Home for Sherre and Ted Venegas is a two-bedroom two-bath house floating on the Columbia River in Portland, Oregon. They have lived here since 1993 in what people call the Moorage — a collection of about one-hundred-seventy-five floating houses moored to finger-like docks jutting out into the Columbia.
Continue reading “A Bridge too Near”The Wreckers of the Rose City Rollers of Portland, Oregon, faced the Sweets of Walla Walla, Washington, in a hard-fought roller derby game on Saturday, Sept. 12. After trading leads multiple times, Walla Walla ended up winning by a single point.
“Durwood” and “Macy DC” reflected after the game about the sport of roller derby.
Durwood
I’ve been playing derby for about two years. It was the community that drew me in. I felt like I found a place where I belonged and was supported. I came through the Boot Camp 101 [introduction] program. I had moved to Portland in 2020, Covid hit, and when everything was lifted I started coming and I loved the atmosphere and I wanted to be a part of it. I came from Yakima, Washington.
Macy DC
I’ve been playing derby for ten years. I started with a league in northern California and transferred here in 2019. I started skating because I was looking for a recreational sport to do that wasn’t softball! I liked to skate and roller derby looked really fun. I had a roommate that had done it so I was like, okay, I’m gonna try. I grew up in the San Luis Obispo, California, area, but when I started roller derby I was in Chico, California. I had been there for about ten years.
Durwood
I think roller derby gives people an opportunity to go ahead and exercise their bodies while exploring the strength that they have. A lot of people come here not knowing that they’re capable of doing this sport and not only do they find similar people who like the same sport, but other hobbies as well.
Macy DC
I really like that no matter what’s your body type there’s a spot for you in this sport, and it just felt right because personally, I’m not a super athletic person. I didn’t grow up playing a lot of sports but when I came into roller derby it was the first time I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m strong. I can do this. I’m helping my team.’
Durwood
I feel like the Wreckers are evolving too and really trying to stake their place as a very inclusive place to be. We have the BIPoc Diversity Discovery Day for skaters to come and try this out and be mentored and ask questions. We also started a deaf and hard-of-hearing program where we go ahead and we learn sign language and everything to help those that are hard of hearing or deaf and try to get those individuals through the door if they really are interested in roller derby.
Macy DC
I didn’t feel out of place joining. I felt that there was somebody within the team, even the team that I started with, that I could connect with right away. That was super nice. And I feel that the cool thing about roller derby is that whenever you travel places, it’s a small and a big community at the same time, so you’ll meet people traveling to games and then you’ll see them later and everybody just kind of knows each other — it’s fun.
Durwood
We have skaters here that have just been here for a few months versus a couple of decades. And so a lot of the Wreckers who have been here for years really mentor and support those [newcomers]. Macy was actually one of the skaters who really helped me come up. I’m a co-captain and when I went out for captain I did ask Macy if she thought that I could do it. It’s nice to come into this league and feel a place where I belong and be able to have the confidence grow with the support of these skaters.
Any overall advice?
Join! Come and play! It’s fun!
“If people want to pigeon hole you then just view it as an opportunity to prove them wrong.”
— E. Gordon Gee
All men are hungry. They always have been. They must eat, and when they deny themselves the pleasures of carrying out that need, they are cutting off part of their possible fullness, their natural realization of life, whether they are poor or rich.
— M.F.K. Fisher, How to Cook a Wolf
I consider today the true start of my journey, my first chance to take a break from eight- and nine-hour days driving my diesel-powered Mercedes Sprinter van west on the never-ending I-80, and to slow down — the speed limits out here are typically as high as 75 mph — and observe what I’ve been passing by since starting out from Connecticut last week.
Continue reading “Dollar Slices”Life “is like driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”
— E. L. Doctorow
I’m parked at the Portage Service Area off I-80 in western Ohio, balancing my laptop on my legs, and every tractor trailer that enters the rest stop passes right in front of me: Dominion, AmeriFreight, Prime, ITS Logistics, and so on.
Continue reading “Bridge Ices before Roadway”Anna, whom everyone calls Queenie — a childhood nickname that took hold — lives down the hall from my now-empty third-floor apartment. It’s not really a hall — more like an elevated walkway with a full wall on one side where the apartment doors are and a half-wall on the other side open to a four-story atrium with skylights that sound like snare drums whenever it rains.
Continue reading “251 Court Street”I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
— Robert Frost
I leave Middletown a month from today (Aug. 19). Just writing that makes this whole adventure seem almost impossibly real.
I plan to take Robert Frost’s advice to heart and take the road less traveled — but not until after I get to Boulder (to have my electrical system installed) and Portland (to spend time with my West Coast family).
Continue reading “T-Minus 30 Days”“So we shall let the reader answer this question for himself: who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed?”
― Hunter S. Thompson
I spent my first two-and-a-half decades sailing, safely, piloting small craft around harbors and coves and creeks and occasionally venturing out onto the usually docile Long Island Sound in my family’s 26-foot sloop, Weepecket, and various 35-footers.
Continue reading “Braving the Storms”I said the road is my redeemer
I never know just what on earth I’ll find
in the face of a stranger
From the song “Jesus In New Orleans” by Over the Rhine
When I share that I plan to travel the country in a camper van, some people tell me it sounds exciting or that they’ve always dreamed of making such a trip.
Others ask: “Why on earth would you do that?”
Continue reading “On the Road to Find Out”