Today marks the public launch of “Along for the ride,”* a new series of mass transit adventure chronicles on Lascher at Large.

Watch an Audio Slideshow | Explore the Map | See the Photo Gallery

The concept: explore Portland as seen from the metropolitan region’s transit lines. Each week, through a highly scientific selection process (in other words a combination of my mood, any errands I may have to run, suggestions from the peanut gallery and other such extremely formal criteria), I’ll be riding the full length — each direction — of one of Tri-Met‘s bus or rail lines (and perhaps those of surrounding transportation authorities, like Clark County’s C-Tran). Who knows what I’ll experience along the way or what I’ll observe, or even what form my storytelling will take? Learn more about the project, how to support it, or how to come along for the ride at the end of this post.

For this inaugural week, I rode Line 75, a megaroute running from St. Johns through much of North, Northeast and Southeast Portland, all the way to Milwaukie (for the non-Oregonians among you, that’s a city immediately south of Portland, not the alternately-spelled lakeside Wisconsin metropolis). For a taste of the route, check out the following audio slideshow. The speaker was a slightly counter-culture, late middle-aged man who identified himself as Robert. Reflecting on Portland’s public transit system and his regular commute to and from St. Johns, this afternoon, Robert, who refused to give his last name, accompanied family on a trip from Portland’s Woodstock neighborhood North to Burnside Blvd.

Before you read the rest of the story, listen to what Robert has to say about riding the 75, check out some images I snapped along the route, and even enjoy a moment of riparian pleasure, all brought to you by the 75:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4zCJR3l6OE

A tale of two Wunderlands

You ride,
And ride,
And ride,
Only at the end do you know the purpose of your trip.

One of twelve current “Frequent Service” Tri-Met bus routes — those designed to run every quarter-hour — the 75 averages intervals of about 17 minutes, according to the Portland Afoot Wiki.

I didn’t time the 75 when I rode it this week. I happened to arrive at its door just before it left Pier Park in St. Johns. Such details will have to be saved for Portland Afoot, or perhaps for future installments of this series. Anyhow, though I originally envisioned “Along for the Ride” as a series of journalistic accounts of individual transit lines, this first trip devolved into more of a solitary journey, albeit one in which my commitment to my profession was redeemed by the discoveries I made along the route.

My ride along the 75 started quietly. I barely made it on board. I don’t live by either end of the line, and my path to Pier Park, the route’s northern terminus, will remain a closely-guarded secret. What I can reveal: It involved an unidentified second transit line and a pedestrian meander to throw off would-be followers. I can, however, say I saw the biggest dog I’ve ever seen in my life along the way.

Anyhow, when I arrived the bus was empty aside from the older woman grilling the driver for details about how to make her connection. Despite the driver’s insistence that there would be plenty of warning before the woman’s required stop, she didn’t seem convinced, and the full-speed run I made to board the bus started to seem unnecessary. But I made it.

Before long we were on Lombard. A bunch of teenagers boarded at the first stop. One sat in the seats across the way from me. He was easily too cool for school. Every few seconds he’d erupt with smirking mirth. That wasn’t minimized by my donning of gigantic headphones as I slowly moved a cheap, underwhelming Radio Shack microphone around to pick up ambient sound (read, cacophonous static roughly reminiscent of rattling windows and engine noises). Already too shy for a journalist, I decided that wasn’t the time for an interview, and packed everything but my camera away.

This was the first instance of a dilemma that persisted throughout the day. People rarely want to be spoken with on buses, even less so than on the street, or so I led myself to believe. They don earbuds, they stick their noses into books, they sigh after a long day at work, they text friends, they flirt and gossip and stare intently out the window. Perhaps, at least for this first trip, the best way to experience transit in Portland was to do just that: experience it, fully.

So I took in the city as it passed. St. Johns’ mid-century downtown brimmed with summertime pedestrians. Friends met for coffee. Photographers ducked into a camera shop. Moms and dads pushed strollers. I saw one of two fencing halls I’d see along the 75.

It was the first of many pairs. The camera shop — Blue Moon Camera and Machine — also boasts typewriter repairs, and only a few blocks southeast, we’d also pass Ace Typewriter, possibly one of the only full-service typewriter maintenance businesses left in the entire country. Eventually, the bus passed two Trader Joe’s locations and two bowling alleys and not one, but two Wunderlands.

As it turns out, the two places I decided to get off the bus — in Portland’s Belmont neighborhood and Downtown Milwaukie — brought me a short stroll from two Wunderland Arcades. Sadly I lacked in nickels and competitors for air hockey, skee-ball, and scads of ticket-spewing games. Beyond the Wunderlands, which also feature second-run movie theaters, Line 75 passed, or stopped within a few blocks’ walk of, multiple cinemas, including the Baghdad, the Hollywood Theatre, and both of St. John’s movie houses.

