Still needing to do some really work, and having many hours before I checked into my next hotel, I kept going east on the Pacific Highway into Hillsboro, which I already knew from previous visits was busier but hardly more inspiring in character than Cornelius or Forest Grove. Having no business there that day, I drove straight through, bypassing the Starbucks there entirely.
As I always do whenever I get in a car in Oregon, the feeling to just keep driving until it's all in my rearview mirror temporarily took over. I resolved to keep going in towards Portland on the side arteries until I finally hit something resembling modern American civilization.
I knew that surely I would see such neighborhoods somewhere between there and Beaverton. I let my mind wander as I drove, following a fellow Bimmer with a metal law enforcement badge fixed to the back license plate, who somehow knew just how to navigate the weird turns in the streets.
At around 235th Street, in the town of Aloha, the apartment complexes and hedge trimmings began to evoke the feeling of the modern suburbs of Austin. Yet despite the new urbanist developments, which are in the majority, there are rustic pockets that remain, and probably will in some cases, becoming quaint as the memory of the old era fades away, if the history of places like Boulder and Aspen is any indication. But that's in Colorado, where rustic things can be cherished as quaint without the stain of being attacked to poverty.
Finally I approached an era of green sculpted landscapes along a parkway with office parks beside, something that I associate with most of suburban America. At last I felt that I could have been in suburban Virginia, from the way it looked. As I approached the next intersection, I looked up at the sign on the stoplight pointing into the entrance of one of the nicer corporate areas.
The sign read "Nike World Campus."
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