Adventurenet.net

Saturday December 23rd 6:26 pm.

December 14 – 18 Lauri & I were on vacation to Portland Oregon. I’ve always wanted to see what it’s like in the Pacific Northwest and her favorite NBA team The Blazers is there.

To leave Austin we got to the airport an hour before our flight was ready to leave, but I am told we should have been here two hours early. We did cut it close as I was using the take-off time and not the boarding time, but we did catch our flight, which also was ready early. So despite a bit of a time scare, we spent very little time at the airport which was nice.

A quick layover in Salt Lake City and we were off to Portland where we also arrived a bit early. Good and easy flights. Delta did us right on this day.

First: Check in at the hotel and drop off the goods.

Lauri was not happy about this as shown in the photo above, but we did it.

Also of note: This hotel was paid for with points that Lauri earned during a work trip. Nice.

With all of the important bits out of the way, thus began our trip. First by crossing what became known as “bullshit bridge.”

Look. The bridge is fine or whatever, but the walking path in the middle gets squishy.

I find it uncomfortable to walk on thin metal that feels squishy when I can see 200+ foot drop below me.

This is how it got this name. I prefer to take any of the other nearby bridges when possible.

Also of note, I didn’t lose our car keys like I did in the last flight we took, which was also from Austin to Salt Lake City. Nice.

First stop? Obon Sokudo for some grub.

Omnomnomnomnomnom. Delicious. Highly recommend.

Now we need to wake up after getting up early and spending hours on airplanes so off to the nearest nice coffee shop.

Exquisite Creatures Coffee is where we landed for a nice pick-me-up.

Next stop: Goodwill. Time to see if we can find some nice Blazer’s gear at a reasonable price.

No luck, I’m afraid, so next up on the visit list is Guardian Games, but first we must figure out the best way to get there.

I only have one picture from this first visit to the store, an RPG I want to look up later.

I did buy several books while we were here. I absolutely love indie RPGs and this lovely store had a great selection. One of my recent posts on here is about Wreck This Deck which I purchased from this store.

But the day is getting late and we must new return our items to the hotel and prepare for NBAing.

On this first day of our visit the bus rides were very easy to understand.

We purchased some gear at the venue and returned to the hotel for a short nap before returning again for the game.

Now would be a good time to explain the Ticketmaster nonsense. The seats we wanted to purchase kept giving us an error.

We chose to try purchasing them on my Ticketmaster account, but I was logged out and couldn’t get back in so I created a new account and I had the same error as Lauri when attempting to purchase so I called Ticketmaster and they expedited my request so that I could get help before the show.

Long story short, it’s been nine days since then and I haven’t heard back.

Ticketmaster remains awful.

We got our tickets off of Seatgeek instead.

But now we have our tickets, our merch, our naps and it is game time.

We spent extra to get really great seats for this game.

Here’s a pic of what of us from the show/stream of the game.

What a blast to see the game from amazing seats.

Time to head back to the hotel. We’ve been up for a long time and have a bit of jet lag to get through.

There are more NBA games that are happening during our visit, maybe we’ll go to them. There’s also a hockey game and some concerts. Or a national park. Or Lewis & Clark stuff.

Plenty to do over the next few days.

And do we did.

Stay tuned for more.

Penny says “Hi.”