July 22, 2025
The Archival Project: a Clearing in the Distance
It's at least dry this morning when I bike over to Ovation, but it's still overcast and actually chillier today with a brisk north wind in my face the whole way. I'm almost shivering when I lock up the bike and enter the door, and grateful when I step up to the counter and my first cup is there poured for me, pushed my direction with a smile. I'm a regular now.
I spread my array on the window sill and then just sit there for a minute with my hands wrapped around the large orange mug, warming them up as I reminisce about a cold morning in Provence thirty years ago. I'll need to start wearing another layer in the morning soon.
Rachael and I have a ride plan for the day: a 25 mile loop south to the Sellwood Bridge, and then up the east side past Reed College and Clinton Street to Mount Tabor. From there we'll drop off the northwest side to have lunch at a Thai restaurant we've never eaten at before, and then bike west along Salmon toward the waterfront and home.
It sounds like an appealing day and a chance for some good video, but it won't be happening until the day warms up. Back at the apartment Rachael and I look at the weather app and agree that by 10 or 10:30 it should be perfect. That leaves me two hours for a shot at an idea that came to me last night: I think there might be enough room on the floor of the storage unit now that I could put everything on it, rather than having it confusingly separated with some under our dining room table and some on top.
And if we can get everything off the table, we can remove the table and take it to Goodwill. And with the table gone we can get access to the last piece of furniture, the glass coffee table we loved in its day but are ready to part with. And with them gone, it's easy to imagine that we're nearing the end of the Archival Project and can downsize further - to a smaller storage unit perhaps, or maybe in an unused corner rented from a friend somewhere.
| Heart | 3 | Comment | 0 | Link |
It's perhaps 8:15 when I leave our building to cross the street to our storage facility. In yet one more striking coincidence of timing, I open the door to find a meter maid writing up a ticket for the car directly in front of our door. She's just tucking a yellow envelope under its wiper blade and then turns around facing me. I give her a friendly smile but then truthfully express my surprise because parking is free until 9 AM. Nope, she says - it's 8, and has been forever, and she points to a sign right by her with the posted hours clearly displayed.
And then I look down the block and see that every vehicle lining it has been ticketed, including mine way down at the end. So I walk down to the end to look at the sign right beside my car, convinced now that the two must have different posted hours; but no, it's definitely nine. I've just always misread it, maybe because the sign is on my blind side, something I'd mentioned to her before walking down to see for myself.
She's still waiting there when I return, and then with a kind expression says that if I know my license number (and I do - an easy one, DTMU59) and plug the meter she'll convert the ticket to a warning. How nice! I thank her, feed the meter, and cross the street to test out my theory about our storage unit.
And I'm right! It's not easy, but I succeed in getting everything off the table. I'm thwarted though when I try to unlatch the table so I can remove the two heavy oak leaves because I can't see underneath or reach them easily enough to unlock and remove them. If I could I would do that and then collapse the table forward to free up enough space in the front to shove in junk I'd move outside the unit. But I can't, and I can't leave it like this; so I head back to the apartment to get Rachael to help me.
Oh, and one more thing - I'm also thwarted by the fact that the table is covered with the large, very heavy plate glass slab that's the top of our coffee table. So first I have to muscle that sideways and off the table and lean it up against the side of the unit. So that's a piece of work.
And since she's here and her help is needed for it anyway, we decide to go ahead and load the coffee table into the car, where it can stay until we get back from our bike ride and I can drive it over to Goodwill. It's a task much easier said than done though because first there's the work of removing the oak leaves and collapsing the table, and then lifting all of the also very heavy other four glass components of the table up from the floor in the very cramped space at the end of the dining room table and onto it and then sliding them forward and onto the cart which we'll wheel down to the elevator before loading them into the back of the car.
And let's just save some time and let you use your imagination to understand that every step of the way is physically difficult and challenging and frustrating and exhausting.
| Heart | 0 | Comment | 1 | Link |
It's nearing noon when we return to the apartment. I mentally calculate how much time remains in the day and then realize I just don't have it in me to go for a bike ride after all. I feel a little sheepish suggesting this to Rachael, but she instantly agrees and had already been thinking the same thing.
I collapse on the couch for about a half hour and then head off for the Goodwill over on 6th Avenue on the east side, the same place I dropped off a load yesterday, while Rachael sits down to read a book - and pretty much stays there until I return four hours later.
My thinking is that after dropping off the coffee table I'll drive over to Little River Cafe on the waterfront for a late breakfast, but that doesn't happen. It doesn't happen first of all because the Goodwill doesn't have the capacity to accept furniture at the present, so I'm directed to the mega-facility five miles further south on Ochoco, near the start of the Johnson Creek bikeway. Directions are complicated, but I'm smart enough to use the phone to navigate me; but not quite smart enough because it picks bicycling as the default option so I'm sent down all these bike boulevards until I eventually come to a pedestrian-only lane and have to backtrack. It probably adds about a half hour to the drive.
But that too gets accomplished, and I make it to Little River Cafe, although not in time for breakfast.
Meanwhile Rachael has plans to take a walk but discovers she has a very painful blister on the side of her big toe and can barely hobble to CVS to get blister pads.
And is there anything else to say about the day, other than that I stop off on the way home to pick up some beer at World Market and then just vedge out until we watch the Pink Panther. A, probably. But this feels like enough to give you the idea and help us remember.
Xx
_
| Rate this entry's writing | Heart | 4 |
| Comment on this entry | Comment | 1 |