Lost in Portland - Sunday August 1st

Woke up at 5am (thank you jetlag) and took in my surroundings. The hotel receptionist apologized endlessly last night that my room was on the ground floor but it's lovely to be virtually on the river, so after unpacking and a a few cups of coffee I set off for a run along the river path.

iPhone snap from my balcony

My hotel is about a mile south of downtown Portland and a mile southeast of the OHSU hospital. It backs directly onto the river and I can pretty much run straight off my balcony onto a few miles of riverside running track. Portlanders are famous for their outdoorsiness so even at 6am there were plenty of runners, cyclists and rowers out.

After breakfast I decided that my main mission for the day was to find the hospital so, armed with simple directions courtesy of Google maps I set off. I was a little surprised that Google suggested that the mile walk would take 45 minutes but I assumed that this was aimed at tubby Americans so I anticipated a 10 or 15 minute stroll.

Wiggly route to hospital

When I arrived at the hospital, and hour and a half later and dripping with sweat I realized that I had forgotten two things:

1. American cities (even "compact, accessible, pseudo-European cities") are never designed for pedestrians. Sidewalks lead you into 6 lanes of traffic then entirely disappear and there seem to be no footbridges or tunnels so the Google instructions are entirely unusable!
2. Portland is built on a volcanic plain surrounded by volcanoes so there is some serious elevation. The climb to the hospital is fairly punishing but the view from the top is spectacular.

Panorama from the OHSU balcony. Mt St Helens and Mt Hood visible in the background. Downtown to the left, my hotel behind the wooded area to the right.

 The hospital itself is truly spectacular and stands fifteen stories high on stilts to counter the steep hillside. The main OHSU is accessed (by all sane people) by a cable car which runs between a riverside tram stop and the hospital pavilion. The main building is then joined to the veterans hospital by a long sky-bridge. It is all fairly breathtaking and more than lives up to Nigel Hacking's claim that this might be the most beautiful IR lab in the world.

I found the Dotter Institute on the 11th floor with a plaque outside the institute proclaiming "At this site on January 16th, 1964, Charles T Dotter MD performed the world's first percutaneous transluminal angioplasty". This might seem unexciting to non IRs but for me this is tantamount to visiting Mecca. It's also incredibly intimidating and I just hope I don't make a complete fool of myself when I start tomorrow. Wish me luck!

Plaque outside the Dotter Institute