Seeing Newport from the Ground

Love Notes: An Advisor Column

My father always taught me: one door closes, another one opens. On August 23, a door closed when I lost my license for a month after an arrest for drinking and driving.

When the door slammed shut, another one flew instantly open to walking, bicycling and taking the bus around Newport. In one month I whipped myself into the best shape of my adult life, experienced my community in a whole new way, and met an astonishing assortment of sick, poor, sad, homeless, mentally disabled and working class people who were previously invisible to me.

I met Brad, who lives in a tent in the woods near Waldport and wants to meet a woman; the bus driver who likes my articles; the man who collages for a living; the mothers struggling to transport their young children; the fishermen returning from the sea; the Californian tourists I lectured to on the sanctity of Oregon’s publicly owned beaches and the obscenity of using an umbrella.

And I met the most beautiful female persona in Newport—the Yaquina Bay Bridge. We met that first morning in a thick fog that hid her gorgeous green curves. When I found myself halfway across, and looked west to the ocean, east the Bayfront, heard the sea lions and saw the boats, I knew I was in love.

And all this because of a mistake I’ll never make again and because I got out of my truck. My father was certainly right.