On Wednesday morning I was scheduled to check out of the Phoenix Inn Suites. I had a conference call scheduled after breakfast, but it got delayed a couple times. In the meantime I lay on the bed with my laptop addressing other work tasks. By mid morning, feeling someone inert, I began to formulate the idea of extending my stay at the Phoenix a couple more nights. It wasn't a bad place, albeit with a few drawbacks. But what did I expect from the cheapest hotel in that section of the I-5 corridor?
During a break I went down to the reception in the lobby and inquired about extending my stay. The woman at the desk brought up the reservation system and told me rooms were available, but the rates for the following evenings were to increase by thirty dollars a night, taking it well above the hundred dollar level, which is the benchmark I strive to maintain as a rough floating average of my nightly accommodations. I don't mind going above that if I have to, but I try not to do that out of sheer laziness, which is what this felt like. So I went online and booked a room for the next two nights at a budget inn along I-205 in the nearby town of Clackamas. The location was actually more convenient for the social activities I had planned.
After checking out of the Phoenix Inn just before noon, I decided to head over to Bridgeport Village to continue the momentum of my new temporary work habit. But in this case too I was stymied, at least on the surface. The entrance to the parking lot that I had been using was blocked off by a Tualatin Police cruiser with its flashers on. The cop was letting cars out, but it was evident that people were not supposed to enter through there.
I could have circled around to another entrance, but in the whimsical way I do, I decided to take it as a cosmic sign to explore another place that day. In these kinds of circumstances, I have found it best to flow like water and follow the least-resistance path, unless it really matters. I'm rarely disappointed when I do that, and almost always regretful when I don't. It's the kind of rolling synchronicity that makes me wonder if we really may be avatars in some massive holographic universe, with an illusion of separate consciousness and identity. Who am I to say we aren't?
After musing for a few moments over possible destinations, and rejecting all of them, I decided to follow my standard protocol and head towards my next hotel, so that by the time I finished work at whatever place I found there, it would be only a short drive to my lodgings at check-in time.
I could have taken the Interstate the long way around to Clackamas, but decided that since I had time, I would cut through the side streets of Lake Oswego, which I hadn't really seen on this trip, even though I had technically been staying there. The part of "Lake O" (as the locals call it) with the hotels and the chain restaurants where I'd been staying is on the very western fringe of the municipality along the freeway, and not indicative of the community as a whole. Given my interests, it seemed more than appropriate to visit the actual downtown, which was a few miles away to the east, along the Willamette River.
A few minutes later I was cruising through a very pleasant residential neighborhood of tall trees and green lawns on rolling hills. Any thoroughfare called "Country Club" is usually very nice like that. Within ten minutes I was in the quaint little gridlike downtown.
I recognized it from years ago, when I went to party at a friend's house near here. He's a local musician. He doesn't live in Lake O anymore, but he is among the people I like seeing when I come here.
Back then it didn't register to me that Lake Oswego was any place special in the Portland metro area, even though people talked about as being upscale. But it took only a few minutes after parking and taking to the sidewalks that I began to understand why people make a point of living here.
The brand new apartment complexes, the trendy restaurants, the small boutiques, the walking path along the lake itself---it made for a superb mix of new development and old charm. But it's not as if Lake Oswego struck me as extraordinary on the scale of America as a whole. In Connecticut or New Jersey, it might be taken as typical mid-to-upscale bedroom community. But that's exactly the point. It could actually be a place there, whereas almost no other community in the Portland area could qualify on that score. In other words, as nice as Lake O was, what made it stand out in this area to me was mostly simple process of elimination.
My friends from this area probably could have told me this. But certain things I need to prove to myself by empirical observation. Up until that moment, I hadn't yet been ready to recognize Lake Oswego for what it was---pretty much the only suburban community around Portland that I could imagine living in. Bridgeport Village was certainly a great place to work and hang out. There were good hotels nearby there, but man does not live by Starbucks alone. BPV was a brand-new commercial district, without the organic charm of a true neighborhood (someday it will have that---you have to plant those seeds for the long term). If I was going to spend any time around the Portland area, which was my intention, I needed a real community that was more than three years old, and where I felt comfortable.
With some time to kill over lunch, I strolled along the lake, past an upscale hotel with patio balconies that hung right over the water, and then up some wide concrete steps to a bustling new French bakery and "salon de thé." There's the magic word again, I thought---thé.
I ducked inside the bakery and treated myself to a pain aux raisins. I took it outside to the patio, where I sat on a metal chair overlooking the lake. It was quite chewy and delicious.
As I ate it I thought of an old friend of mine, a woman I'd had a fling with many years ago, during a trip I had made up here from Texas. At the time she was single and lived in NW Portland. The short time we spent together, and even the aftermath, was very joyful (at least for me), at a time when I really needed something exactly like that to make me feel welcome in Portland again. In a way she was no small influence in my life---a breath of fresh air. Funny how it works that way. Now she lives in Lake Oswego and is (happily) married with two kids. We've kept in touch over the years and have corresponded from time to time as friends---one of those "flings with a happy ending." Ironically I met her at a party hosted by my aforementioned musician friend.
I had no plans to seek her out in person, or even tip her off that I was in the area, but of course it occurred to me that I might well run into her at any second while I was in downtown Lake O. I rehearsed clever fun opening lines in case our paths crossed. No doubt she would be surprised but I hoped it would be a pleasant reunion, if by chance it happened.
"Now I know why you chose to live here," I imagined telling her.
As I looked over the lake and the beautiful homes amid the fir trees on the ridge beyond, I thought about the hotel in Clackamas where I had reservations. Yet another magnetic key card, another mini-fridge, another bar of hotel soap, another "breakfast 6-9 in the dining room." The thought of it all made me a bit fatigued. I was approaching the point of diminishing rewards for constant hotel jumping, and felt the need for something a little more stable for a while.
The thought hit me: maybe it's finally time to check out what's available around here on AirBnB.
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