The title of this post refers to a Blur song called Parklife, which is now stuck in my head.
So I did a thing today: a friend and old high school classmate of mine, Annie, DMed me a couple days ago to refer me to parkrun, a casual, timed, 5k run started in the UK (Annie lives in London now) but has spread all over the country. There is one near Portland, at Rock Creek Trail which is either in Hillsboro or some unincorporated area called Somerset West; I don’t know how cities work anymore. It’s free and they time you and you get a barcode and everything. Sounded neat, so I went!
I only got one photo and there is a trash can and TWO poles in it. Great.
This event occurred about five days after I finally tested negative for covid, after being riddled with it since December 20th. So, you know, I wasn’t expecting much. In fact I assumed I would be walking the vast majority of it due to my lungs still healing from the badness.
Instead, I ran a PR. Granted, this is a 2022/23 PR, not a ten years ago PR, but still, the fact that I ran very well for this after having covid is amazing to me. I’m extremely proud of myself. What’s even better is that I had eaten cold pizza for breakfast just before leaving. This seals it — cold pizza is the best pre-run meal.
The drive there was fine. The drive home went through West of Ross Island Bridge territory, aka a Clusterfuck of Streets, which was annoying but not terrible. I will always write about my drive to and from races.
The event itself was excellent. A handful of very friendly volunteers (including a leader who was definitely from England herself) and a lovely little trail between some nice looking suburbs. Rock Creek Trail itself is a wetlands area (Rock Creek is a tributary of the Tualatin River) and I can’t wait to run through here in the spring and summertime. Everyone was friendly and encouraging; this was the first time running in my life where someone said “Good job, keep going” while they passed me on the course. That is worth 1,000 medals, believe me.
I plan to go to this every Saturday. In fact, I am replacing one of my New Years resolutions with this, because my “eat X amount of carbs in January” resolution flew out the window. This is a much more interesting resolution.
I’ve told this (mundane) story several times, but Courier Coffee was the first place I ever had a cup of coffee. Prior to them, I hated coffee. (I still did when I got my first cup.) My dad would brew a big pot of coffee every morning and pour it into a 32 or 64oz plastic gas station mug to take with him to work. Every morning I endured the horrible smell of Folgers.
Then, in 2007 or 08, I can’t remember, I traveled/moved to Portland and got a cup of coffee with a friend, who took me to Courier. I don’t remember who this friend was now. I barely remember where we were! It’s funny visiting a city and going to a location and then later moving there and really understanding where that location is now. Like, I had another friend who lived on 60th and Glisan, and I still pass by those apartment and feel a disconnect between them now, and them when I was visiting.
Anyway, Courier was and still is a little hole in the wall coffee shop. It opened in 2006 and is going strong and I believe that address on the beans is Joel’s house? I’m not sure, because the Courier coffee shop is on the other side of the river, and Google Maps points that address to a house on Hawthorne. I don’t know. This coffee is from Kivu, in the Congo. There are a lot of coffee farms in Kivu and there’s even a coffee called Kivu made by Kroger, which cannot be a good coffee.
One of the things I love about Courier is the DIY attitude. The handwritten description, the blurry stamp. It’s lovely. But it also leaves out a few bits of information, like the roast level and any info about how the coffee was harvested. I think one can assume that it’s all as ethical as can be, but it’s always good to have a blurb somewhere, you know?
This coffee is tangy! Bright and fruity. I think it’s a light roast, the seam on the underside of the bean is very light, almost white, which makes me think it wasn’t roasted long. My recent bout with covid made coffee taste like seaweed for a couple days (apparently the taste/smell issues with covid can impact your umami taste more than the others), but this does not taste like seaweed at all. It has an earthy undertone to it and a slight ashy aftertaste, but the dominant taste is tangy citrusy fruit. It’s not my preferred coffee taste, to be honest, but it’s not bad either. I think I may cut this one with milk in the future, to see if that mellows out the tang at all.
