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Actually, I think the girl in the middle was just a little bit sad, because she was the only one without a cellphone in her hand...
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For much of my life, I’ve had the bad habit of visiting a new city for a week of intense activity — and, on occasion, even living in a new city for as long as a year — without ever getting to know it. It’s easier than you might think, if you have a set routine: you get up in the morning, you take the same route to school or work, you come home at the end of the day, and that’s that. I think I may have also been slightly warped by the childhood experience of moving every year (17 schools before college), and concluding (perhaps subconsciously) that there was no point really getting to know anything about (or anyone in) the current town, since we’d be moving within a year …
Anyway, I resolved to try harder during a recent weeklong Thanksgiving trip to visit the west coast contingent of my family, which involved our driving from Portland to a rented house in Bend, Oregon — located roughly in the center of Oregon. I had never been in Bend before, and I probably never will be again … but even so, I wanted to get a sense of what the town was all about.
Bend turns out to be the largest town in central Oregon, but its estimated population in 2013 was only 81,236. If you include the surrounding area of “metropolitan Bend,” that number increases to 165,954 — but that still makes it only the fifth largest metropolitan area in Oregon, and probably about the same as an individual neighborhood in New York City.
Compared to NYC, Bend’s recorded history is also much shorter — though that ignores the fact that Native Americans lived in the area for some 12,000 years before fur trading parties arrived in 1824, and succeeding generations of pioneers, intent on pushing further west to the Pacific Coast, forded the Deschutes River at a shallow point known as the “Farewell Bend” — which ultimately gave the town its name (you can blame the U.S. Postal Service for shortening the original name to “Bend”).
Not much happened until 1901, when the Pilot Butte Development Company built a commercial sawmill in Bend; a city was incorporated there in 1904 by a general vote of the community’s 300 residents. From what I can tell, the town then continued to grow, thrive, and prosper for another 30 or 40 years … after which it seems to have stagnated. Walking along Bond Street and Wall Street — the two busiest downtown streets — I saw a number of plaques on the side of buildings indicating that they had all been built in the 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s …
As for today, tourism is probably the most significant economic activities — focused around skiing at Mount Bachelor, and recreational activities around the nearby Cascade Lakes. Bend is also home to the Deschutes Brewery, which is the 6th largest craft brewery in the nation. And the town has hosted on of the top indie film festivals in the nation (the BendFilm Festival) each year since 2004. For whatever it’s worth, much of the town’s growth in recent years is due to its attraction as a retirement destination (I guess there must be a rational explanation for the decision to retire here, perhaps including a low crime rate or a low cost-of-living — but I found the concept quite mind-boggling) …
But none of this explains the look and feel of the houses in the “historical district” a few blocks away from the center of town. This is where my family members and I spent Thanksgiving week, and I walked through several quiet, empty blocks during the few days that it wasn’t raining … and while the photos in this Flickr album will give you some idea of what the houses and people look like, I’m at a loss for words to characterize what’s going on around here.
For one thing, it seems that every house is different. They’re all on tiny lots — probably about 1/4 of an acre — but they’re all different sizes, painted different colors, with different designs and architectures. I’m used to towns where all of the houses in an entire neighborhood are identical, because they were all designed and constructed by the same real-estate developer. And my son pointed out that in Portland, just a few hours away by car, the houses in several neighborhoods may look different from the house next door — but they all fall into five or six basic styles. Not so in Bend: it seems that nobody talked to anyone else, and nobody looked at any other house in the neighborhood, before they came up with their own unique design.
And with one or two exceptions, none of the houses are “modern” in any sense of the word. Many of them remind me of the neighborhoods were I lived as a child in the early 1950s; and I have a strong suspicion that many of them are much older than that, perhaps having been built in the 1920s or 1930s. Like the rest of the town, it seems that everything thrived here until the beginning of the 1940s … and then stopped.
Which then raises another interesting question: who actually lives in these houses today, in late 2014? I really couldn’t tell, because the streets were generally empty. and the only thing I saw through a living room window was a football game on a large TV screen. But I noticed that the cars parked on the street were by no means as old as the houses; most of them appeared to be less than five years old, with many large, modern trucks and Jeeps. There were a few bicycles and other indications of childhood life, along with a significant number of brightly-painted lawn chairs, an occasional barbecue grills (including some big, gas-powered grills on the front porch!), and lots of American flags …
If I had had a little more time or energy, I could have gone into the Deschutes County Museum (housed in what had been a stand-alone school house built in 1914), or perhaps the Town Hall, to learn a little more … but I didn’t.
