In exactly 1 week I’ll be sitting on a plane headed back to Europe, and after 3 intense weeks and almost 6400 km travelled across the US I was looking forward to some downtime in Portland to catch my breath, see friends and drink some great beer.
Hanging out with friends
One of the great pleasures of this trip has been to spend time with friends along the way, and Portland certainly delivered in this department too. I am very happy I managed to catch up with my old friend Oliver, whom I had last seen in Lisbon 10 years ago, and hear about all the cool projects he is involved in at the moment.
Another great encounter was with the Cole “brothers”, Tim and Mason (who are not actually related, but share the same last name and hometown and are some of the nicest people I have met in my professional life). While I have been seeing Mason regularly (although sadly always very briefly) at industry events, Tim does not travel that much anymore so getting to spend time with him was a real treat.
Visiting Portland also gave me the opportunity to catch up with another of the great people that the “domain industry” has brought into my life, Jackie. She is also a very talented artist with a great sensibility, so it was great chatting about my trip with her and share my impressions of the museums I have seen on the way and on the US in general. Jackie was also so kind to bring me along to meet her friends, who were gathering to watch the first episode of the new “Twin Peaks” (in a setup that reminded me of the type of gatherings most typically associated with big sporting events 🙂 ).
Thanks to Jackie I also got to spend some time with Ray, Andrew and their team looking after ICANNWiki and the .design, .wiki and .ink Top-Level Domains (and on whose wifi I am currently sponging off to write this post!).
Art & Nature
Portland’s Art Museum is probably not as impressive as some of the other museums I have visited on the way, but I still enjoyed my time there very much. In particular the exhibition “Constructing Identity” presented several interesting works of African-American artists exploring questions of race and identity.
The Museum has also a small but very interesting section of Native American art, which particularly here in the Pacific Northwest presents some extremely beautiful artifacts.
The highlight of the trip was however the visit to the Japanese Garden, an incredible space that even on a day full of visitors managed to inspire a sense of calm, harmony and peace. Being a person constantly on the move with loads of things to do and see, the magic of the garden was like a gentle but firm hand on my shoulder inviting me to stop for a moment and take some time to sit in a quiet corner in the shade, listening to the water from the nearby pond and just breathing (something I really need to remember to do more often).