Overall, a bright, fruity, tangy taste with some earthy, ashy aftertaste. Not bad, especially if you enjoy tangy coffee, but it’s not my preferred go-to. 6/10
SE 31st Avenue and Market Street Neighborhood: Richmond Website
A nice little dog park in a nice little part of town. Comes with a community garden, a playground for the kids, and a large flat off-leash area to let your dog run around in. The area is also a baseball diamond but I suspect people probably play kickball there more than baseball, considering the prices of some of these houses. It is surrounded by a lovely neighborhood that I would personally love to live in. If anyone wants to give me around $750-850,000 dollars to help me move in, that would be great.
Aesthetics: It’s fairly basic, but the surrounding neighborhood is nice, so that helps. 7/10
Function: If you have a dog, 10/10. If you don’t have a dog, it’s standard fare. 5/10
Sketchiness: I cannot imagine anything sketchy happening in this park. Too surrounded by residential homes full of people with money. 1/10
Hello, welcome to 2023. So far it feels a lot like 2022, which, to be honest, is unsurprising. A blanket of fog rolled through Portland as I awoke at 6am, like I always do, despite a terrible night of sleep due to going to be late and also because I ate a whole frozen pizza and a bag and a half of Doritos, along with too much sparkling cider. My body was upset with the sheer amount of carbohydrates.
As always, I’ve decided to do some resolutions this year. I’m bad at following through on resolutions, so this year I’ve tried really hard to make actionable resolutions, things that I can check off a list, rather than esoteric, abstract concepts that I want to follow. Without further ado…
Run a half-marathon (and/or run a 5k every month).
This I think will be the easiest to manage, as once I get back into the habit of running 5k, I can bump it up incrementally until I hit 21k. I’m aiming for a September or later half.
Bench 225lbs for reps.
This one requires me to get a gym membership, and is something I’ve done in the past, so I think I can do it again no problem.
For January, eat 100-150g of carbs and no artificial or added sugars.
This one will be tough but I’ve done similar things before. I’m aiming for more of the “no sugar” part if I can’t do both.
Workout for 30 minutes every day I am healthy except Sunday.
A mix of weight training and walking/running. I can do this.
No social media except for Instagram, BeReal, Strava, and D&D Reddit.
This sounds like I’m capitulating but Strava is barely social media (plus it’s focused on positive exercise) and now that I’ve scrubbed all my subreddits to only D&D ones, I have not clicked on a single thing to read the comments. It’s really just Insta and BeReal. And Discord I guess but that’s more for friend communication than social media. Anyway.
Meditate every day I am healthy.
This should be a breeze so long as I have ten free minutes and my phone.
Complete a project.
Leaving this vague because I don’t know what project, but it would be nice to complete something. I’ve been tinkering with the idea of a “I’m 40” type of music album. We’ll see.
Find a new hobby.
I’ve been itching to learn how to do something different. There’s lots of time to figure it out. Obvious ones are film editing and coding, but those sound boring. I’d like a fun hobby.
Make a new friend.
Out of all of these, this one makes me the most nervous. I am terrible at this. Make a new friend? Out of the fucking blue? We’ll see. We’ll see. (I am not including “romantic relationship” in this. I want to make a new friend that I don’t also sleep with.)
Take a trip out of state and/or to a place I’ve never been before.
I just honestly want to do this. Canada maybe? Let’s go to Vancouver BC!
I’ll keep you updated on how I do. Happy New Year!
not really, but maybe? no, probably not. but kinda!
January is on its way, and you know what that means: it’s the new year. What, did you think I was going to make a little joke there? Look, January is nothing to joke about. It is a very special month. BOTH of my older brothers were born in January. An insurrection happened on January 6th—which is also my brother Matt’s birthday! I’m not saying that Matt had anything to do with the insurrection, by the way. As far as I know, he did not participate in it as some sort of birthday present to himself. He hasn’t returned my phone calls though since the event, but I’m sure he’s just a busy guy.
I’ve decided to post these at the end of the month, rather than the beginning of the month, to better act as an encapsulation of what I’ve been up to. So here you go. You’re welcome! Please, don’t send $100 to my Venmo account, I know you’re glad to have this newsletter but $100 is — wait, $200? You want to send—? No, please, that’s too much!
Hey Josh Didn’t You Have a Podcast Thing—?
