Portland has this weird culture in driving. Ever since I traveled in its byways, drivers are always courteous. There was no shouting or honking, or flashing rude signs. About the shouting, I did experienced one incident in which the driver shouted at me; but that was not in Portland, that was in Albany. I stopped at an intersection. Seeing no vehicles crossing my path, I crossed it. It so happened that there was a car that was crossing my path but it was several car-lengths before they could reach me. So when I reach the other intersection, the driver of the car howled and then I was made aware.
In Portland, however, I never experienced any incident. Cars would always be a distance away. They always run a tad slower than in most American cities. Bicycles were always respected. And, there was always a regard for the pedestrian. Of course, there were news I heard of fights between the cyclist and pedestrians being overrun. But compare them to the statistics of other towns Portland seemed to have a more mellow decorum. There was a time when I was driving home and at a stop, I begin to daydream and twirl my hair. I stood at the stop for quite some time but no one honked at me or shouted obscenities. I simply realized that it was time to go and so I did. I realized that the traffic behind me had formed a line but I guess they too were twirling their hair.
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Bicycles are big in Portland although they are not like San Francisco wherein the bikers, especially those delivering messages in the financial district drive their bikes with gusto and when they get into an accident, the fault always rest with the vehicle. Bikers in San Francisco are rude, and they have this attitude that they own the road. Portland, after all is the biking capital (or one of them). And yes, bicycles rule the road. You can see executives, laborers and all sorts of workers biking across the Hawthorne Bridge. And they seem to increase by the day. Public policy gives priority to the bicycles that there is a growing complain about it. Although roads are narrower, the major roads like Hawthorne and Cesar Chavez have bikers trudging along these avenues. There even is a priority lane for bikers. The road is painted green wherein the bikers have the priority over the cars. In an intersection, the bikers stop ahead of the cars in those green painted areas of the road. The mayor, Sam Adams, made Portland the way it is, now.
Mattias, a German friend of mine and a biker had a complaint about cars, though. He said that the car would speed up and suddenly stop to allow him to pass. This gave Mattias a difficult time estimating the speed that he should be biking.
When I was not living in Portland, yet and I was just visiting my home, here (I lived in Oakland, California), snow began to fall. I was in a restaurant, then along Hawthorne. A woman in panic ordered her “for here” food “to go”. She was apparently distraught about the falling snow. I was not mindful about it. In fact, I find the falling snow beautiful. So after which I ate my late lunch, I hung around Greater Trumps. Lo and behold, the snow melted, it freezes over and I was caught in a slippery roadway. So I had a difficult time maneuvering my car. When I reached Cesar Chavez and Stark, my car stalled because I could not get my car to escape the clutches of the frozen ice on the road. Two gentlemen were apparently watching me and soon approached me. I got scared. You would not want anyone to approach you in the middle of the night. My experience in Oakland told me this. But these two gentlemen actually helped me get out of that rut. They even put on my chains on my wheels.
But times changed, a little. Traffic on highway 26 and the northbound Interstate 5 is clogged late in the evening. This did not spell the lack of courtesy on the part of the drivers of Portland; rather, there were more cars on the road now than ever. After all, comparing the traffic of Portland to that of the Bay Area was like comparing a miniature pony to a Clydesdale.
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