Getting hopelessly lost twice before breakfast
My friend Ed does a regular(ish) wednesday morning bike ride up one hill or another, and since this is the last week I can do it for a while (school starts next week, and I will be spending my early mornings babyherding) I decided I’d go out for one last fling.
The plan was to go up to Pittock Mansion, but when we got there the plan changed to going up to Council Crest. About halfway there I decided to escape because it was creeping up towards 9am and I wanted to get back home at a reasonable time, so I peeled off and (I thought) started heading towards town.
In Southwest Portland this is not a good plan, because that part of the city is a maze of twisty little passageways all alike. I ended up looping around one of the volcanic vents north of highway 26, then getting stuck in a maze of twisty little roads that deposited me right at the foot of the road up to the park. Okay, fine, I’ll go up there; but once I got up there I needed to get down, but I ended up going south on Council Crest Road, which deadended into a (steeply downhill with gravel) trail that dropped down off the summit and finally onto Fairmount Road, which, after passing by many houses in the so-expensive-we-couldn’t-afford-good-design style, finally deposited me onto a familiar road that dropped down into Portland proper.
I’d like to think that now that I’ve ridden these roads I’ll remember them and won’t get lost again, but hah! – this is Southwest Portland we’re talking about and that part of the city is a classic example of non-euclidian space.