Portlandia.

I usually forget how much of a little progressive bubble I live in. There is a new sketch comedy show out about Portland. I've watched the first couple episodes and enjoyed it well enough. It's hard to tell how it will be received by people who don't live here. A lot of it might seem a little over the top, but it actually hits the nail on the head pretty well. There is the sketch about the adult Hide and Seek League. A slight exaggeration, but the vast majority of people I know are in adult kickball or dodgeball leagues. It's the thing to do. I've never done it mostly because I remember hating kickball and dodgeball, but this time around they are sponsored by the local breweries. There is the sketch about the lengths one couple goes to to order humanely raised chickens. Again, a bit of an exaggeration, but it is very, very, very common to overhear conversations about it in grocery stores and notes on restaurant menus about the farms the chickens came from. There is the militant bike messenger who demands bicycle rights wherever he goes, whether it be on a train, in a store, or through his house. It made me laugh.

Last night on my way home from work I approached N. Williams Street, which I have recently heard dubbed a "bicycle highway", not so much from the infrastructure, but from the traffic. As I came up to the street a herd of cyclists passed by and I was a little taken aback. Maybe two cars filled the road, but there were about a dozen cyclists pedaling past and a few stragglers behind them. Then I looked to my right and saw a vacant lot that has been taken over by urban farmers with long rows of veggies with a cloche frame for the cold. I signed up yesterday for the Seed Club packing event. I get 15 packets of non-GMO, heirloom seeds from local seed savers for about half price for helping sort them. Plus they hold it at the local brew-pub. Oh, and I forgot to mention the newest pub to grace my neighborhood will be non-profit. You heard me, a non-profit bar. I discovered this through an email this morning. Yes, it's bicycle delivered valentines. There are bicycle delivery services for just about anything; pizza, movers, packages, soup. Yes, a company dedicated to delivering soup by bike.

I looked at the delivery zone for the valentines one and saw that I live too far out for delivery. It made me a little annoyed because I ride up that far - so can they! And, hey, I have a bike boulevard a block away; it's not like it's out in the boonies! But then I realized that's why this city is so great. I do live far out. That's why when I moved into my house I suddenly stopped going out so much. We are so far out of the way. Out of the way here is four miles from the dead center of downtown. In any other urban metropolis (save Manhattan maybe) that would be so close in. Here, because distance is measured by bike and foot and not so much by car it's a long haul.

And from all this I realize it's so easy to get into gardening and keeping chickens and alternative forms of transport here. The culture is immersed in it. I'm not the odd duck in these parts. No one bats an eye when I say I want to keep chickens or expand my garden or put my energy into farming dreams. It just seems normal.