LEAVE ME ALONE
I GOT THE COVID
Whoops. I went to the company holiday party on 12/17 and me and a bunch of other people got covid. I officially tested positive on the morning of December 21st, after a fitful night’s sleep due to a low grade fever. I’m writing this ten days later and I still have lingering congestion. It’s been a long time since I’ve been sick, especially with a fever. I didn’t like it and I don’t recommend covid to anyone, even if you’re vaccinated and boosted. Sore throat, fever, cough, and phlegm that occasionally appeared in my throat like it was choking me. Plus a lot of fatigue and aches and some chills. Was not fun. I’m doing better every day but today, for example, I had to go downstairs to pick up a delivery and walking back up the four flights of stairs to my apartment was a nightmare.
There’s nothing worse to the self-sufficient man than illness. I had to ask friends for help with simple tasks, which I hate. I needed groceries and asked my friend Ryan to buy some necessities for me (including NyQuil and cough drops, which were insanely helpful, thank you Ryan). The problem with those moments of no longer being self-sufficient is that I realize how little I help people in the same sorts of ways. I’ve had conversations with my therapist about how I help my friends in other ways, but it still nags at me that I am capable of certain things and nearly incapable of others. The truth is that I don’t want to help others all the time, I want to do my own things in my little hermit cave, which requires self-sufficiency; without it, I rely on people for even the basics, which means, to me, that I owe them. My therapist reminds me: “They don’t necessarily think you owe them though.”
Anyway, covid ruined any and all holiday plans I had this year, which absolutely is the worst. Do not recommend.
2022 Wrap Up
Aside from the glaring shittiness that was my father being in the hospital for around three weeks (he’s home now, and doing much better too), as well as the shittiness of having covid during Christmas, 2022 turned out to be a pretty alright year. In fact, compared to years past, it was very good for me. Lots of progress and upward momentum.
In the beginning of the year I learned that I did not, in fact, have the genetic mutation which my brother Matt has, which means I don’t have an increased likelihood of developing colorectal cancer. (At least, not more increased than the general increase people seem to have in modern times.) This was great news! A huge load off my shoulders.
In March, my dad celebrated his 80th birthday and I traveled to Idaho to visit him and my family. It was nice to be back as I hadn’t been back home since the pandemic started. Got to visit the war museum in Nampa and see some of my grandpa Jack’s memorabilia. He was a good man.
Over the spring and summer I started getting more and more into dedicated walks every day, which eventually spurned my renaissance of running. In June I acquired BIG TV. (Big TV is Good.) And then in October I had my first 5k race through Mt Tabor Park, which began what has become a rejuvenation into the world of the exercise, cut a bit short due to covid, but I’ll be damned if I let this disease keep me from exercising.
It was also my first full year in my apartment, which has been a very good apartment to me. Arguably one of my best living situations, and I sincerely hope they don’t raise my rent by a crazy amount.
And during all that time: near constant Dungeons & Dragons playing. Can’t hate that.
2023 is shaping up to be a good year. I have 5k races planned for every month and I even plan on running a half-marathon by the end of the year. The only part of my life that’s not great is my love life, which is arguably non-existent. But I think I just needed some time to work on myself, especially during this global pandemic, which has screwed my brain right up. So hopefully that will change as well. Or I’ll just be a hermit forever with a cat, which could be worse.
Every Park in Portland
A thing I tried to do in 20…16? 2017? was to visit every park in the city of Portland. I had a Tumblr set up and everything, with little blurbs and photos of the parks. Then I deleted Tumblr and didn’t make a backup for some reason.
Well, since I’ve been more active lately, I decided to reset and restart my project. You can read the blurbs here if you’d like, on me ol’ bloggo. British people should call blogs “bloggos.” Or, Australians, really. That’s a very Australian thing to say. “Bloggo.” Anyway, this isn’t something I’m going to finish in a year or anything, it’s just that this time I won’t forget to make a backup of my entries this time. Check it out!
