Adventurenet.net

Sunday December 17th, our final full day in Portland, Oregon. On the 18th we fly home to Austin.

This morning we chose to skip hotel breakfast and try out a food truck.

My vegan wife Lauri picked this place and I made the assumption it was a vegan restaurant and so I told the worker to “Surprise me.” and serve me whatever he thinks is the best item on the menu.

I don’t eat pork or shellfish.

About halfway through the sandwich I realize this is not a vegan restaurant and that I’m probably eating sausage.

Oops.

C’est la vie.

On this morning I realized how much different the traffic is compared to Austin. I had immediately noticed that folks in Portland use their blinkers, but I did not realize until this day how polite folks are about letting people cross the road.

Here in Austin it always feels like I’m an inch away from being run over, but on this day in Portland someone stopped at a green light to let us pass.

Delightful.

And safe.

A novel feeling.

Next stop is a tattoo shop for Lauri.

We arrive early and grab a couple of drinks and snacks at a local gas station and this is where we meet Vinny, a local cat who hangs out at the corner gas station

Vinny runs this town.

Like in previous days we hopped onto a bus and discovered that the payment system isn’t working and the bus driver said “Don’t worry about it.”

I love how chill this town is.

And like previous days, we do use our mobile payment and meet the maximum fee for the day. Portland is paid for their services, I assure you.

While Lauri had her three hour tattoo session I travelled to a nearby library and wrote postcards to Tony and read books about backpacking.

Did you know there are some government owned lands where you can just always set up a tent?

I’m attempting to learn more about this as well as other camping alternatives to state parks. (I recently discovered four county parks in Texas that allow camping, though it is not free).

One other item I learned during this trip to the library is that you can mail yourself packages to any post office by putting your name, the post office address and adding “general delivery” with an eta of your arrival.

Neat!

A quick coffee at Holly Rose Coffee Bar and then back to Lauri who is nearly done being tattooed. (She got a Titanic movie tattoo).

For lunch we ate at a scary vegan bar called Black Water.

NGL, I was super intimidated by this place, but the food is nice.

We have a third basketball game that we scored nice tickets to on this day, but we have a bit more time to kill and we made a quick trip to a local Walgreens.

This city has more controls in place against theft than I’m used to and when we wanted to purchase nail clippers, they were on a shelf that you couldn’t take the clippers off of the shelf because the peg had a lock at the end.

I asked the clerk up front how to have it unlocked and he got on the microphone to send someone.

While waiting we saw the button to call someone over.

After a significant wait I pressed the button.

After another significant wait I pressed the button again.

After a short wait, I ripped the cardboard backing of the nail clippers and took it to the front to pay.

The manager made it to the back just as we were checking out.

Cashier was chill about the clearly ripped packaging.

Nearing the end of our final day we made a trip to Ben & Jerry’s. We have purchased plenty of pints from them over the years, but this was fun to visit one of their storefronts.

The worker at this locastion was absolutely delightful.

The final visit before the NBA game was a second trip to Powell’s, the book store.

For the basketball game we had amazing seats and the game was very close. This one almost went into overtime.

I’d like to share a quick “Thank you.” to the folks who sell their tickets on reddit for a reasonable price when they are unable to attend and also to the venue for having a system that ensures tickets are transferred to the buyer.

A delightful event.

Here are some pictures we took while waiting for a train to take us back to our hotel.

We decided that these pictures would fit into a Beastie Boys music video.

Also: the train was very late.

We walked back to the hotel. (The train passed us as we were nearly back).

6.5 miles walked this day.

One thing that I have been struggling with when it comes to updating this blog is that Lauri takes much better photos than I do, but it is difficult to manage her photos as they do not use the same file naming system that my phone does.

I need to compress these images as I do not have much storage on this website and so this can mix up the picture order as well.

This is why the next few photos are shared out of order and are looking back and previous bits of this adventure

I believe this photo was the morning of our market visit.

For the life of me I do not know what a vegan square pie is.

Wait. Is that what is in these little counter displays?

That must be it.

Thrift/Vintage store.

Vinny runs this town:

The coffee shop from day one or two:

Here is a picture of the delightful game store that has one of the best selections of indie RPGs that I have ever witnessed.

We should probably take a moment to discuss Bullshit Bridge.

The middle section has a walking/bicycling path that is made of very thin metal with squishy stuff on top of it and a large gap that is very easy to see below to “the void.”

“It’s scary.” is what I’m trying to say, and the flimsy feeling material is bullshit.

Other bridges are better.

Union Station

Underground parties & WWII memorials:

Moda Center:

Pizza

And two more pictures of that first NBA game where we went in on great seats.

On Monday December 18th, 2023 we took the train to the airport (this time we didn’t pay due to technical issues again and I still have $5 on my transit card because of it).

A short layover in Los Angeles and then we returned to Austin and slept.

It was a good trip.

Also, Keanu says “Hi.”