Low Ceiling
Saturday, November 8th, 2008
Late last year on our way home from Long Beach in Washington, we crossed the Columbia into Oregon and stopped in Astoria for lunch. The restaurant was right on the river providing a view of container ships anchored offshore. That’s Washington to the north, the ships are pointed east towards Portland.
I’m a little fascinated by ocean-going ships, I grew up many miles from the ocean in the Midwest and Southeast and to this day have not been out on a boat in the open seas. On my morning commute as I cross the Willamette on the MAX, I look out to see if there are any container ships docked at the riverbank. Portland is a ways inland but even ocean-going ships can reach its ports via the Columbia, entering the river here at Astoria.
The heavy cloud cover we sometimes get in the winter is something else I had to get used to when I moved here. Where I grew up back east, we’d have built an ark with clouds like these, but they aren’t so unusual in the winter here (and they don’t bring the torrential downpours their image might suggest).