For a change, we were in town for the weekend, and we decided to take advantage of the many fine activities offered by our own home town for a change. It was uncharacteristically hot all weekend but we made the best of it.

On Saturday we drove up to Mt. Hood for a tour of five cabins built by Henry Steiner and his family in the 1920s and 30s. Steiner himself hand-carved the massive hexagonal columns in the grand hall of Timberline Lodge, and he is also responsible for the Oregon Writers Colony’s Colonyhouse. These cabins on Mt. Hood share the same aesthetic and hand-built details that make the Colonyhouse so delightful. You can read an article and see some pictures of one of the cabins we visited, and a few small pictures of another.

Today the city closed a bunch of streets in our section of town to cars, an event called Sunday Parkways, creating a couple of bicycle-only loops and offering a variety of bike- and pedestrian-oriented activities. Kate took her bike around and had a grand time while I stayed home and did laundry and other chores. When she returned we went back out again to hit the Hawthorne Street Fair, our neighborhood’s annual festival of food, shopping, and face-painting (we saw Tina Connolly taking a breather from her day job). And of course, it wouldn’t be Hawthorne without a visit from the local unicycle-riding bagpipe player.

After a nap, we went downtown to the India Festival, which was hot, crowded, noisy, and otherwise completely authentic. We ran into an old friend, Keith Lofstrom, there and talked about novel methods of launching satellites into orbit while sitting on a park bench and eating delightful Indian food.

Then we came home to enjoy our air-conditioned house.

A rather ordinary day in some ways. But it’s ours.