The Inaugural Josh Belville Christmas 5k Extravaganza
Here’s the story: a couple months ago I missed the signup for the December Holiday Half. At the time I thought, Oh that’s alright, I’ll just run my own 5k in December. So I’d have a 5k every month, right? Ain’t no progress without repetition.
In between then and now, my leg was giving me some serious guff. What with the hurting and the muscle seizing up and whatnot. By the end of the November my revised thought was, You know? I think I’ll just rest my legs until next year.
Then, a week ago I decided to incorporate strength training into my exercise routine. Specifically, I started a bodyweight routine I found on the goddamn Red Bull website. To be fair, these were exercises you could find on hundreds of websites, but the fact that I found one I liked on the Red Bull site was funny to me.
So cut to yesterday: I’m up, I’m feeling energized, I think, Hey, let’s go to the track and run a couple of laps. I figured I would run a mile or until my leg started hurting, then call it a day.
I get to the track. There are always soccer games happening on the weekends, I think high school games? So there was a nice gaggle of people to make the experience feel wholesome. And I ran. And I ran two laps entirely (three laps is about a mile). The third lap I ran 75% of. At that point, after hitting a mile, my leg was feeling a little stiff, but otherwise fine, and I decided to keep going, splitting the track 50/50 for running and walking. When I got to mile two, I realized I could do 5k. So I did! That’s the end of the story.
My time was a full five minutes (and twelve seconds) faster than the Turkey Trot. I am amazed by this. My pace was 1:47 faster. I attribute this to the 50/50 splits, because when it got to the running portion, I pushed myself to run as fast as I reasonably could. Definitely going to incorporate this into future runs because I think it was very successful.
I also side note own a Pixel Watch now so I was able to track my BPM as I ran. I was, as you might say, running a bit hot, especially with those running splits. I think my highest was around 170, going down to about 130-140, then back up, etc etc. Not terrible but I’m hoping to lower that a bit as well. I’ve got some work to do.
All in all though, strength training! It’s good for you! Building muscle helped my body protect the parts that weren’t doing as well. Ice and rest helped too, of course, but I truly think the squats and stretches were the key factor. Felt good, bro.
Anyway, next year hopefully I’ll A) get to do the Holiday Half and B) actually do a half marathon. (This is a 2023 resolution.) Until then, it’s 5k races and getting my pace down.
2023 Resolutions
So, I’ll be honest: almost every time I create new year resolutions, it is done half-assedly. I make them as a sort of amorphous guideline of something I want to do, and then promptly forget about it two weeks later. This year I wish to eschew that in favor of putting down actual, serviceable goals that I can achieve in a calendar year. Thus, instead of making a resolution that says, “Do less of a thing,” I am instead going to write down five achievable goals. Here they are!
Run a half-marathon and/or run a 5k every month. I’ve been thinking about this one a LOT. I really want to do this, and I think with enough training and time, I can do it, even by summer. I don’t know where all this positive energy came from buy god damn it, I am going to grasp onto it as if my life depends on it. Because it does, kind of; exercise is good! Right now my goal is to keep running 5ks until my legs feel strong enough to run farther, so if that doesn’t pan out, the plan is to run a 5k every month and just get better at those. But I am raring to swap out one of those 5ks with a half, I’m telling you!
Bench press 225lbs for reps. This requires me to get a gym membership, so maybe that’s the resolution. But regardless, I’ve done this before and I can definitely do it again. I was going to put a few weightlifting goals here, but I decided to settle on one because otherwise it gets to be too many and I end up doing none of it.
Eat 100-150g of net carbs a day. This will be the toughest one. Lord knows I love carbs. And carbs are good for you! But I suspect I eat too many of them, and often those high on the glycemic index. I need to change this, for my gut and my own good. I actually did this a few years ago, as part of a research thing for 23andMe, and I ended up losing a bunch of weight and feeling pretty healthy. Plus, as I get older sweet and sugary foods just don’t cut it anymore. They’re too sweet now! It’s time to cut back. I’m going to measure my carb intake each day and track how I’m doing overall. In truth, I’ll also probably eat more carbs before races and such, but those will be utilized carbs, not just “floatin’ around in my blood stream doing fuck all” carbs.
