The protest left some damage in its wake, police said, with windows broken at the Bank of America building on Southwest Fifth Avenue.

I was at Fifth and Salmon; maybe the windows were further up Fifth, but I didn’t hear glass breaking.  I will go and check it out.

If I’d had the presence of mind, I would have taken a picture of the moment when the anarchists tried to break away from their police escort, but as they swirled around me and the others at the bus stop, they were stopped in their tracks by the wall of mounted police on Salmon St.  It was quite a tableau, with the black flags on one side, mounted cops on the other, cops on foot blocking off the street to the north.  That’s when I moved into the bus shelter, in case there was a charge by either side.  The situation was fluid, in respect both to how quickly the scene changed and the manner in which the crowd changed direction and flowed east, channeled in that direction by the pressure of the cops.  Then I stood for awhile, waiting for my bus home, but the cops still had Salmon blocked off to the west.  I used my PDXBus app to figure out where they had re-routed it to and set off to meet it.  I saw no more, heard no more, of the protest.

Right down to the mailbox:

Bels fut li vespres, e li soleilz fut cler

Then I turned into a street upon which the morning sun had not yet shone and up which a cold, biting wind was blowing.  I like to have died.  It is still winter.

And for those living in their solipsistic nightmares: please don’t bitch at the bus drivers on days like today (or most other days, actually).  They’re obviously doing the best they can.  I walked past two busses stuck in snowdrifts downtown earlier this morning.  There was also a set of tire chains abandoned in the snow on the sidewalk.  I wonder if those were like the chains we bought, supposedly the right size according to the label on the case, but with the habit of popping off when you hit deep snow.

As I walked along the frigid streets, I said to myself I very much doubted that sign.  The temperature sign on the building where I work told me that it considered us to be enjoying a brisk 15 degrees.  That sounded more like it but once again technology is letting me down.

If it’s going to get that cold one hopes it will at least snow. It’s good for the dogs. Unfortunately this town shuts down if snow actually falls and sticks to the ground. The bus I take to work goes over Mt. Tabor, so when it snows it takes an alternate route to avoid the steep streets. Last time this occurred I trudged to the alternate stop, only to be befuddled by the bus driver’s reluctance to let me on the bus. “I don’t pick people up from this stop,” he said, “I’m on a snow route.” “That just means you’re supposed to pick up passengers at stops on a different street from usual,” I said. “What’s the point in having a snow route if you don’t pick up people who go out to the alternate stop?” Maybe he thought he was meant to just drive around with an empty bus all day until he was cleared to be back to the regular route.

Perhaps I shouldn’t.  I think that for the last album they passed Portland by in the first leg of the tour, but came through on the second.  I hope that is the case; they may be hecka old but they put on a great show, despite its being as predictable as last year’s underpants.

Speaking of dogs, yesterday on our evening walk as we went up Yamhill, past the Catholic church, a couple were bicycling down the street.  The woman of the pair looked over Boris and Vinnie, and as if in answer to her companion said, “Not as pretty as ours.”  Oh sister, oh no you di’nt.