Greetings from Portland, Day 1

• My one experience on the transit system so far has been as expected: clean, quick and safe. Odd that there was no one/no machine checking to make sure I had bought a ticket (I had), but I suspect we’ll find out how that works at some point.
• People here are…wait for it…friendly! Someone chatted us up on the light rail today, at lunch and at the wine bar we went to at night.
• Turns out, things are different here than in DC. While the guy at the wine bar was friendly and somewhat chatty, the place itself was dead. Where do twenty-somethings hang out in Portland? Much like the transit fare question, we’re not yet sure.
• Hipsters–wow. Seriously? I know, I know, it’s Portland and I shouldn’t be surprised by the throngs of hipsters, vagrants and others of questionable character that populate street corners around here. But, last time we were here, we spent most of that one day in Pioneer Square and that evening in the neighborhood called (I think) the “Upper 23rd.” That area is somewhat affluent (again, I think), and doesn’t lend itself well to the hipster community. Apparently downtown does.
• It’s also worth noting here that the homeless and vagrant here are way younger than I expected. This is a stark contrast to DC, and I’m curious as to why there’s so clearly a demographic difference between the homeless in Portland and DC.
• Traveling across country is hard. This is doubly true when you nearly miss your 6:30 a.m. flight and rush through your morning. It’s nearing lunch here now, which boggles my mind, since I could swear it’s no later than 8 a.m.
• In DC, everyone has a dog…of reasonable size. I’ve noticed very few here, and the ones that are around all seem to be miniature breeds.
• Map’s not updated yet. Running into an issue where I can’t get it to find the blue markers, so I’m going to look at that later.