Hi All,

We had some free time on our hands as we're early in Eugene and they're running high voltage tests on the power lines at UofO this weekend (meaning everything electrical MUST be unplugged campus-wide, I don't know whose idea this was but it closed campus.) So we went to Portland (a few things we were looking for and it's an otherwise neat town.)

There's a huge waterfront park along the river (Willamette) this is an approaching shot.

In downtown Portland they have the Saturday Market every Sat. and Sun. Mar-Dec. It gets about 25,000 people in attendance every day and is similar to the Dogwood festival. How they can keep it popular and attended is a matter for much discourse but a major contributor is the booths ONLY allow Oregon hand-crafted goods sold by their creators. This gives an exclusive market for many vendors and cooks and a shopping/eating location with NONE of the same stuff you see elsewhere.

This week in addition Nike or somebody was sponsoring "Hoop it Up." (Pictured above.)

They buried the Battleship Oregon here. No, actually this is a set from the new Planet of the Apes movie. No, that's not it either, they just cut off the main mast/tower when they scrapped it and put it in their park.

View of the river and bridges/boats from the park.

View of the river in the other direction, same spot in the park.

View of people in same park.

This and the next shot feature Portlands light rail. It is worthy of note as it is IMHO (and Al Gore's) the best public transport in the U.S. They use a light rail that runs through the streets (in this case it is running through the Public Market.) It is dirt cheap and in the last year they decided to add 18miles of track to attach a suburb (Beaverton home of PC-Tools.) They don't have a lot of lines (about the same # as Atlanta) but the ridership is way higher and the cost to run/operate way lower. It's also very nice even if they cars aren't as manly as heavy rail. For buses they use a downtown bus mall that runs about 1 mi. It's a dedicated mall only buses and puts all rides with no more than 1 transfer.

People walking across the light rail lines. It's odd seeing trains and cars share the same street. The lights are triggered to give trains a green and stop everyone else at the intersection. Train lanes are turn only lanes.

Back of Demaris walking towards market booths. The market is set on a 12 block section of downtown streets, mostly parking lots (that get covered in booths.) A large section is under one of the bridges crossing the river (seen.)

Shot of market. People felt bad getting in my picture. I didn't realize till afterwards they were concerned about wasting my film.

Downtown buildings.

We'll probably send out one more of these before we ship back the laptop and camera. Eugene is about to have their" big" celebrate Eugene fest.