The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 8,400 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 14 years to get that many views.
Over this last weekend I headed out to Forest Grove to Mcmenamins Grand Lodge. It’s a great place to spend a weekend away from everything, with the bonus of actually being reachable by transit. From downtown, take any MAX that goes to either Beaverton Transit Center or Hillsboro and transfer at either of those places to the #57 Bus that goes to Forest Grobe. I prefer to take the MAX for and wait until the end of the line to transfer. It always makes working on a laptop dramatically easier than riding on a bus, thus my main reason on many trips for taking rail over the bus.
Between the soaking pool, which is a great heated pool that is absolutely wonderful during the winter, I started pondering. I ought to spearhead a website that lays out the locations that are close to stops on the light rail, streetcar, WES and bus corridors in the TriMet Service area. However I’d not want to do this alone. If you’d like to volunteer to help me out (don’t worry, we’re only talking about content and helping to find cool places, you don’t have to code or actually create the website) with this let me know. Just enter the things you could provide and I’ll get in touch ASAP.
Cheers – Transit Sleuth
I’m just curious where my readers stand. If you could take a few minutes to fill this out and hit submit I’d greatly appreciate it. Also I made the email address empty, but it is just going to me, I’m not selling any of your information and many of you know me. So don’t be alarmed – it would make it easier for me if you did enter your email.
After a week or two I’ll post all of my answers also. Last thing, if you’re from Seattle, Vancouver WA or wherever feel free to fill this out if you keep up with Portland politics. I know some of you do. 😉
Barista, classically amazing coffee.
Today I headed to The Side Door as my second office of the day. After making my postal pick up at the UPS Store and enjoying a good Barista espresso & cappuccino to kick off the day I wanted a different side of the Willamette. I cut through along Yamhill to Naito Parkway and then along the water front and over the Hawthorne Bridge. Once on the other side it was a loop under the bridge and out to Water Avenue up to The Side Door.
At The Side Door I had a great working session before heading back out for an easy commute back to the home office via the Portland Streetcar CL Line. Yup, that’s right, two trips confirmed on the CL Line.
The working session at The Side Door was great too, in that I was able to get a lot of work done, but also got introduced to a lot of rocking doom metal via the rocking staff. Thanks Side Door staff!
…with that, I’m at the home office and it’s all foot traffic for the rest of this day.
My lady and I enjoyed a joint commute today. I decided my morning office was going to be Barista. I have to make an early morning pickup at the UPS Store for an important delivery pickup and the Barista Coffee Shop (3rd St Location) is just shy of 2 blocks away.
However before I headed off we both walked into Stumptown at Stark. I locked my bike real quick and we walked inside. With just 7 minutes before the streetcar arrived I decided to stay in line and she headed off to purchase a fare for her commute. I then, upon purchasing our quick breakfast croissants, jumped on my bike for the super long (that’s sarcasm ya’ll) trip about 280 feet to the streetcar stop. I rolled up with 4 minutes before the streetcar arrived. We enjoyed chit chat, our croissants and the morning air.
The streetcar arrived on time per the GPS Tracking estimate and per the schedule. It is always a bit amazing when the transit tracker arrival, schedule arrival and the actual arrival are all the same! Almost like the operations are more precise then they are. Because the thing is, this is America, and we’re pretty lazy about our precision of operations in this country. But that’s just fine for the commutes we’ve built for ourselves.
CL Line (click for full size, beware, it’s huge)
My lady boarded the CL Line (yup, you read that right, somebody in downtown is actually riding the CL Line!). She heads across the Broadway Bridge and into the offices at the Left Bank Annex. I headed down the Stark Street Buffered Bike Lane and then onto 3rd to pull into Barista Coffee. I think the cross streets are Washington and 3rd. Barista, if you haven’t tried it, is one of the top coffee shops in the world (yeah, I didn’t mistype, world vs. just Portland).
Overall her commute it about 25 minutes, including the 4 minute wait at the streetcar stop. My commute was about 5 minutes, including a stop at a red light. Including the stop at Stumptown Coffee for morning croissant for her and I we maybe added 3-4 minutes. That’s what a commute should be. End of story.
