Air

I took a short walk over to Kennilworth Park today, which is about two blocks away from our house. I wanted to get some pictures of the immense trees over there, and I happened to get some awesome views of clouds while I was at it. Portland is great for clouds. On any given day, you can walk around and see every type of cloud there is. My favorites are the thick, chunky ones with lots of crevices. They look like some kind of yummy whipped dessert when the sun hits them right.

(Click the image to see a panorama from the lookout in the park)

While I was walking, I noticed that it smelled like barbeque today. Not really strongly, like someone was actually cooking in their backyard. More like when you go to a cookout, and you can still smell the grill on your clothes when you go home. It was like the smell of cooking food had permeated everything in the neighborhood.

It wasn't a great day for barbequing anyway, since it started raining as I walked home, and it wasn't all that warm out to begin with. It reminded me of the range of smells in the neighborhood though. Some days, it's woodsmoke. I like walking past houses burning their woodstoves on colder days. There have been a good handful of "spring" smelling days recently too. Those are the best! Sometimes it just smells like damp earth. Like when you're working in the garden - the smell of dirt.

Sometimes when I'm driving I can smell some bad exhaust smells, which is pretty normal everywhere (and especially in a place with so many very old cars). I think some of it is the biodiesel, though. All the buses here (and a healthy portion of passenger vehicles) run on biodiesel. In CA, it smelled like french fries when you drove behind one. Here, it smells more like burning oil. Interesting....