Sunday I had my first “long” bike ride since our return. I rode to Iowa Hill, a total round-trip of 58.8 miles, which I finished in a little more than 3 and a half hours. Other than Iowa Hill itself there was precious little climbing; I rode to outer Washington County on the Tualatin-Sherwood Highway, and returned (more or less) on SR 10 and Scholls Ferry road. For me, any ride that tops 60 miles is officially a Long Bike Ride. I can kinda just get on my bike and ride 50, but for more than that I have to bring food, money, tools, phone, and a different attitude.

My average speed these days is about half a mile an hour faster than it might have been a year ago. I reckon I lost 5 to 10 pounds in China, mostly muscle. I’ve put most of it back, but I haven’t weighed myself since January, so this is really all conjecture. There’s a theory that Lance Armstrong’s cancer-induced weight loss abetted his Tour de France winning streak. That’s not as unlikely as it sounds. Five pounds weighs more when you have to pull it yourself.

Oregon treated me to one of its good-to-be-alive Sundays: broken clouds, mid-60s, not too much wind. Perfect riding weather. After I reached, I dunno, Scholls? the countryside opened up and presented one rustic tableau after another. Llamas. Shetland ponies. Red-tailed hawks. Sunflower fields. Handpainted “U-Pick” signs. Red barns. Rolling hills. Woodsy tree claims. Nice. I never take a camera on these rides but maybe I should start.

Tiny agricultural communities used to surround Portland. Most of these (Scholls, Farmington, Progress, Cornelius) have decayed to an intersection and a couple of repurposed buildings. A lucky few (Sherwood, Forest Grove) have blossomed into bedroom communities. I pine for a landscape that would have provided a regular punctuation of small towns for my bike rambles. I gave only one business my patronage outside the Metro boundary, a café at the intersection of SR 219 and Scholls-Sherwood. For the longest time, a pizza and sandwich place occupied the building (vintage ca. 1910); it closed around 2003 and the building stood vacant until sometime this past year.

Four-lane highways, and the way of life they encourage, have no room for places like Farmington. I grew up in a rural state and rural landscapes are my favorite. A lot of West Coast people fairly worship “wilderness,” in my opinion to the detriment of damn near every other landscape. From time to time I might spend Sunday afternoon driving an hour to an old growth forest, there to walk around in a circle with a backpack, then drive an hour back home. It’s like Disneyland, but with trees instead of the teacup ride.

But I see more birdies and bunnies from a bike.

Almost daily on my commute I have a brush that, a few years ago, would have outraged me. Right-hand-turners in the bike lane. Cut off by left-turners. Clueless turkeys with no notion of the width of their car (hint: not as wide as you think it is.) Timid passers. Shouts of “get off the road!” (or better: “get a car!” — as if bicycle riding is somehow incompatible with car ownership.) When I first started commuting regularly by bike (about 6 years ago), this stuff so outraged me that I took to filling my pockets with gravel, so when someone did something that offended me, I could hurl a handful of gravel at their tailgates.

Somehow, I never got beat up for this.

When I lived in NW Portland, that was the worst. Most of the drivers in that neighborhood don’t live there. They are, in fact, suburban tourists en route to Pottery Barn. Or Papa Haydn’s. One fine midsummer day in 2002, while riding around the neighborhood, a guy in an SUV blew past me at a stop sign in a way that suggested he saw neither me, or the sign. At the next stop, I maneuvered into the lane so I was directly in front of his windshield — I wanted to be sure he knew I was there. He made a big point of passing me at the next stop, far too close and with too much acceleration. The kind of maneuver that just screams “overcompensating.” Ooooh, scary. I got an Incredible Hulk surge of anger adrenaline and chased him down to the next stop. I flew up to the driver’s side window, brandishing my U-Lock like a hammer. I’m sure I had a few choice words for him, too. The poor guy, he was just another bewildered suburbanite, 40ish, pudgy, the kind of guy with his cellphone clipped to his belt. He wasn’t looking for a fight, he was just in a hurry. And here’s this stinky dude on a bicycle, shaking and gibbering, and waving his U-Lock in way intended to be menacing.

He didn’t turn his head to look at me. He just coolly rolled up his window.

My current commute takes me the entire length of Terwilliger Drive. The piece from Burlingame into Lake Oswego is entirely downhill, two lanes, with no shoulder, through a forest. After the turn for the Tryon Creek parking lot, I can kick up to my highest gear and stoke steadily down the last mile to State Street. I work up to about 30 to 40 mph, and at that speed, and in those conditions, I move about 3 feet into the lane. The lanes are wide enough that an attentive driver can pass me with a few feet to spare, and still stay right of the centerline.

Yesterday, on this stretch of road, a car came menacingly close behind me. He eventually worked up the nerve to pass me, shouting (I think) “retard!” He was driving a WRX, which inspired conflicted emotions. As a fellow Subaru-owner, I was a little sad, in the same way you’d be sad when, on vacation in Laos, you watch an American tourist berate a restauranteur for not having ice water. But at the same time, I was definitely thinking: “overcompensating.”

He passed me just before the final drop to State Street, where I attain my best speeds. Good enough, in fact, to catch the WRX, then overtake him.

The icing on the cake was passing every other car on State Street, which was at the usual rush hour standstill.

When I bought my Vanilla bicycle in 2004, more than one person suggested I was “overcompensating.” Which is, I suppose, fair enough. But I wonder if it’s “overcompensating” in the same sense that “taking dozens of satisfied lovers” could also be construed as “overcompensating.”

Jenny hates this picture

So was it only a year ago we arrived in Xiamen? (Was it only a month ago [+4 days] that we arrived back in Portland?) Which part was (or is) the dream: the part where we lived in China or the part where we hadn’t ever lived in China?

One of my new coworkers (see previous post for more info) just returned from China. I was looking through his photos and feeling...God, I can only describe it as homesickness. Maybe not for China, so much, but certainly for Asia and, yeah, OK for Xiamen. Wow, how did that happen?

And clearly Portland life isn’t nearly as blog-worthy as Xiamen life. There’s your metaphor, Professor.

Like, for example, we found an apartment. In, um, Lake Oswego. Yeah, everyone has that reaction. But really, it’s better than you think. It’s like a small town. Kind of a snobby small town, but still. We are 500 yards from a river and 100 feet from a lake and Bismarck can swim in both of them.

And my commute (oh, yeah, I have this new job ...) is an eight mile bike ride through a forest.

And it’s exactly halfway between the places we work (Wilsonville and Lair Hill).

And they have a good farmer’s market. And bike shops.

And have you tried to find an apartment in Portland lately? Everything’s for sale and nothing’s for rent.

Hey, I don’t have to defend this decision.

So yeah, the new job. I’m a (actually “the”) web designer at Mercy Corps. This is so amazingly sweet and so utterly fortuitous.

Many cosmic events conspired to keep my jobless for a month yet simultaneously offered me several opportunities. I took a job with a software company like four weeks ago and yet the deal was bungled by the company wooing me ... I mean, they actually hired me but couldn’t finish the hiring process because of boneheaded bureaucracy (and whew did I dodge a bullet there when you think about it). And that opportunity kept me from snatching a really tempting tempting opportunity with a former employer...tempting because a) they offered me a lot of money and b) it would have meant really returning to where I was before we went to China, and you know what they say about going home again.

So working at Mercy Corps is really sweet for me on a cosmic level. The Mercy Corps vibe is good. “Good” in a Matthew 7:16 way, and “good” in a “generous employer” way. It’s like drinking a tall glass of milk.