I had a blog post mostly written and ready to go, but I wasn’t happy with how it turned out, so I’m going to take another stab at it with this one.
I did manage to find a home, thanks to Craig and his List. I’m living in a hundred year old house with 3 other people and a dog. My roommates are turning out to be pretty cool. The location is perfect – about three blocks from Portland State University, and a five minute bike ride from most things. I’ve obtained most of the furniture I want/need. I’m trying to take a less-cluttered approach to my living area. I want to keep things simple.
It’s funny.. I’ve spent the past 4 months or so selling off everything I owned through Craigslist, and now I’m on the complete other side of the concept.. now it’s been my turn to seek out what I need, and coordinate the logistics. Thankfully, I got my furniture from the same guy who is selling off most of what he owns to move to London.
All I need now is an office chair to make my desk a bit more comfortable, but I haven’t found what I want yet. There was a pretty cool vintage type chair that would have lasted absolutely forever, but I didn’t want to pay $125 for it, and I bet it wouldn’t have been that comfortable anyway.
Even if I did want it, I can’t go pick it up at the moment anyway.. the car’s back in the shop. 
The VW dealership told me my belts were loose, so I had them tighten them up to spec. Either they did a horrible job, or something else got mangled in the process. I was going to go to Seattle this weekend to see an old friend, but I only got about 60 miles into Washington before I decided to see what the deal was with the solid battery light: The alternator belt had come off completely and wedged itself where it wasn’t supposed to go, and half melted in the process; and the A/C compressor was bouncing around damn near freely.
They better warranty their work, because they charged me for the tightening in the first place.
Regardless, I do believe my experiment with old VW diesels will soon be coming to an end. Apparently diesel cars are in demand up here, so I’m hoping that will inflate the price I can ask quite a bit, considering the amount of work that’s been done on the car. Recouping some of that would be great. It did the job I needed it to do, that being to get me here with all my stuff.. but the break-downs have me not wanting to deal with it anymore. Besides, I can survive in Portland pretty easily without a car. Camping without a car might be a bit of a bitch though, so I’m considering picking up some other small (cheap) vehicle to get me places since I won’t use it a lot, and I want to use the extra money to pick up a nice road bike.
I’ve biked around town so much lately that my legs have hurt for the past two days straight. My favorite coffee place is less than 5 minutes away, and mostly downhill or flat on the way in.. the ride home sucks, however. After my 8 mile walk today, it’s going to be even more difficult tonight.
I’ve been putting off going out and taking pictures of Portland for a while. I don’t really have a good excuse, other than wanting to be able to go places without taking the camera.. which I guess does qualify as an pretty good excuse, anyway.
Here are a few shots from my expedition into town today…
Next time I do this, I’m going to ride the streetcar and the max a bit more.
