Game days

I rely upon Cal Anderson park to reveal new and inventive games to me. Sure, there are the classic baseball games, Bocce Ball crews and the ubiquitous Frisbee throwers, but something about the park brings out more interesting displays of leisure activity. In winter I discovered a group of bicycle polo players batting a ball around the basketball courts. A few months later there was a game of skateboard street hockey played with a crushed aluminum can. Last week I found what I think is a made-up game with wooden blocks and cylindrical batons, which are tossed over strings to knock over the opposing team's line of wooden blocks. I couldn't quite decipher it all.

On some days at the tennis courts I can find a raucous game of dodge ball in full swing. This weekly match is no minor event. The court is always packed with people stalking around each other with big gumball-colored rubber balls and serious game face. Nobody has been able to tell me exactly how long the Dodgeballers have been pummeling each other in Cal Anderson and I don't know exactly how it is scheduled and how people know when to come but they do come and in droves. It has become a sensation for players and spectators alike.

This isn't a light-hearted revival of a kitchy throwback, it is an intense competition. The tennis net serves as a divider for those people who are still in the game and viable targets and those who have been struck out and are temporary spectators. Full-time spectators are outside the chain link fence hollering like betters at a cock fight. When I arrive there are seven men still standing on the East side and a single man and woman on the West side. He is tagged out by a double attack and suddenly she is on her own. There is a brief moment of pause as the four of the seven men who still have ammunition aim and hold, reviewing the advice of their mothers. They hurl their rubber balls at the girl anyway. She dodges one missile, catches the next and uses it to deflect the third while the fourth utterly misses. All the balls are hers now and she is watching the seven men watch her. It is all about her timing now with all the gumball colored rubber balls piled like a snow drift in her corner of the tennis court. She can pick one of the guys off the opposite side, wait to dodge the return attack and try again. She throws, he dodges, another one moves quick, recovers the ball and returns it to her before she can react. He nails her in the thigh and it is over. The waiting mass of players unceremoniously fill up the two sides of the court again and begin a new round. A blond boy next to me leaning against the chain link fence turns to a brunette boy and hands him a dollar and says, "here you win."

Cascade rails

We are on the Amtrak Cascades from Portland to Seattle. Rachel and I barely made our train; running full-tilt down downtown Portland streets to jump directly onto our car. Now, as we pull into Seattle, so close we could crawl to the station platform, we come to a full and sudden stop. A voice crackles over the speakers: we apologize for the inconvenience, there is freight ahead. We're having a bit of a territory dispute. But, we should be up and running and into the Seattle station within a minute. We hear this message three more times and 15 minutes later we crawl forward to the platform, offload and go home. Only 15 minutes late? We got off easy.

The majority of American freight is still transported by rail, while passenger services are a money loosing venture. Perhaps that is why the freights always win these territory standoffs. In the July/August 2008 issue of Good, Ben Jervey rides from New York to Oakland on the Amtrak, chronicling it's failure. The train he rides to Salt Lake City sits for six hours on the tracks just shy of their destination because a stalled freighter has blocked the way. He also cites a horrible tale that is circulated among the riders about a California train that was stalled for two days on the tracks. Most of us have experienced or heard about the ubiquitous Amtrak delays and so rarely think of our stateside train as a viable transportation alternative. This embarrassing neglect of public transportation is unfortunate. Jervy talks to George Chilson of the National Association of Railroad Passengers about how environmentally responsible train travel could be since it uses half the energy of a plane trip and can carry twice the passengers. But, our trains can't sell themselves as convenient or efficient, which are two very important factors we weight when making transportation choices. A conductor even tells Jervy, if you have some place to get to, take a plane. Otherwise, a train will do.

A train is still much more affordable and convenient than a plane for a 180 mile trip between Portland and Seattle. These days it is even more affordable than driving that distance. And there is something about it that draws me. It isn't the romance of the rails in that nostalgic Americana sense as much as the convenience of kicking back to read a novel or drowse or write and not worry about hitting rush hour and not worry about locating a rest stop. On top of that, I appreciate the opportunity to glance the backs of things. We build huge neon fast food signs, over-lit gas stations and sprawling shopping centers and car lots to face our highways. On a train I pass the backs of things: loading docks, a river, a field of small plants and a woman tending them on her knees. There are frontage roads and hillsides of scotch broom and Douglas fir. Occasionally there are empty stretches of track, piles of miscellaneous debris and graffitied underpasses. One tagger has written "Niacin & Pomegranate" under a bridge. Is it a prescription, a moniker or a code with a meaning I don't know? The trees give way to fenced back yards and a cat in a narrow alley watching us pass.