In the latest issue of The Guardian, columnist Peter Preston writes about Cascadia, in A World Away From Texas [can I get an atheist amen!?]

I’ve lost my zeal for the Oregon Brewers Festival (perhaps next year I’ll take the Thursday off and go right at noon, before the hoards descend).
So this past weekend Heather and I got out of town. We’ve nearly exhausted the close-to-town campgrounds on the Oregon side of the river, so we decided [...]

Update: The second train starts running August 19th.
Starting in August, two Amtrak Cascade trains a day will make the cross border journey to Vancouver, BC. This means that, finally, Vancouver bound Portlanders won’t have to transfer to a bus or wait until the next day for the final leg of the trip [...]

The Novel that Predicted Portland
That’s the headline of an article in the New York Times today that equates modern day Portland with the utopian locale in the 70s era environmentalist-Utopian novel Ecotopia by Ernest Callenbach.
The novel, now being rediscovered, speaks to our ecological present: in the flush of a financial crisis, the Pacific [...]

Portland’s bike-friendly culture gets some love in the Portland Mercury’s big-sister weekly The Stranger. Erica C. Barnett writes in the paper’s blog (which for some reason they call SLOG):

In Seattle, when a bike lane threatened to take out a few feet of road that could otherwise be used by cars, businesses put pressure on [...]

Update 7/6/09: Finally: One day train service from Portland to Vancouver, BC
Summer of 2008 Portlanders will be able to take the train up to Vancouver, BC without having to stop overnight in Seattle (and vice versa). At least that’s what this article seems to be saying:

When the new service begins operations, Amtrak Cascades will [...]

The Timbers might have a new regional rival as soon as next year.
More Cascadia teams would mean fewer ridiculous road trips for the team, and also more potential road trips for the fans; I, for one, will be the first one to sign up for the trip to Vancouver and Victoria to see the Timbers [...]