The Sellwood Bridge

I'm not gonna miss the old Sellwood Bridge at all. It looked like a train trestle and was approximately as safe to cross.

The nicest thing I can say about the old bridge: it was the bridge we were all used to.

Before 2012 or so, I used to ride under the interchange there, through a small copse of (I think) European maples with big mossy boulders around them. Then I would cut through the Staff Jennings driveway to the disused trolley line and ride on THAT to the old Willamette Greenway. Someone had painted “Bikes are sexy” on that path which I appreciated. All of it was scruffy and feral in the usual way of forgotten urban spaces.

The new stuff will, to an item, be better. Riding my bike this way will no longer be an exercise in urban spelunking with highway traffic howling four inches from my ear.

I’m old & grumpy enough that when even unlovely, unuseful things disappear from my life I feel the loss.