Even more plentiful than movie theaters were parks. Big parks, little parks, dog parks, boring parks, fun parks, ugly parks, pretty parks, the 75 stopped near them all (actually, I don’t recall any particularly ugly or boring ones. They’re parks, after all). Parks too constrained for you? Why not take the 75 to the Springwater Corridor trailhead at Johnson Creek? Or head out on the water? Though I didn’t realize it at the time, my trip on the 75 was taking me to the river.

Summertime, and the Living is Easy

Upon arriving at the route’s terminus in Milwaukie, I headed out for a stroll. The day was far too beautiful not to do so. Of all the ways I’m nerdy, I’m not a comic-book reader. Were I so, I might have been thrilled to pass the headquarters of Dark Horse Comics (though the Darth Vader posters on the window were enough to excite the Star Wars nerd within). But my nerd-dom lies elsewhere, so I continued on toward a glistening shoreline I spied from Milwaukie’s Main Street.

I soon forgot about it all — the storefronts, the bus, my frustration with not interviewing anyone — when I reached the shores of the Willamette. There, dogs played, boaters launched, office workers strolled in khakis and button-ups and old men surveyed the landscape from recumbent bicycles flying hot pink banners. Summer surrounded.

It only continued. On my way to the water I’d passed the Main St. Collectors Mall and Soda Fountain, and I stopped in before re-boarding the bus home. Like any antique mall, its shelves were stuffed with pan-decade nostalgia — Star Wars Toys, World War II memorabilia, old record collections — but it featured an extra treat: the counter of a former Rexall Department Store — also known as Perry’s Pharmacy — where a family laughed over phosphates and hot dogs and an elderly mother treated her adult daughter to an ice cream cone. It was as if no one had ever moved. My only regret: not shooting the scene when I first glimpsed it through one of the store’s aisles. I did, however, enjoy my lunch and my dessert of chocolate peanut butter ice cream in a sugar cone.

This was no longer a bus ride. This was a journey. With a $4.75 day pass, I’d wandered across a metropolis, stopped for snacks and a stroll in a hip neighborhood (I’d grabbed a bite on Belmont Ave.), run an errand for a friend, and found myself on a quiet shoreline, where water lapped at my feet, dogs played fetch, kids laughed from inner tubes pulled behind motorboats and the world slowed down, if only for a moment.

More Transiting Portland Each Week

What’s “Along for the Ride?” It’s my evolving series of Portland-area mass transit chronicles. For the next, well, for the next long while I’ll be riding a new Tri-Met operated transit line. By new, I mean new to me. I’m beginning with lines I’ve never ridden, then I’ll move on to riding other lines I have taken, until I’ve ridden every bus, railway and shuttle operated by Tri-Met (and possibly routes on other public transit systems near and far, should the situation arise). Expect stories along the way. What kind of stories? I can’t quite be certain. Some newsy. Some reflective. Some only possible in the moment. Expect guest stars too. Perhaps expect to even come along yourself.

I expect Along for the Ride to also be a laboratory for new (to me) storytelling practices and a chance for me to hone audio recording, photography, videography, interviewing, mapping, writing, editing and other skills. Don’t be surprised if different forms are used to tell stories from week to week, though it’s conceivable the series will find its own rhythm, just as transit has its own pace.

You can help set that rhythm, however. You can start by getting involved. Tell me about your reflections of transit or via a tweet to @billlascher. If you use public transit, what do you use it for? What transit lines do you ride and why? If you don’t use public transit, explain why not. What might change your opinion about using transit, whether you currently use it or not? I want to know about transit in any city — after all, my love affair with transit writing started in LA, where transportation policy became the focus of my graduate studies — so why not reflect on your town’s best or worst routes?

For those of you familiar with particular Tri-Met lines, why not suggest in the comments what lines I should try next? Do you know of great stops along the way? If so, enter them on the map. Do you have a favorite transit story? Why not share some here, though I don’t want to step on the toes of Michael Andersen, and the great stories in each edition of his incomparable Portland Afoot (By the way, if you need something to read on the bus, or anywhere else you happen to be, I bet your $5 subscription or other support will be well worth it).

*By the way, special thanks to writer Christina Cooke for devising this series’ title, “Along for the Ride.” Check out Christina’s work at christinacooke.com.

Click on any image to enlarge:

SEJ 2010: My journey

For the next week or so, each day I’ll recount some element of my October trip to and from the 2010 Society of Environmental Journalists conference. I’ll combine my recollection of what I saw, experienced or learned, tweets I made at the time, photographs and links to some of the cool things I learned. Check back each day for new reflections, tales and reports. At the end of my updates I’ll post a link to read the story as one narrative (and post a complete photo album as well). Be prepared. This series will include a mix of storytelling styles — don’t expect straight journalism, or complete creativity. In fact, don’t expect anything but a journey.

“The only way out is through,” I thought, pulling my scarf tightly around my neck as I burrowed into my sleeping bag. Admittedly, I didn’t realize when I mumbled this that I was (not quite precisely) quoting Robert Frost. For a week or so, for a variety of reasons, a dear friend and I had been throwing this phrase around. Never was it more true to me than this moment.

