I felt a little like Odysseus the other day.  I was near the river in one of the more industrial-feeling parts of Portland.  Blocks earlier, I’d bought a banana and eaten it.  Now only  the peel was left.  I said to myself, I will walk with this banana peel until I see somewhere to throw it away.

Not unlike for Odysseus with his oar, it was quite a journey.  I did not meet sirens or the cyclops but I did walk by hipsters drinking beer in the blasting sun at one of our warehouse turned brew pubs.  I also passed a tall skeletal elderly woman with fly-away dandelion fluff hair, black bangles on one arm and an aquamarine-colored tattoo of a VW bug on the other.

I walked 15 blocks before I encountered a trash can.  As Odysseus said when his journey finally ended, Whew!