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On Leaving Portland
Some of you know, but many may not, that @1967mustangman and I have left Portland, OR, for the greener pastures of Dayton, OH. While there are many things about Portland I miss (the food, Mustang’s family, my coworkers, the food, the mountains, the food…) it surprised me what a sense of relief I felt as we left the city limits. Driving a 22-foot diesel moving van was a learning experience — one which required asking @davecarter many questions on Facebook — but actually driving across this beautiful country helped remind me that there is life outside the dreary angst that progressives have created in Oregon. Wyoming and Nebraska were especially beautiful.
Perhaps the most noticeable difference is the lack of homeless people in Dayton. The winter weather is fairly inhospitable for living on the streets, and Dayton doesn’t really cotton to having homeless hanging out on street corners. Since we moved here, I have seen maybe four people asking for money on street corners. This is in stark contrast to the tent cities of Portland, where vagrancy is not only tolerated but accepted and supported. Because of that permissiveness, the freeways and under bridges are littered with trash, making the city look like a cross between Idiocracy and District 12 from The Hunger Games. Lest anyone think the homeless are harmless, I would invite you to read this, where the victim in question is my own sweet husband. To be fair, Ohio does have some of the highest heroin use in the country, but serious efforts are in place to stop the influx of drugs by the cartels. Meanwhile, at my hospital in Portland, a patient who denied any street drug use finally owned up to doing meth because, as he said, “I mean…everyone does a little meth…”
Since settling into our new place a month ago, my stress level has decreased dramatically. Oregon drivers are their own brand of special, and I’m no longer constantly angry and frustrated every time I drive down the street. I can get anywhere in the greater Dayton area in 20 minutes, as opposed to the 45 minutes it took me to commute to work at 6 am. Houses in Dayton are affordable, and the lots they’re built on are generally larger than the standard 8,000-square-foot lot in the suburbs of Portland. Why is that? Because there is no government-imposed urban growth boundary that causes people to be packed in like New Yorkers on a subway during rush hour. This also means that you can park your cars in your own driveway instead of on the street. A Portland building code makes garages and driveways just barely too small to fit two cars abreast. It is done to encourage people to give up one of their cars and utilize public transportation instead. I used to use the bus and Max system when I first moved there but had to stop when the bus going the hospital just didn’t show up a few mornings. You see the problem there. Because of the narrow driveways and garages, two car households are forced to park on the grass or on the street. The result is narrow streets that are a virtual slalom course when opposing traffic approaches. Driving in Portland is its own experience — there is a timidity to Oregon drivers that is infuriating to the rest of us. It is not at all uncommon for Oregonians to drive five miles under the speed limit on the freeway in the left lane! However, Ohio drivers are maniacs, a puzzling inconsistency with how nice everyone is.
People are nice here. I mean, very nice. Talk to you in the grocery store nice. Calling customer service at a local business and people are genuinely helpful nice. The kind of nice that people on the coasts don’t understand or value. When we broke the news of our impending move to friends of our in Portland, they also informed us of their move to Spain this summer. When we described how nice people in the Midwest are, the wife responded “It kinda gives me the heebie-jeebies. Plus I wouldn’t fit in, and I like my ethnic food too much. I think I would have a harder time adapting to Ohio than I would Spain.” When I explained how my new hospital had rolled out the red carpet for me during my interview, she said “Of course they did. There’s nothing else to look at amidst the flatness…” As someone who largely grew up in the South, it is that kind of dismissive contempt from coastal leftists that always made me feel like that girl in 7th grade with the headgear. The pretentiousness and false tolerance in Portland created a high-school-like environment of cool kids and losers.
Part of being new to Portland includes establishing one’s leftist bona fides — tattoos, unnatural hair colors, lefty bumper stickers, driving a Subaru, participating in marches, hiking, biking to work, and drinking kombucha. Ok, so I might drink kombucha … but I definitely did not measure up to Portland’s exacting standards of what’s acceptable. In fact, the mere fact that I came from the South and was open about my church attendance caused some coworkers to label me a racist, homophobic bigot without ever having one conversation with me. But as a college friend posted on Facebook this morning, that’s perfectly ok- conservatives do not deserve tolerance by the left. Since we left, Portland has continued its downward spiral into madness when 200 bikes at multiple Biketown stations were vandalized by a group saying “Our city is not a corporate amusement park.” Excuse me while I take some ibuprofen for my headache — it’s because of all the eye rolling. There’s no winning with the leftists of Portland. I guess being that woke precludes the ability to ever have any fun. It’s a miracle they ever emerge from their apartments- being that triggered at all times must be exhausting. But now I get to sit back and watch the crazy from afar, from the comfort of my new city where the traffic is light, people smile, and the children play in the yards of their houses that sit on an acre. So long, Portland!
