Afoot's Michael Andersen, it was the "Sunday Parkways of transit." Instead of reading about it here, why not listen to what it was like when I went Along for the Ride? While you're listening, click here to take a glance at my photos, which you can see after the jump (you can also find out how to contribute a few bucks to keep "Along for the Ride." alive).

I can't say the experience was a normal glimpse at everyday life aboard the streetcar, but it did seem to entertain two distinct groups of people: regular streetcar riders who stumbled upon the musicians as they explored Downtown and Northwest Portland, and an audience who came out specifically for the event. Some rode the entire length to listen to a particular musician's full set. Others, like me, hopped from streetcar to streetcar for a chance to experience the variety of performances. Indeed, I became so focused on listening to the music that I nearly forget I was riding the streetcar, and definitely lost track of which neighborhoods I was in when. Click any of the images to enlarge and start a slideshow. [shashin type="albumphotos" id="7" size="small" crop="y" columns="4" caption="y" order="date" position="center"]

Along for the Ride: Max Blue Line 1 -- Hillsboro

[shashin type="photo" id="169" size="320" columns="max" order="user" position="left"]

This week's installment of Along for the Ride, my series of weekly chronicles of Portland, OR-area transit lines. is an audio postcard from a rush hour trip aboard the MAX Blue Line to Hillsboro. In a future edition, I'll explore the rest of the line, from Downtown Portland, east to Gresham.

Listen to the Story

[audio:http://lascheratlarge.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Along-For-The-Ride-Max-Blue-Line-to-Hillsboro.mp3|titles=Along For The Ride - Max Blue Line to Hillsboro]

Along for the Ride is an evolving experiment in exploring Portland's transit system. I'm excited to hear what you have to say about it. If you like this project or if you hate it, why not let me know? Comment! Share the project on your social networks. Participate by suggesting routes to take and things to see along the way, or anything else you think might improve this project. And, if you want to make it more possible for me to ride more often, and to take time doing these stories, why not offer a few dollars? Just click below.