Avoid social media. I already started this (you can read about it on my blog), but the idea is to just get away from it all, with a few exceptions. The biggest one being Instagram. I need one tether to humanity, you know? And that’s the one. But no more Twitter, no TikTok, I unsubbed from all my Reddits except the D&D related ones because I get maps from them sometimes. Strava is social too I suppose but it’s exercise-related and fairly positive, so I’m keeping that. And BeReal, because I love BeReal. This should be an easy resolution.
Suggestions
Twitch is annoying most of the time, so it’s lovely to watch a guy like Limmy, a (Scottish) BAFTA award winning comedian take fifteen goddamn minutes to try and figure out how Worldle works. Guy’s a gem, truly, and I’m thankful that there are people who are putting his clips out there (with Limmy’s permission too) to watch on YouTube. If you have a chance to watch Limmy’s Show, do it! It’s funny and weird.
Honestly, I’m just suggesting that because I’ve got covid brain and can’t think past five minutes.
Happy New Year
Thanks for reading and I hope you had a good holiday season and I hope you have a great 2023 as well. I almost wrote that as 2013 and you know what, I hope you had a good 2013 too. See you in January.
Look, I’ll get down to brass tacks: I have covid. Tested positive on the 21st, though I’m 99% sure I got it at the company holiday party the Saturday prior, because a bunch of other employees have tested positive as well. It sucks, and I am incredibly grateful for the vaccine and the boosters at helping me manage what would absolutely be a much worse illness if I hadn’t gotten them.
My symptoms align with most others: low grade fever, sore throat, fatigue and aches, cough. At inopportune times I will suddenly hack up an egregious amount of phlegm, such as the time my friend Ryan dropped some much needed groceries at my door; the moment I said hello I suddenly had to cough, and then the phlegm was so intrusive that I couldn’t even speak to him. I don’t think I’ve ever coughed up so much phlegm I thought I was going to choke on it. Again, this feels like it would be worse if I wasn’t vaccinated.
I thought I was doing better yesterday, but that was just the cortisol talking. I knew I had covid when I went to bed on the night of the 20th and, despite it being 40°F outside and much warmer in my apartment, I was freezing. I decided it was time to Install the Duvet, which I almost never use because I’m a warm boy. I put it together and went to sleep, only to wake up in the middle of the night feeling like I was encased in molten lava. It was at 4:30am that I woke up, got out of bed, ran a comb across my head–no, sorry, I went into the bathroom to check my temperature. Sure enough, I was at 100.6°F. I took a covid test then and there and it was positive.
It’s kind of amazing the different a degree or two of temperature can have on the human body. Last night I was freezing again, though I chalked it up to the frigid temperatures hovering over Portland. I took my temperature and it was 97.6. So this is what my body is like one degree cooler? I bundled up, and again woke up in the middle of the night on fire. Took my temperature: 99.6. It’s been a long time since I’ve had a fever and I forgot how much your body reacts to even a small increase like that.
That’s about it. Covid sucks, don’t get it. I started watching Earth: Final Conflict on YouTube for some reason. I guess because it’s from Gene Roddenberry? It’s very “of its time” but I kinda like it. It feels like Gene had an idea for a Vulcan “first contact” Star Trek show but for some reason it didn’t get picked up. It feels like what would happen if we had a show about humanity dealing with the Vulcans. Also, Majel’s in it and I appreciate that. (She put the show together from Gene’s notes. I didn’t realize he died in 1991!)
Anyway, I’m playing Valheim and trying not to choke on my own phlegm. What are you up to?
Here’s the story: a couple months ago I missed the signup for the December Holiday Half. At the time I thought, Oh that’s alright, I’ll just run my own 5k in December. So I’d have a 5k every month, right? Ain’t no progress without repetition.
In between then and now, my leg was giving me some serious guff. What with the hurting and the muscle seizing up and whatnot. By the end of the November my revised thought was, You know? I think I’ll just rest my legs until next year.
Then, a week ago I decided to incorporate strength training into my exercise routine. Specifically, I started a bodyweight routine I found on the goddamn Red Bull website. To be fair, these were exercises you could find on hundreds of websites, but the fact that I found one I liked on the Red Bull site was funny to me.