Published in General
Same same in Washington. Counties are all the same, too. City: liberal, rural areas: conservative…well…not progressive, lets say that.
You have no idea how difficult that engineering challenge initially was (cough*wing warping*cough) ….and how the patent fight over that and every other thing about controlled flight, delayed US development for about 10 years. Thus giving the stinking French the naming rights to most of the initial innovative aviation feature such as “fuselage”, “ailerons”, “empennage”, “canard”, “pitot tube”. One could argue that “stabilizer” of which we have vertical and horizontal versions on airplanes are also of French roots…
Lawyers always the bane to progress.
The driving in Nebraska is heaven. It has a high speed limit, and even though there are only two lanes on the main highway, every car Is come across stayed in the right lane unless passing. If you merged into a highway and there was a car in the right lane, it would shift to the left lane to make it easier for you to merge. What a great place to drive, and loved those beautiful fields.
Lawyers were not the problem.
The problems were two-fold.
First, like many inventors, the Wright Brothers were nutjobs. They were nutjobs who had their own incorrect ideas of patent law. That created an obsessive secrecy that greatly hindered them. 25 years later, another American nutjob, Robert Goddard, similarly sabotaged his own work, which is why von Braun is more famous.
Second, they had the US government as a competitor. Nothing can stifle innovation like having the government as a competitor.
Well, as kids we thought they had value. Every fall we would collect little red wagons full of the things. Oh, wait. Truth be told, we never did anything with them. Just collect them year after year (in Pittsburgh). Has anyone come up with a use for them???
We used to throw them at each other. Does that count as useful?
Yes
I’ve never seen one. Only eaten the candy version of them. And isn’t that really what matters?
Good enough for me.
They are awesome candy (chocolate covered peanut butter fudge) and are scientifically proven to provide good luck.
Nut jobs eh? I guess their legal counsel did not prevent them from shooting themselves in the foot. Just hope we have enough of those kind of nut jobs to technologically usher our society to the land of milk and honey 😉
1. I’m glad you’re not talking to Taylor Swift. And I love his beard.
2. Yes.
3. I’m going to channel a Portland lefty to add some flavor: people are not illegal.
20 years from now he’s going to shave it off, revealing skin free from sun damage and making people think you’re his mom.
There was room in the back seat of my patrol car for everyone, regardless of race, color, or creed. You could have filmed an Ancestry.com commercial in the back seat of that car.
This makes me happy.
If I liked peanut butter I’d have ‘liked’ your comment.
Speaking of food, I found a reason to move back.
Dayton is a bit of a blue collar town. But you are not that far from Columbus. And The Ohio State University.
The local rag in Seattle that went by the name The Stranger used to have a comic called “The Uptight Seattlelite.” From the sounds of it, he has moved to Portland. I didn’t think people could be so uptight about such ordinary things in life. I’m glad your nerves will be spared from extended living on the Left Coast. I believe it can only get worse.
Houses in Dayton are affordable, and the lots they’re built on are generally larger than the standard 8,000-square-foot lot in the suburbs of Portland.
Many new suburban developments now have 4000 square foot lots.
Felicitations on your new home!
I can relate. While we’re still in California, we recently left LA for the Central Coast – the north end of San Luis Obispo County. If this ain’t heaven, it’s mighty close!
Yes we do. We have all the technological progress we can handle. We just need to make sure we don’t screw up the politics too badly. That’s the real trick. The technological progress is easy.
The whole point is their nuttiness hinders them from further advancing the technology.
All I have to go by is the avatar. :-)
Which totally would have happened if we gave the Wright Brothers any political power. That would be like giving Lysenko political power. At the same time as Lysenko, there was an amazing geneticist advancing our knowledge of evolution by experimenting on foxes. The Russians were more than capable of making advances in science by socialist nuttiness held them back.
Yes. Got in trouble for advertising Florence Mall.
Speaking of Candy:
Grandpa’s Cheesebarn
668 U.S. Hwy 250 E, Ashland, OH 44805 We always go when we visit family. Only a couple hours away!
Down heyah in South Carolina, we use “square feet” for houses and “acres” for lots. Just sayin’ . . .
I moved from Alexandria, VA, near Old Towne, to Leavenworth, KS for all the same reasons. My journey started on a visit to Boise, ID. We were there for a long weekend then flew back to BWI. The difference in how people spoke to us was alarming, and eye opening. The final straw was the hour and a half it took me to drive 12 miles to dinner at 7 PM on a weekday night. Next day I told my boss it was time to go.
Welcome to America! But, seriously, how can you drink kombucha? It’s ghastly.