People of Portland

While I always say that there are beautiful people (both inside and out) in every country, town, or neighborhood, some places obviously have a higher concentration of nice. Portland is certainly one of those places. Michelle, being an extremely nice person, always strikes up conversations and easily makes friendly with any random folk, but here it goes even further because a larger portion of people are open and willing to be friendly back.

Case in point: We are in a need of furniture, and if we can get it free, wouldn't that be the best. And there are plenty of free things around, especially furniture wise during the summer. One place advertised on Craigslist a good table+top and it was only 2 miles away. Hop in the car we did, and minutes later there we were. Problem was - Michelle's car was just too small to take it all in. Few minutes in our struggle, a woman (Tracy) asks if we'd be interested in putting the table+top in her truck, and she is willing to drive it to our place (it is after all, only 2 miles away). She was picking at the same free pile of things as we did. We quickly agreed and loaded the furniture into her car. I gave her a "Thank You" card and she easily proclaimed that it just made her day, how she had a crappy start of the day and how it is always a good idea to help out good people (us, basically). Thank you Portland Folk! We belong among you.

Case in point numero dos: Farm fresh veggies are awesome for few reasons - they are MAD cheap (I will not stop raving about 39 cents a pound for onions. Thirty nine cents, people!), they are UBER tasty, because they have been picked either that day or the day before, and you can chat with a person who grew these delicious berries that explode flavor all over your taste buds. Things we bought at the farm stands range from multicolor carrots (purple, red, white, orange) to garlic bulbs to fruits and berries to potatoes to honey. One particular place, Cereghino Farms, had a sweet guy (who was also a Red Sox fan), so not only Michelle and Michael bonded over the team love, but he actually gave us his phone number so we can call him and hang out at his BBQ because we don't really know anyone around here just yet. I'm going to text him right now! Bam! Human Connections. Done!

So are people nicer on West coast than East coast? Perhaps... And even more so in Portland? Maybe... Can it be because we are so easy going? I would say so.