The Week I Found My Limits In Portland, Oregon

September 2022

Su	M	T	W	Th	F	S
28	29	30	31	9/1	2	3
4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17
18	19	20	21	22	23	24
25	26	27	28	29	30	10/1
2	3	4	5	6	7	8

Summary

Addicted to what?? Exhausted from what??

Adding security upgrades to the van
Heading south to Portland, OR
Meeting back up with Colleen and Troubadour
Finding my limits
Exploring Hood River, OR

Locations

Seattle, WA
Portland, OR
Hood River, OR

Laundry Without The Fiasco

Pay via app, gosh, it’s just so boring…

Adding Security To The Van

Before heading down to Portland I decided to add a little extra security to the van. From what I had been reading, it seemed like if I were gonna do anything, it would be now. I feel very fortunate to have not had any issues thus far.

5 hours, one broken drill bit, and many, many trips to Home Depot later, the final product:

Basically what I did was chain both front doors to the seat blocks, as well as chain the two rear doors together. So now, even if any of those doors are unlocked, you still can’t fully open them.

It’s in no way perfect… But I just wanted a little something more, a little extra deterrent in case anything happened. Regardless, I feel proud of myself for accomplishing what I set out to accomplish. Home Depot is NOT my happy place and I had no instruction manual to follow, just an idea from online and some creative brainpower.

I rewarded myself with some boba, lol, and boy did that taste good. I mean I don’t think I’m addicted to boba… Oh just you wait, he says.

Off To Portland!

I never stopped to get a good picture, but Mt. Rainier is SO cool to see in the distance. It’s 14,411′ tall and most of the Seattle area is about sea level, so it just absolutely towers over the horizon. It’s hard to capture the true scale in a picture.

When I got to Portland, it turns out Colleen and Troubadour were still there! We caught up a bit on the numerous things we’ve done and places we’ve been before they headed out.

I had a Jianbing (like a crepe sandwich) at the Bing Mi Food Truck for lunch and it was absolutely stellar. I got boba after. Okay I swear I’m not addicted.

Finding My Limits

The next 2.5 days (Wednesday/Thursday/half of Friday) I spent exploring Portland via coffee shops, boba places, and libraries.

I pushed pretty hard. Those days looked a lot like:

6:30am wake up
20min drive into the city
Work at a coffee shop from ~7:15am until around 12pm
Lunch, grab some boba, walk around a park/neighborhood
Find a library
Work from ~2:30pm until ~5:30pm
Drive 30min to Anytime Fitness
Work out for ~1 hr
Squeeze some food in
Find a spot to sleep
Crash at 9:30pm

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

^ That food is from Eem – SUPER good Thai place.

Addicted to boba, you say? Pshh nah

I did tons of journaling, got around to editing/scheduling Olympic National Park photo posts, and drafted a couple blog posts.

Here’s one:

Mount Olympus (Washington)

The flow was incredible and I felt great about the progress I was making, but by Friday afternoon I was exhausted. I can’t remember the last time I was in a singular spot for more than half a day (i.e. camping) … I think the last time was camping at Beckler River from this post:

From Meeting New People In Montana To New People In Seattle

Along with a lot of physical moving around, I’ve been wrestling with some foundational ideas lately. I had been listening to a lot of content that I’ve been trying to reconcile. I drafted a post capturing some of those in-the-moment thoughts that I’ll probably post once things cool down a little.