Peel P50

At 6′ 5″ inches tall, my inter­est in things small might seem inex­plic­a­ble, but the fact remains — small things are cool. And there is not much cooler than a Peel P50. Check out the links at left and @ the image of the Peel P50 above for some great shots of this great lit­tle vin­tage wonder.

Isetta plus teardrop

When I was a bit shorter my father worked for Porsche Cars South­west in San Anto­nio, Texas, the south­west regional dis­trib­u­tor for Porsche (“por sha, not porsh” as he used to say.) I grew up around inter­est­ing cars and car peo­ple.
So when my young eyes first glimped a BMW Iseta, I knew that it was just about the coolest thing a car could be — small. Of course, the next log­i­cal step is to add a teardrop trailer — another grow­ing inter­est of mine. An even smaller one can be seen here on the Tales and Trails website.

The park — in the mid­dle of Naito Parkway!

One wet Port­land after­noon Lisa and I set off on one our peri­odic archi­tec­ture tours in the down­town area. I decided it was time to visit Portland’s small­est park.

Mill Ends Park

It was a per­fect, rainy Port­land after­noon, the kind that makes color sub­lime and car tires hiss. Mill Ends Park, cre­ated as a home for lep­rechauns, appears with dif­fer­ent veg­e­ta­tive scenery in every pic­ture you will find of it.
Port­land being a cen­ter of the once boom­ing lum­ber indus­try, the term Mill’s End refers to the pieces left over in the process of con­vert­ing tress to lumber. The story of the park’s cre­ation is an inter­est­ing bit of Port­land his­tory and worth inves­ti­gat­ing at the Port­land Parks and Recre­ation site.

The cur­rent theme.