A Week on the Willamette

Portland, Ore. - This has been a busy and hectic week, and even though the working week is officially over, I'm still here in Portland.

I arrived here last Sunday, earlier (10.30 am) than I had anticipated, so I rented a car and toured around a little. It was both Rose Festival weekend and Fleet Week (several battleships were parked along the Willamette) so downtown parking was a little hard to find, but I managed. I had lumper (if a late breakfast-early lunch is "brunch," why can't a late lunch-early supper be called "lumper"?) at an outdoor cafe on 23rd Street. Although it wasn't raining, the weather was surprisingly cool (50s), especially after a week of 90+ temperatures in Atlanta. When the time finally permitted, I checked in at the Marriott Courtyard by the Convention Center, the same hotel I stayed in last November, and returned the car at the airport, taking the MAX light-rail back to the hotel. The picture above is the view from my room, taken Saturday morning.

But the fun really began on Monday. I'm here for a major marketing push, the so-called "Northwest Marketing Blitz," along with my new Portland colleagues and some corporate staff. The purpose is to drum up some business for my planned relocation here. On Monday, we had a single lunch meeting with a Portland environmental attorney at a downtown restaurant. After the day was over, my new colleagues, the corporate types, and I went up to the Portland City Grill on the 30th floor of the U.S. Bancorp Building for a few drinks and to get to all know one another a bit better.

On Tuesday, we picked up the pace with a meeting at a paper mill in Washington State and another lunch with another law firm, this time at the University Club, an exclusive, up-scale establishment in downtown Portland. That evening, the corporate director of marketing and I went to Blitz, a sports bar in the Pearl District, the same place I saw the 2008 Superbowl, to watch Game 3 of the NBA Finals (the Celtics lost, but still led the series 2-1).

Wednesday featured another lunch meeting, this time with a very prominent Portland business, at the Benson Hotel, one of the classic downtown luxury hotels. In the afternoon, we called on a "green developer" at their Pearl District office complex, followed by a huge dinner at Jake's Crawfish House, an fine seafood restaurant. And on Thursday, we drove up to Tacoma, Washington for marketing calls on a wood-treating company and a paper mill (which turned out to be the same mill where many scenes from "An Officer and a Gentleman" were filmed, and affectionately called "The Aroma of Tacoma" by locals). The sun finally came out for the first time of the week on Thursday and on the way home we stopped for dinner and to watch Game 4 of the NBA Finals at McMenamin's, a lovely outdoor restaurant on the banks of the Columbia River. Sailboats blew by on the river and there was hardly a cloud in the sky, and snow-covered Mount Hood stood majestically upstream. The Celtics overcame a 24-point deficit to win the game and take a 3-1 series lead as Mount Hood was bathed in alpenglow in seeming celebration.

Friday morning, I dropped the corporate marketing director off at the airport, and returned to the office in what turned out to be an unsuccessful attempt to catch back up on work. I'm here in Portland for the weekend, or at least until 2 pm Sunday when my flight takes me back to Atlanta, with no particular plans, although I may spend the day today looking at houses and evaluating my real-estate options.

This was my first trip to Portland since last March, and it feels good to be back. Sometimes I get nervous about the relocation, surrounded by Calvinistic clouds of self doubt, but this week's return and the modest success of the marketing efforts have reassured me that I'm making the right decision to come here.