not arriving until Monday?

I got word that my new BlackBerry (yep-- Dad convinced the warranty folks simply to replace the thing; I'll have to mail back the old one) won't be arriving in Portland until Monday. I won't be staying at Metanoia Peace Community that long, though I have accepted Pastor John's kind invitation to stay until Sunday morning (I think that makes three or four extensions at this point; I'm very grateful, but also feeling very guilty).

There's an EconoLodge motel on Broadway, not far down the street from Metanoia; I'll probably move there for a few days before heading east. My knee still doesn't feel right, which isn't a good sign. I've kept my walks around town pretty much under ten miles, and have learned a tiny bit about Portland's public transportation system, but it seems my knee simply needs me not to put any weight on it for a few days. Of course, if I try the bedridden lifestyle, I'll basically have to stop eating: I've gotten into the habit of gobbling carbs like nobody's business, and I'm still losing weight: another notch will be going into the belt soon.

I went to the Portland REI today; it's about two miles from Metanoia. For those looking at Portland, Oregon via Google Maps, Metanoia is located on the corner of 18th and Tillamook; the REI is across the Willamette River: cross the Broadway Bridge, go onto Lovejoy, turn left onto 14th, and it's on the corner of 14th and NW Johnson St. I haven't calculated the actual distance, but I'm pretty sure two miles, give or take a few tenths of a mile, is a decent guess (just did the calculation; it's almost exactly 2.25 miles). A very nice staffer whose name I never learned (sorry, Mademoiselle, but I do appreciate the sage advice and great sense of humor!) helped me pick out a solar charger; I'm pretty sure it's the same charger that Rico had pointed out to me when he and I visited the REI flagship store in Seattle. I also bought new "convertible" pants (long pants with legs that zip off to make short pants) and-- finally-- a pair of shorts to wear as pajamas. Will be sending back my heavy jeans pretty soon, along with a mess of paperwork, and possibly some of the bulky bottles in my traveling medicine cabinet. I got a water purification/filtration system at a different store the other day; that may come in handy when I'm in the boonies.

Speaking of the boonies: my manager Alan (everybody along my path praises your commitment, by the way, Alan) has planned out my route all the way through to Lewiston, Idaho; he's got me doing the trek in 19 days, which may be optimistic, especially if my knee continues to be a problem. Assuming I start this leg of the journey-- which involves a ton of camping, some of which might even be illegal-- around July 15, this would put me in Idaho around July 34th, i.e., August 3rd (15 + 19 = 34, 3 days past 31... ever calculated calendar dates this way?). Let's move that to August 10th or 15th to accommodate the inevitable down time. Heck, let's just say that I'll hit Idaho in mid-August. (Then again, it doesn't seem that I'll actually be meeting anyone during this part of the journey, so I might be more motivated simply to trudge onward without taking long pauses to rest.)

If this is the case, I may be in trouble. The timing is very poor for entering the Rockies, and it's enough to make me wonder whether other people were right about heading south instead of following the cold, as I had originally wanted to do (send your opinions to Alan at the Kevin's Walk Central address: kevinswalkcentral [at] gmail [dot] com). I don't mind cold, but I do mind danger. Then again, just how dangerous would the Rockies be for someone not actually climbing the mountains? I realize many of the roads will lead to higher altitudes, but how many go that high, and how long do they stay that high? I see myself following valleys, not mountain arêtes.

Met a dude on the bus last night-- shout-out to Eric!-- who warned me about the perils of northern and southern Wyoming, respectively. It's humbling to realize how much sheer distance I have yet to cross. Eric also mentioned humidity in the Plains states, which sucks. Here's hoping I travel through those regions when it's much cooler.

A word about yesterday's bus rides: to get to and from Lewis and Clark College, I took three rides-- one was on a Number 35 bus just past Riverside Park (if you're going southward on Naito); I had wanted to walk the full distance to the college along Route 43, but the exit onto 43 had absolutely no shoulder, and the cars just kept coming and coming. When going back to Metanoia from L&C, I walked the long bike path that led to the southern entrance/exit to the campus (close to Lake Oswego) and waited from about 8:10 to 9:10PM or so for a 35 bus, which I had been told would be there-- the girl staffing the law library's front desk had told me so. I took the 35 back into town (Lewis and Clark College is actually slightly outside of Portland proper), then took the 77 to 17th Avenue.

I mention all this, not because I'm a wizard at navigation, but because in all three cases I got navigational help not only from the three bus drivers but also from various passengers who happened to overhear my conversations with the drivers. I was impressed with, for lack of a better term, the citizen involvement. It would have been hard to get the same sort of help in Korea; my conversation would almost certainly have remained exclusively between me and the driver, with strangers not wanting to involve themselves unless asked a direct question.

This issue came up, after a fashion, during the interreligious discussion of a couple nights ago, when Karl (who often has sharp insights into things) asked me a comparative question re: Koreans' "communitarian" nature. In my response, I tried to convey this notion that Koreans don't generally involve themselves with strangers-- that they have definite circles of loyalty thanks to Confucianism and the overall cultural history of the peninsula (nuclear family, relatives, friends, coworkers, classmates, etc.), but don't treat with those who fail to "fit into the picture," so to speak. This is one reason why Koreans (in Korea, I mean) aren't predisposed to greeting strangers on the street, and believe me, I've tried many times to say hello.* Otherness is hard for Koreans to handle, so in many cases they simply don't handle it.

Well, I've zigzagged over several topics when all I had wanted to do was give an update on my BlackBerry, so perhaps I'll stop here before I zig or zag again.

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*This may be an unfair generalization based on my experience, which is largely confined to Seoul. However, one out of four Koreans lives in Seoul, so this claim might not be that unfair.


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