So cut to yesterday: I’m up, I’m feeling energized, I think, Hey, let’s go to the track and run a couple of laps. I figured I would run a mile or until my leg started hurting, then call it a day.
This is not a shot from that day. That pole is where I start my runs.
I get to the track. There are always soccer games happening on the weekends, I think high school games? So there was a nice gaggle of people to make the experience feel wholesome. And I ran. And I ran two laps entirely (three laps is about a mile). The third lap I ran 75% of. At that point, after hitting a mile, my leg was feeling a little stiff, but otherwise fine, and I decided to keep going, splitting the track 50/50 for running and walking. When I got to mile two, I realized I could do 5k. So I did! That’s the end of the story.
My time was a full five minutes (and twelve seconds) faster than the Turkey Trot. I am amazed by this. My pace was 1:47 faster. I attribute this to the 50/50 splits, because when it got to the running portion, I pushed myself to run as fast as I reasonably could. Definitely going to incorporate this into future runs because I think it was very successful.
I also side note own a Pixel Watch now so I was able to track my BPM as I ran. I was, as you might say, running a bit hot, especially with those running splits. I think my highest was around 170, going down to about 130-140, then back up, etc etc. Not terrible but I’m hoping to lower that a bit as well. I’ve got some work to do.
All in all though, strength training! It’s good for you! Building muscle helped my body protect the parts that weren’t doing as well. Ice and rest helped too, of course, but I truly think the squats and stretches were the key factor. Felt good, bro.
Anyway, next year hopefully I’ll A) get to do the Holiday Half and B) actually do a half marathon. (This is a 2023 resolution.) Until then, it’s 5k races and getting my pace down.
I’m seriously considering turning off/deleting all of my social media for 2023, with one exception: BeReal. The concept of not being able to see what I’m up to other than once per day at a random time is funny to me. The problem is that not enough of my friends are on BeReal, which is a shame. It’s fun! I genuinely like being able to scroll through people’s random, sometimes boring lives. I’m sick of stuff being curated, presenting the “best” of us. That’s nice on occasion, but gimme some real shit too.
Also, logistically, it would be two exceptions: the aforementioned BeReal, and Reddit, culled down to just the D&D related subreddits, only because there’s a treasure trove of battle maps there. I just did that, in fact, because it sounded like a good idea regardless, and it’s been a fine transition so far. I don’t miss any of the other subreddits I was subbed to, and whenever I need information about X I just google “X” + “reddit” and go read comments. I’m done with Reddit comments. I’m just sick of reading comments in general.
In truth, I’ve already started the Great Social Media Cleanse of 2023. I deleted TikTok and am surprised at how little I desire it back in my life. I miss some videos, but not enough to redownload it. I also hated posting videos that got no traction. I’m sick of not gaining traction with apps anymore. I’ll just be tractionless now, okay?
My Twitter account is officially gone as well and that feels fine too. I sometimes miss having an outlet for tiny thoughts, but it’s not a big deal. Twitter tricked me into thinking I needed to air every bit of jostled nonsense that popped out of my brain.
I deleted my presence from dating apps except for Bumble. This was a decision born out of MatchGroup. I signed up for Match and its interface and general vibe were so goddamn annoying that I went to delete my account, only to have to jump through a bunch of hoops to do that. Hey, app developers: the harder you make it for people to delete their accounts, the more likely I am to delete my account.
So anyway I deleted that and OKCupid. I have had virtually no success with dating apps, and am constantly reminded of that when I’m on them. Out of, like, fourteen years using OKCupid, I had one short dating session with a woman who ended up being a catalyst for my pent-up homesickness and loneliness from moving to Portland, which ended up getting me into therapy, which I guess is a win overall. The second was a much more recent short relationship that I ended because the pandemic hit and I wasn’t sure I was into the relationship enough to continue it over Zoom.
