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I don’t remember who said it. Maybe it’s someone I know. Maybe it’s someone I read. But someone once said something like: “If it were easy and people knew about it, it wouldn’t be a shortcut. It would be the way.”

Having grown up here in town, I have a few favorite, lesser-known back-paths to get around. I feel very attached to them.

One of my favorites is getting from Barbur Blvd., near the Fulton Park Community Center, to Taylors Ferry right by Macadam via a curious weaving path across the freeway and down the hill on curvy, occasionally single-laned backstreets. I got to demonstrate this expertise to my husband a few weeks ago, and he was gape-jawed impressed.

Strikingly, I hadn’t taken that shortcut in at least a decade. I am always thrilled to feel the neural pathways light up, having lurked there in my brain for when I need them again.

Do you have secret shortcuts in Portland that I should know about?

I have a woven existence with the news media in this town.

During my childhood, one parent worked for The Oregonian and the other briefly produced the news at KOIN-6. One of my stepparents is a former local news anchor. I’ve been to anchor weddings and newspaper lamb roasts.

Despite the KOIN/CBS connection (or perhaps perversely because of it), we were decidedly an NBC household after my parents divorced. At least, when we weren’t reading the paper.

That meant KGW news most mornings and NBC Nightly many evenings. Thus I have a strange (but reverent) daddy issue with Tom Brokaw and have these odd, ghostlike memories of all of the local anchors.

The one who sticks in my memory the most, for no good reason, is Tracy Barry. I remember her in cycles and seasons; I remember seeing her pregnant, maybe even more than once. She looks entirely the same to me now as she did in 1985. Maybe it’s that our relative age difference is constant.

In a strange twist of coincidence, I ended up working closely with several former KGW reporters for a while a couple of years ago. It was curious; I’d see them at parties, social situations and in cubicles or pouring themselves coffee and want to say “You know, I used to watch you on television when I was kid.” But that conversation seemed far too weird. And they, too, looked exactly as I remembered them. They had good speaking voices.

Do local anchors have such a longitudinal impact on other people? Or am I peculiarly bound to the media here?

SE Morrison Street is a bit of a trial right now between about 12th and 6th. Two of the three lanes are closed for a while (months? I think?) while the sewer is dug up and replaced. In attempt to ease the snarl, the city has placed a big ol’ sign up on the sidewalk that says:

“USE BUS LANE”

Except that, the three times I’ve gone through there (I live nearby), no one is. Thus I feel like a big ol’ jerk as I use the bus lane and pass a stationary line of cars a block and a half long. Am I being a jerk here? Is it necessary in Portland to be so nice as to not even use the bus lane when we’re told to do so? Is the sign too small or otherwise suffering from low visibility? Is this just a crisis of the over-polite?

For those of you who like your novels witty, visionary and geekoriffic, you might want to know that cyperpunk maestro Neal Stephenson will be at the Bagdad Theater on Sept. 16. The author of the seminal and comic sui generis Snow Crash and the Baroque Cycle series will be talking about (and signing copies of) his new novel, Anathem.

From Powell’s synopsis of Anathem:

Since childhood, nineteen-year old Raz has lived behind the walls of a 3,400 year old monastery — a sanctuary for scientists, philosophers, and mathematicians; for those who live (and thrive, living) the life of the mind. Within their sanctuary he and his cohorts are safely sealed off from the world outside: an illiterate, irrational, unpredictable world; an endless landscape of casinos and megastores, plagued by recurring booms and busts, dark ages and reawakenings, wars between individuals and among nations.

Advance tickets are $5 plus fiscal rape charge if you buy them online.

More info on McMenamin’s site

Who’s with me? I personally celebrate the man’s entire catalog.

I purchased a motorcycle this weekend, my first. It’s amazing how fast that makes one a member of a certain “club.” Motorcyclers seem to stick together and have a strong regard for compatriots.

I had a few nice conversations this weekend in which other motorcycle folks who asserted that they thought Portland was a fairly decent place to be on a bike. Drivers for the most part are attentive and courteous.

Do you think this is because of our preponderance of bicycles? Our generally friendly Portland nature? Are you a motorcycle person in Portland? What has been your experience?

As for my personal decision to buy a bike, it was something that filled a hole that a bicycle couldn’t quite fill for me. I wanted a more responsible replacement for my late Audi TT, something for mid-range trips around the city. My commute is still on foot, but I wanted an occasional non-car option that was still a kick in the pants. I expect this year will be a good one for motorcycle sales.