Jay Lake: Writer

[photos|travel] Yes, we have no aurora

Yesterday after work I completely played hookie from writing and pretty much anything else. the_child and I ran a couple of necessary errands, then picked up goulo and a2na on the Portland leg of their American tour. (They are visiting from Poland, goulo is good friend from my Austin days.)

mlerules had noted there was a possible viewing of the aurora borealis at Portland’s latitude last night, so along with Mother of the Child we hied off to dinner at the SE Belmont food cart pod, where another old Austin friend J— met up with us.

The guests of honor eat a delicious vegan meal not purchased at the Mexican place right behind them

the_child in her natural state

mlerules goes vegan as well

I utterly fail to go vegan, instead having a pork belly sandwich from Lardo, dressed with a fried egg, cheddar cheese, aoili and arugula

After that we piled into two cars and drove out to the Columbia Gorge in hopes of viewing the aurora from Crown Point if (a) the clouds cleared and (b) the current solar outburst actually drove the aurora this far south.

The Gorge near dusk from Chanticleer Point

(a) didn’t really happen, and according to the forecast, neither did (b) — solar intensity was 5 on a scale of 10, and 6 or more would be required to push the aurora to our latitude. But we did have a great time touring about.

goulo and a2na at Multnomah Falls, along with J— and the_child — if you squint, you can see them up there

My chemo-addled self did not make the walk up to the viewing bridge, and in fact I spent most of this small road trip in the vehicle of mlerules with the seat laid flat, under a blanket, dozing or talking quietly with her. I didn’t even get out of the car at Latourelle Falls. (Everyone else was in J—’s car, except for when mlerules ran us back to Nuevo Rancho Lake at the end of the evening, well past both my bedtime and that of the_child.)

Even though we had no aurora, a very satisfying evening, even if I didn’t get a lick of responsible work done. Heading to the Gorge always reminds me of one of the biggest reasons I moved to Oregon. It’s freaking pretty here. I love sharing this experience with friends.

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Photos © 2011, Joseph E. Lake, Jr.

This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Tags: Child, family, Food, friends, nature, Oregon, Photos, Travel

Posted: 5:34 am Thu June 09 2011 |

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