Anyway, this isn’t a dating post. OKCupid was cool and then Match bought them and now MatchGroup owns EVERY dating app including Hinge, which I was planning on keeping. Dating has become a capitalist scheme which is like a nuclear apocalypse for the human soul. Bumble is the only dating app that I’m aware of that is popular and is not owned MatchGroup. (Except Raya, but I’m not a cool celebrity and also Raya is Apple only which is INSANE.) In general I don’t think dating apps are good but I feel like I have to have at least one of them, just in case a miracle occurs.
I’m debating over Instagram. I need some tether to friends and family and that appears to be Instagram. Plus, I like sharing pictures and stuff. Despite Facebook/Meta’s insistence on ruining things, Instagram still at its core feels like a photo sharing app. Yes, even with reels and all that shit. It really feels like nobody is ready to transition to a new social media app in any case. I think we’re all sick of them, and we stick to IG or Facebook because we don’t want to deal with anything new.
For now, my social media has been whittled down to:
BeReal
Instagram
Strava
D&D subreddits
Bumble (not a social media app but still)
Discord
I put Discord but that’s basically a glorified friends chat at this point. Instagram is the real stickler of the group. I just like sharing pictures with friends. I really wish IG was just that and not the incessant explore and ads and influencers and hot tattooed models that I like! don’t get me wrong! but also could do with like 75% less of. This is a problem with The Algorithm: you click on one hot tattooed model and suddenly your feed is full of hot tattooed models.
So anyway, if you don’t see me on social media next year, it’s because I’m doing my best to not be on social media. Follow me on Strava, so we can talk about exercise. Or just read this blog! I’ll definitely be here.
NE 30th Avenue and Oregon Street Neighborhood: Kerns Website
I didn’t even know this park existed until I drove by it one day on my way to getting a slow leak in one of my tires patched at a Les Schwab nearby. It’s a nice little residential park, a perfect place to bring the kids and let them tire themselves out. It has some amenities like a basketball court and a playground, and the tall trees all around are a welcome reminder that this entire area used to be forest. A good place to get away from the urban life for a moment and enjoy nature.
Aesthetics: The trees add a point onto what would otherwise be an average looking park. (You’ll see what I mean when we get into east Portland parks.) 5/10
Function: It’s got stuff to do and play on! 5/10
Sketchiness: I honestly don’t know how sketchy this place is since I’ve barely ever been here. It doesn’t looks sketchy at all but when I arrived there was a man resting on top of a picnic table, so …? 4/10
Groundwork Coffee began as a shop at Venice Beach, California, but now has two roasteries: one in LA and one here in Portland. So, despite the HQ being a state away, I still feel like I’m buying locally roasted beans, which is nice. The beans come from AMUCC, a woman’s co-op of coffee growers in Popayan. If there’s one thing I love about the coffee scene these days, it’s how hard some roasters are trying to work with local co-ops and growers and not exploit them. If buying these beans helps put decent money into the pockets of women in Colombia, I’m all for it.
First off: I upped my Bean Grams, from 15g to 20g. Groundwork suggests 1tbsp of grounds per 6oz of water. That’s 15g per 177ml, roughly. Doubling that (30g to 354ml) would actually be around the amount of liquid that one of my coffee mugs can hold, but 30g seems like too much for me. A tablespoon holds about 60mg of caffeine, and I only want to hit around 100mg. I ain’t no caffeine fiend.
The increase in grounds did improve the flavor though. It’s a much richer cup. What struck me first was how ashy the first sip was, and how each subsequent sip was more mellow. It was never ashy enough to be gross, but it was pronounced. Then came a floral, almost tangy taste (I guess that’s where the tangerine comes in), bold but not overpowering. That was the dominant flavor for me. I’d say it’s a better cup than the Two Dad’s beans, but as I mentioned in that review, I was measuring my beans incorrectly and generally getting weaker cups as a result. But I would say that I think I prefer light roasts over medium, overall.
That said, I do kind of wish this cup had a little bit more of a roasty flavor to it. The other tasting note, milk chocolate, I didn’t really get, but I’ve said before that I’m not great at tasting notes.
I bought these beans at Market of Choice for like $10.50 (on sale), which is a steal for organic, locally roasted beans. So it was worth it.
Overall: a bright, floral, slightly tangy cup of coffee. I liked it! 8/10
