It's a nice place to visit . . . but now you gotta live here.

In third grade, I flunked the geography portion of the final test in the "All About Oregon" unit at school. I was asked, "What's the capital of Oregon?" to which, I responded with resounding confidence, "PORTLAND!"

(Insert soul-crushing game show buzzer sound here.)

Wrong.

I was politely informed by my teacher that it was not Portland, but in fact Salem, which was the capital of our great state. I told my teacher I thought this was pretty cool since the city of Salem was rumored to be haunted by a bunch of dead witches. My teacher blinked and then pinned a copy of the Sylvan Learning Center brochure to my shirt so that I could give it to my mom.

The only other extremely vivid memory of Portland from my childhood happened when I was about 13. I was in the car with my parents, and as per usual, my father was driving like Mr. Magoo on Oxycoton and my mother was reacting to his slow slides into the opposing lanes with an impressive amount of volume. To make matters worse, it was rush hour so the patience that the other drivers had for my father's Super Dave Osborne-esque attempts to ride up on the highway divider on two wheels were not accepted with any degree of what one might call patience. My mother kept muttering, "The traffic here is crazy!" and cursing the day that the other drivers were born. Amidst the honks and frequent tests of the Maternal Broadcast System, I vowed to myself that I would never live in this place. I was wholeheartedly surprised to learn after a couple of white-knuckled road trips to P-town in my early 20s that it is not the city that makes the trip scary, but rather your tour guides. (In defense of my parents- there is much that they do well- volunteer, community-build, raise awareness for various civil rights-based issues- it's just that land travel together is not one of them.)

So I moved here at 23 with absolutely no idea of anything aside from the fact that I wanted to be out of my hometown. Over the course of the next six years I would learn many things I would have previously thought impossible: how to use chopsticks, that I could learn the names and positions of each player on a professional sports team (GO BLAZERS!), that the truest proof of this world having been created by a Divine Being is found in the existence of Powell's City of Books, and that bacon on top of a maple bar is the greatest thing to happen to breakfast since the first farmers said, "Hey what's coming out of that chicken's hoo-ha?" "I don't know what it is, but I think maybe we should eat it!"

After all this time though, I don't know, I think I just got jaded. The waterfront festivals that happen every weekend during the summer can get annoying when all you want to do is get to Burnside without hitting a kid dressed as a turtle-loving zombie with your car. Last Thursday on Alberta has great Thai food but STOP TOUCHING ME!!!! And the hipsters. My gosh, the hipsters. If I see one more Jack Skellington look-alike wearing the same Jazzercizing bears sweatshirt that I wore in the elementary school underneath a tweed blazer and topped with a Muslim prayer scarf, I am going to grab a giant frozen turkey and play everyone's favorite game of "Bowling for Anemics".

Last weekend though, Portland did its best to re-prove itself to me. In a very real sense, it stood outside of my balcony in the pouring rain, renting it's bird-bedecked shirt in two, yelling, "LAUR-IE!!! LAUR-IE!!!" (That reminds me- I gotta update my "Best of Brando" list on Netflix.)

Last week, I took part in a Fam Tour for Portland. Before I go on, I should explain that a Fam Tour is an opportunity for cities to show off what they have to offer to the planners of large-scale events. They fly people in, wine them, dine them, and do their best to convince that person to bring their conference (as well as the hundreds of thousands of dollars of revenue they represent) to that city. I have gotten to go play in both Alaska and Florida on Fam Tours, and they were AWESOME. They spoil you rotten and give you a lot of free stuff. Not being able to partake in the GALLONS of free booze on these trips by both company and personal religious directive, I use these trips to eat my weight in free steak. Seriously, it's as though I saw Lady Gaga at the Grammy's and said, "Throw her on the grill and hand me a decent knife." Of course, I am not a fan of Gaga, so I would just put all that to the side and save it for the dogs . . .

Anyway, a recent conversation with a hotel contact of mine resulted in her encouraging me to attend the Fam Tour for my home city of Portland, as it would help me get to know the hotels in the area for the meetings that I plan regionally. I called Travel Portland- the Convention and Visitor's Bureau for P-town- to ask if I could take part. They said yes. They were even nice enough to put me up in the hotel where the rest of the participants would be staying so that I would not have to go home each night.

Because these trips are meant to highlight the wonder and beauty of the city, they took us to do a lot of things that were very tourist-y but also very wonderful. We took a driving tour of the Washington Park area; went out to Multnomah Falls; ate at farm-to-plate restaurants; watched a local aerial troop perform acts using hoops, ribbons, and ass muscles I have never even heard of; and learned all about this, the City of Roses.

I guess it was not so much the sights that reminded me of why it is great to live where I do, but what people said about it that reminded me that it is not like this everywhere. People kept commenting on how beautiful and enormous the trees were. I forget that in many places, it is not common to have a 100 ft. tree in every front yard on the block. They were shocked and delighted that there were receptacles for recycling everywhere that there was a trash bin and that social culture dictates that you conserve or die. I guess I take for granted that I have receptacles for both in my kitchen and that I do not have to pay more in my garbage bill to take care of the earth.

They also commented on how nice the people are and that there seems to be a great sense of a unified community all around. This was confirmed for me as I sat in the window seat of my tenth floor hotel room and watched the end of the Starlight Parade on Saturday night. If you are not familiar- the Starlight Parade occurs a week before our own Rose Parade and is basically the most random collection of lit up floats, marching bands, and random weirdos that you could imagine. I watched as joyful people were smiling and cheering and in all ways showing their enthusiasm for floats that ranged from the cancer survivors on the Susan G. Kommen float, to the active military, to the Star Wars enthusiasts, to the Newfoundland (dog) Society of the Portland Metro Area. At the end of the parade, some random guy ran out into the quickly deserting street and wrote in huge letters on the ground "KEEP PORTLAND WEIRD" and then ran back to the waiting arms of his adorably nerdy girlfriend. I smiled and sighed to myself because it was sort of a perfect moment.

I came away from the trip a few aluminum water bottles richer, and with a renewed perspective on my city. Sure, the people can be unbelievably pretentious at times (I think this may be, in part, what spurred my love of reading obscenely popular Stephen King novels in independently-owned coffee shops- thus marring the brooding landscape with my advanced degree AND love of popular literature), but they are also enthusiastic about some things that are pretty great- music, art, nature, food.

My biggest worry about Portland though, is that it suffers too much from the idea of being "better" than other cities because of our reduced crime, city cleanliness, air quality, progressively minded politicians (let's leave the dirty Sam Adams jokes by the wayside for now), etc. The problem this kind of thinking creates is that people fail to understand that there is still much, much room for us to push ourselves as a community and grow. I think that as long as there are people out there that are willing to remind us that all is not right in Oz, and move us to make positive change for our people, wildlife, and environment, then we can truly embrace Portland for the weird wonder of the Northwest that it is.

Now if you will excuse me, I gotta get naked and ride my bike down 6th Street with 500 other people . . . .