In Forest Park, the old classic trail signs, like this:
…are slowly being replaced with a new generation of signs, like this:
The old ones are made of painted wood, apparently hand-stenciled. They could degrade fairly quickly in our wet conditions, but they must have been pretty inexpensive to replace. To my eye, they had a classic look that fit in well in the woods.
The new signs are metal or metal laminated over plastic, printed in a heavy Helvetica typeface, with some additional “Forest Park” and “Portland Parks and Recreation” lettering in the margins. Precluding vandalism (an unfortunately common problem in the park) they could probably last forever. To me, they look wrong, and somehow cheap. I’m glad they kept the trapezoidal shape. I wish they had used a stencil typeface. Helvetica’s modern, clean look just grates on me in this context.
What do you think?
Anyway, I took these pictures during my 16-mile run on Wildwood on Saturday. Two more miles today, in the pouring rain, gave me a 41-mile week, which is not bad. I’m still feeling slow and out-of-shape and still wrestling with various aches and pains, ranging from a sore back to top-of-foot aches and most things in between at one time or another. But I think it’s getting better.