And so Bend will remain a mystery, as we pack up and drive back to Portland tomorrow morning. And while nobody here will care, or even notice, I will go on record with the following prediction: I won’t be retiring here.
A little bit better looking, now, in all senses of the word. Last time I photographed this was in 103:105 livery up Princes Avenue in June 2020, so hey - I'm catching up! Erm... repainted into the new livery in late summer 2020, to go on a desperate tangent, part of this batch of buses had the unusual distinction of being allocated to the flagship X46 service between 2013 and the new demonstrator deliveries in 2015. After this, this batch was repurposed and sent off to the University corridor in the aformentioned 103:105 livery for a period of five years. In reality, this isn't exactly unfamiliar territory for 769, and I expect it still regularly plies trade on the 105... and whenever the 103 resumes.
Pulling into Castle Hill Hospital from Castle Road as it comes to the end of an outbound working of the 104 is East Yorkshire's 769, a well-travelled Volvo B9TL Wright Gemini 2.
My latest video was mostly a life and channel update (check it out at youtu.be/zaBrJ6RrVnM) but I still managed a few images, and this is one of them
It was the reflections and the light patterns from the moving water that caught my eye. The marina in El Campello, Spain.
A bit of love for the Voodoo.
I gave it a good wash the other day and must admit it was looking rather splendid this morning, so thought it deserved a glamour snap.
I use Simoniz car shampoo and wax on my bikes, and it really does a good job, leaving a good deep and glossy shine that beads water nicely, and also gives the tyres a pleasingly clean and 'new' black look. Good stuff in my opinion.
Bit of fun before going into the office this morning. Path on Port Melbourne foreshore looking towards Web Dock West. Couldn't resist placing the moon under the lamp.
A bit of sunshine and her dog.
Badly trimmed, eventually lost. This picture was special and the girl was a treasure to someone.
Bit of a rare beast on the 10.20 Plymouth - Penzance on the 2nd May 1983 as this was a solid ETH 45/1 turn. 45046 ticks over at Liskeard while a desperate photograph is obtained by peak bashers en route. For the record the train was in the station for 2 minutes and 17 seconds. This was a bank holiday and a fair few of us were heading west to Penzance for our usual massive chip butty and pints of Courage Best in the One And All before returning on the 13.45 to Bristol TM. Or so we thought. Control had other ideas and put 50011 on the train marooning the Peak Army in deepest Cornwall. So it was off to St Ives for a .....walk around the town and beaches as the pubs all shut at 2.30 in the afternoon back then. An afternoon of sobriety and no peak home. Not a good combination.
a bit of a wordy blog post about the cleansing of my hard drive & move beyond mindless shutter-happiness here
[DAVROS] Partly_Cloudy_Blue_Day
Visit this location at Craggy Island - A wee bit of Ireland in Second Life
Shot up to the local cemetery to catch the last bits of snow in port. Early morningish so i had that nice glow from the rising sun.
Those who were around in my early days of photography might remember a similar hdr shot i did back then... in fact only my second ever hdr. you can see it here: www.flickr.com/photos/pommedan/4491786595/in/photostream
i think i still prefer the first one....
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COOLPIX P7000
13mm (61mm equivalent)
Picture Control: Vivid
Just grabbing shots from the wife's office while I was waiting to pick her up for a date night.
A froghopper to the right, next to a devil's-bit scabious (Succisa pratensis).
(Skumsikade, ved siden av en blåknapp, in Norwegian)
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Still buying flowers for a bit of color. Love the lilies. Soon I'll have mine blooming in the garden.
Chest and shoulder parts removed. Shoulders should be as small as could be, so that head looks big and great..... Except for lovers of good ol' Hasbro power of the force macho type action figures!
A nice stroll through one of the many small rural villages in central Japan.
This was captured with the Zeiss Otus 55mm f1.4 on the D810.
Bit worrying this- looks like the dewdrops are communicating with each other :)
Suspect this was frozen with some spiders web between the grass blades
via Playground Markings UK bit.ly/1OwiDoI
Playground Marking Removal in Bulbridge | Removing Play Surface Markings #Play #Area #Markings #Removal #Bulbridge bit.ly/1OwiDoG