Happy Monday

Every Monday I post photos of guys smiling.

I realized after I was done that this is sort of like “the ages of man.” First you’re a budding young hunk. Then you’re a hot shit stud. Then, ooops, you’re daddy to some ugly little pig. …Or actually, I guess that’s more of a cautionary tale.

Happy Monday

Every Monday I post photos of guys smiling.

Legerdemain

Wordy Wednesday’s Wonderful Word of the Week

legerdemain

• sleight of hand
• trickery; deception
• a show of skill or deceitful cleverness

Sounds like: ledge ur duh MAINE

Origin: Middle English from Old French. Literally meaning “light of hand.”

Example: Ryan thought that he was fooling his wife, telling her he spent a long weekend at a “meditation retreat” in the mountains when he was actually fishing with his buddies, but Sarah had the last laugh: She had gotten him to pay for weekly visits of the “cleaning woman,” Shonda, with whom she had been carrying on a passionate affair for two years, a cunning bit of domestic legerdemain that still brought a guilty smile to her lips.

The Sky

The sky has been unbelievably blue lately. Not a cloud to be seen — perfect, perfect, perfect weather. I’ve had a hard time staying inside. I even went for a ride at 5 a.m. this morning, which was, for me, actually last night. I had already ridden to Mt Tabor and picked blackberries, then later taken an after-dinner coast around the neighborhood. It was just so nice, I had to go out again.

 This afternoon in the park

There were a few joggers out — healthy, graceful, bounding like spirited gazelles. What fuckheads. I felt ever so briefly as though I belonged to an elite fraternity of highly disciplined athletes, but of course, I had not yet gone to bed yet. They, on the other hand, had gotten up at an hour that only a borderline psychotic (or obsessive-compulsive control freak) would choose of his own free will. Screw them. Damn morning people.

  Last night. Sunset over downtown Portland from Mt Tabor.

Today I sat in the park and read a book in the 94 degree heat. Thirty feet away, clearly heterosexual men gathered to shoot hoops. Some of them took off their shirts, God bless ‘em. A few days ago, I was also reading in the same spot, but there were two guys practicing capoeira moves with each other. They were both shirtless and exceptionally fit. Their arms and abs rippled with every lunge, spin, and handstand. The bigger, more muscular man was showing the other smaller, leaner guy how to do the moves. [Insert sexual fantasy here.] I can’t remember anything that I read that afternoon.

 Saturday. Bullseye Glass, Southeast Portland.

So anyway, yeah, the sky has been impossibly blue for days. None of the photos here has been photoshopped. That was the real color.

Happy Monday – Friends

Every Monday I post photos of guys smiling.

These are all the same guys, friends who live somewhere in South America. There were so many great shots of them all being happy and having fun together that it was hard to choose just three. The flickr photostream is called, imaginatively enough, Las Fotos de Rodrigo.

Crown Point

My friend Brian and I rode out to Crown Point in the Columbia River Gorge this evening. We had planned it days ago, but I left him a message in the early afternoon telling him I was too tired to make it.

He called me back three minutes later. The first words out of his mouth were, “You! …are such a pussy.”

“It doesn’t take much pressure to convince me to go on a ride,” I told him. I had already changed my mind.

We rode the rush hour train out to Gresham, which is, in so many ways, the end of the line. Twenty minutes of Friday afternoon traffic later, we crossed the Sandy River onto the Columbia River Scenic Highway. Then it was just up, up, up through the tree lined hills.

Really, it wasn’t bad at all, just twelve miles total from the train station, and half of that downhill. We had a little picnic of Clif bars and trail mix, snapped a lot of pictures, watched the sun go almost completely down, then took off before the light was gone.

I’ve been meaning to go out to Crown Point all summer, but never felt like I had the energy to grind up the cliffs in the gorge. The ride was a lot easier than I thought it would be though, and I’m glad there was somebody to give me that tiny push that I needed to get off my ass. It really doesn’t take much to get me moving. Makes me wonder why I can’t do it for myself.

Photos:
 •Vista House at Crown Point. Brian taking pictures of the bikes.
 •Yours truly.
 •Sunset. Columbia River, looking west towards Portland.

More Crown Point photos at my Flickr page.