Vancouver

I just got back from visiting my friends James and Cherilyn in Vancouver (Washington, not Canada). They had an airline voucher and couldn’t decide what to do with just one voucher, so they finally decided to use it to buy me a plane ticket to come see them. (For future reference, anyone who buys me a plane ticket is automatically my new best friend.)

It was a very serendipitous weekend. Everywhere we went, we were stumbling upon festivals, celebrations, and flea markets. We also kept running into people we all knew. I never see anybody I know while out and about in Spokane (or maybe I’m just not very observant ) but we couldn’t seem to go anywhere in the greater Portland metro area without running into somebody we all knew.

Here’s an example of what the whole weekend was like. We decided to go out to Sauvie Island to do some hiking. (Sauvie Island is an island in the Columbia River which is large enough to have its own lake, which, in turn, is large enough to have its own island. ) On our way out there, we crossed the Sauvie Island Bridge and found out that (a) they had built a new bridge and (b) the grand Bridge Opening Festival was being held that day. How often do you get to go to a bridge opening festival???

Of course we stopped, and as we were wandering around, we heard a booming voice yelling, “Blackfoot! Hey, Blackfoot!” James and I looked at each other with our eyebrows raised, and turned around. Our friend Dorothy and her husband Jerry were just behind us. (Jerry and I both grew up in Blackfoot, Idaho, albeit in different eras, so he knew that would be good way to get my attention!) So this picture is of James, Cherilyn, me, and Dorothy at the Sauvie Island Bridge Opening Festival.

(James kept getting questions about his shirt. For those who don’t know or have forgotten, that’s not an ancient fertility symbol or the Chinese sign for good luck. It’s the symbol of The Greatest American Hero, which went off the air in 1983. “Believe it or not, I’m walking on air…”)