Likely resembling little more than a lump of a polypropylene undershirt, two sweaters, a down vest, a pair of long underwear, waterproof gloves, fleece socks and a knit hat, I burrowed deeper into my bag as temperatures outside my tent dropped below freezing. I’d already felt the tickles of a cold coming on before I arrived after dark to Wallowa Lake State Park. Did I really want to push getting sick before the SEJ conference after working so hard to get there?

I’d already paid $16 for the site, after all, a whopping $16. The closest motel was 5 miles back in Joseph and another $70. If I wanted to actually see the lake, I’d have to return once more the next morning.

No, I could do it. Adventurers did this and far, far more everyday, right ? Besides, I had a car with a heater, seat warmers and a reclining seat. I wasn’t exactly isolated (really, it’s pretty ridiculous I even thought the word “adventurer”).

It’s now a few days before Christmas and I’m packing for a holiday trip to my mother’s house. I grab a dop kit and find some cold medicine inside. The discovery reminds me how long I’ve been taking to tell this story. Holding the medicine in my hand, I remember my trip’s first day.

Sixty miles east of Portland, after a brief stop in Hood River for coffee and a bagel, I felt the first hint of a scratch in my throat. Ten miles later, my throat burned. As I progressed further eastward, my eyes watered. My face burned. Each mile closer to Missoula seemed to bring new aches. Pain coursed behind my eyes, but, no, I wasn’t going to succumb. I would battle through. I was far too excited about the conference, about the people I’d meet and the places I’d go and the ideas I’d generate. As the week progressed and after I arrived at the conference, each day I did what I could to set the cold aside as late into the night as possible. Back where I was staying for the event, at the Hutchins Hostel, I’d return to the bottom of a bunk bed in a room I shared with other conference-goers and try, desperately – and unsuccessfully — to muffle hacks and coughs, stringing sleepless night upon sleepless night throughout the length of an event that I’d been looking forward to for months.

Still holding the cold medicine as I walk to my suitcase to finish packing for my holiday trip, I see dark lines stretching across the United States. Rather, I notice lines across a map of the country tacked to a wall in my apartment.

Each line traces a route I’ve driven at some point in my life. The record tells a story as comprehensive and accurate as I can attempt.

The map only documents roads I’ve driven, or ridden along, and it’s at such a scale that the nuances of my trips get lost. I’ve had to guess at routes taken during a few trips because they took place on stretches not charted by this map, or so long ago that I can’t recall their exact path. Nevertheless, each time I return from a journey I look forward to tracing my trips on the map. Doing so is the only reason I keep pencils around my house.

More than two months after I’ve returned from one journey, though, I’ve yet to trace its path. I still haven’t traced my trip from Portland to Missoula and back, and I can’t quite express why not. Perhaps I don’t feel like the trip’s over, like I’ve truly returned. Perhaps I can’t record it until I’ve described it, until I’ve wrapped the journey in words and pictures and recollections that I realize are fading with each day.

Some of you might not be interested in such ponderings.

“Get to the point,” you’ll say. “Tell me about the conference. Tell me what you learned, what you saw along the way, what the latest news is. I only have so much time. Don’t you know attention spans are ever so slight? Haven’t you ever heard of an editor?”

Indeed I do, and I have. As I’ve noted elsewhere, as so many have noted before, though, to truly travel you can’t simply move from Point A to Point B. You can’t experience this world’s multiplicity of dimensions through a straight line.

The truth is, of course, I did wait to write this down. I let the story fester. I let it fall away and apart. Like anyone might, I’ve been making excuses for months now for not chronicling my trip. My terrible cold on the road. Assignments due just upon my return. Job applications. Novel Writing. Story development. Other conferences to attend as a reporter. Holidays. I could think of any number of reasons why you’re reading this now, today, this very second, and only now, but this is the moment, this is when these words take shape.

I’ve also, I’m coming to realize and admit, been utterly incapacitated for months by writer’s block – really the worst I’ve known – despite having felt so inspired, so driven by the conference (and, despite having completed the rough draft of my first serious stab at fiction during NaNoWriMo, which, it should be said, was the only thing to really begin to loosen this writer’s block).

But somewhere in the middle of the first sleepless night of my journey, in that jury rigged tent, as the cold descended — both in the form of my illness and the weather — I wrote clumsily, with gloved hands, in an irregularly kept journal, beginning with the following fragment:

Sometimes I ponder the choices I make, or my difficulty making them. I end up here, in what promises to be a beautiful setting, but aching. I ache with the impact of pride, of love, of adventure.

The first day never quite goes right. Surprises for both the better and worse arise and you’re left not quite certain how to process them.

I’m fighting a cold I refuse to catch, but hearing creeks splash from what seems like all sides. My tent is jury-rigged together – I’m missing a stake so I put a rock in the corner to hold one side down – but outside the stars pepper the sky in such a way that clichés actually serve them well.

Nobody knows where I am (how near or how far). Were I not ill, I’m not sure whether I’d really want them to.

I quit a job, spent a year of my life and paid thousands of dollars to get this shot.