She's Going the Distance/She's Going for Speed

Greetings from Portland!

AmeriCorps NCCC Class XVII: Pacific Region was inducted on Thursday, November 4^th at a short ceremony on campus. We clean up nice in our “AmeriTuxes” - white polos, black BDUs, and our steel toes.

                                                             Pod 4: Legit Corps Members!

An hour after the ceremony was over, Silver 5 and 7 were pulling out of McClellan on our way to Portland! Well, more correctly, to Roseburg, Oregon (about 7 hours into the total drive), where both teams were stopping for the the night. We made excellent time and got to see an amazing array of scenery during our travels. The most notable was Mount Shasta, pictured below. This picture does not properly portray how it loomed over us when it sometimes appeared directly in front of us. I will be stealing pictures from my teammates who used real cameras, but this pic is courtesy of my phone.

One of the coolest parts about seeing Mount Shasta was watching what was going on around it. On one side you saw what's pictured above: the tall, gold “grass” and the occasional tree (and California's attempt at fall). The other side was much more reminiscent of fall in Central New York – brighter colors and in far greater quantities. It was so great to see since I had been feeling like I had missed out on fall. Luckily for me, Portland's seasons are slightly behind those of the east coast. Their rainy season is most of our winter, and if they get snow it won't be until late January: fall is only just thinking about wrapping up out here. Victory!

We arrived in Portland on Friday afternoon, bringing the California sun with us. After eating and visiting one of our work sites we arrived at our SPIKE housing. It's incredibly nice as far as SPIKE (or even normal) housing is concerned. While it's a little cramped for nine people, we're making it work pretty well. It's unfurnished save for two couches, which works to our advantage because of the open floor plan and lack of furniture. The 9 cots we brought with us are spread out between 2 bedrooms and the common area, and the kitchen sometimes feels bigger than the kitchen we had back on base.

Our work weeks are Tuesday through Saturday, which means our “weekends” are Sunday and Monday. We went right to work on Saturday, providing assistance to the regular volunteers and learning our way around one of the sites. More on this later, as our group will be splitting up between two build sites: one in Gresham and the other more towards Portland for the remainder of our time here.

Saturday night was our first night to relax in...well, a long time. A few of us took advantage of this by riding the light rail into Portland to see what we could see. Our first stop was Ground Kontrol, as recommended by Josh. I have never seen so many video games in one place in my entire life. There were some games there that brought me back to my rink rat days, race driving games, and even a 6-player X-Men game that of course we had to play. Great fun was had by all, and I'm sure that we'll be stopping back there again.

And the rain did not deter us from waiting outside of Voodoo Doughnuts for 45 minutes (which, I'm told, is kind of a short wait). Every person got a different doughnut so we got to try 7 of Voodoo's great creations. I opted for a Mexican Hot Chocolate: a chocolate doughnut with cinnamon sugar. It also contained significantly more than a hint of some sort of pepper (chili, perhaps?), which totally made it for me.

We then went on a quest to find Powell's Books, a 4-story bookstore, but opted to save that trip for when we could spend more time there. In our travels we stumbled upon the Tugboat Ale House, an awesome micro-brewery. It's a small place, but it's obviously well-visited seeing that it was crowded the whole time we were there. I liked the cozy atmosphere: nice booths and other seating arrangements, small tables, and there was only one bar-tender for the whole night. While there wasn't any live music, the Tug Boat had an awesome variety of board games to play. It was a lot of fun to be able to relax and tell stories outside of forced NCCC bonding/reflection times and activities. No matter how engaging and helpful they are, it's a whole different feeling when everyone is out of the “A” and socializing of their own accord.

Yesterday, after an awesome physical training (PT) session, our team went to a dedication ceremony for four Habitat homes. It was great to see what the houses looked like in their various states of completion and gave us a good idea of how much work needs to be done on the houses we worked on the day before.

And today, our Sunday, has so far been spent in a very relaxing manner. I spent over 2 hours at Trade Up Music just playing a whole bunch of random instruments. It's great to know where a good used music store is, especially since Victoria was nice enough to give me her Daytripper! I practiced intense self-restraint and only purchased a few picks, a capo, and a small chord dictionary. My visit to Trade Up was not my first reminder of how much I've missed playing music not only during my time in NCCC, but even over the past few months. Thanks, Victoria, for the guitar because now I have an outlet for this. My poor teammates have been forced to listen to me rock out to the radio during van rides simply because there has been no other musical option. Hopefully this will subside as I start to play the guitar more =)

One other thing! We found Stumptown Coffee Roasters, apparently a Portland must-see. I recommend it for the coffee, but not for sitting for long periods of time typing blog updates. Other team members found another great cafe that apparently has awesome chairs. I look forward to updating from there next time.

Miss you, family and friends! Hopefully I can update this more regularly now that we're about to get a more normal routine. If not, get mad at me. I'll deserve it.

Cheers!