What did you do in Portland, Jess?

I went shopping.

Yes, on Wednesday, my second proper day in Portland, I discovered the Lloyd Center and didn't look back.

But let's look back for a moment, at the highlights of the past three days:

Wednesday

I woke up with Kev at about 7am so we could have complimentary breakfast goether before he nicked off to OSCON. Well! I would have been quite happy to never leave the Arcadian Gardens Room ever again - the eye-popping range of foods available were, well, eye-popping! Pancakes, tater-tots, scrambled eggs, french toast, custom eggs, custom omelets, fresh fruit, yoghurt, toast, scones, bagels, muffins, jams, jellies, juices, soft drinks, teas and coffees, cereals... And I've probably only covered about 50% of the choices I was faced with. From memory, I had tater-tots, scones (with jam and butter), a bagel (see scone toppings), an apple, lots of apple juice, and I tried to eat a tub of strawberry yoghurt but it was far too sugary.

Kev then went off to the geek-fest and I went back to bed til noon. This became the norm for the stay in Portland.

I then headed off, as planned, to the Japanese Gardens to do some study. When I reached Washington Park, I looked on a map and the Japanese Gardens were a fair hike from the train stop. I already had small blisters from my sandals and it was a stinking hot day. So I decided to park my buttocks under a tree near the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, and spent an hour reading my Drama reader. I had to keep shifting into the shade cos the pesky sun was trying to have its way with me.

After a while I was feeling way too hot so I packed it in and hopped back on the train. I planned to go to the Chinese Gardens but upon arrival I see that there's an entry fee of $7. Guess what my response was to that? So since I'm close already, I head out to the shopping centre, the Lloyd Center, near the convention centre Kev is at, cos I want to buy t-shirts.

A summary of the randomness of that day:

• I was asked to do a paid survey about mascara. We get through all the screening questions and then the bright spark tells me that she'll give me a mascara and I'm to come back in a week and do another survey... After laughing off her embarrassment when I tell her I won't be in the country next week, we go and do a potato chip packaging survey (snore) which takes 30 minutes because she's new (double snore). She gives me $5 and I tell her that all American potato chips are crap and she should import Red Rock Deli chippies.
  
  
• I buy an uber-cutesy top from a trashy store call Rave or something, and the shopgirl coos about my accent and "just has to ask" whether massive spiders really live in our shoes. I fight the temptation and set her straight, though I do mention the huntsman with a 30cm diameter we found on our window one day. I show her its size with my hands, to which she almost squeals, "Is that just its body???"
  
  
• I find a somewhat trashy store and manage to scoop up 4 tops that are cheap and look half-decent on me. Everything over here is mega-skimpy, mega-long and/or mega-transparent. Also, big breasts must be unheard of in the Caucasian community, since most tops are cut and detailed in ways that only really fit, well, boys. This would also explain the reaction of some men to my singlet top...
  

Malls stay open until 9pm here, so I finished shopping at about 7:30pm, which felt like 5pm to me, just by the fact that I was shopping and all... Got home late, and Kev and I had room service for the second night in a row. Disappointing, twice.

Best thing of the day: I SAW A SQUIRREL!!! Shame I don't have a camera... It kinda looked like a rat with a frothy tail and subtle cuteness dressing. I would say I want one, but the piggies are cuter.

Thursday

Scones, tater-tots and juice for brekkie, then snoozing til 1:30pm or something equally ludicrous. I thought about going to the Portland Brewer's Festival but the map I have suggests that it's a long walk, and it's already hot out. So I go somewhere with guaranteed A/C - the Lloyd Center.

• Ever since I lived at Farrer Hall, I always associated ultra-faded blue jeans with hot American girls. So Wednesday was my "find great-fitting almost-white jeans or die trying" day. I tried Sears, I tried American Eagle, blah blah blah, and then I find Aeropostale. I don't have any clue whether Aeropostale is cool or junky, but it's very American - close-fitting sporty ('preppy'?) clothes. After a slightly hilarious discussion with the shopgirl about sizes (it only works if you hear it), I find THE JEANS. I try them on, scared that the marked size is going to prove too small, but they're not too small at all. They're snug (but stretch jeans always give a bit) and low-riding but they're SO CUTE that I have to have them! So I hide them at the bottom of the pile and go away to think about it - they're marked at $50, so...
  
  
• I go next door into Torrid, a plus-size store that has an incredible goth range but everything else is really chunky and shapeless, and most stuff doesn't have my size (I'm a zero???).
  
  
• Motivated by the existence of a store in which everything is too big for me, I go back and buy the jeans. Along the way I notice a "$20 off the tagged price" sign, so yay!
  
  
• I do my good turn for the day - I go to Subway for lunch and the girl who has just paid for her meal forgets her drink, which the shopgirl is pouring. The shopgirl realises and starts hollering "EXCUSE ME" in a way that I think only an American can, but the customer doesn't notice. After a few rounds of screams I go over to the customer and let her know she forgot her drink. Does she thank me? Heck no. But I feel like a good sheila anyway.
  
  
• I get to double-dip on good samaritanism: while eating my lunch in a lounge above the ice rink in the shopping mall, an African-American girl about my age asks a lady sitting next to me if she can "write some things" on her phone for her. The lady doesn't know how to sms so the girl looks to me and I wave her over. She gets me to type out "applications are on the computers" and she then takes the phone back and stays by me while she types out "if u are going for a job here". She had trouble spelling "are", quite an awkward experience for me as she sort of shouted at her phone trying to write the word. She offers to me "Is A-R 'are'?" so I help her. She then finishes her message and walks off, slipping me a muffled "thank you" as she leaves.
  

I feel like a swim, but decide to wait for Kev. I watch crap TV in the meantime, but while I flip channels I spot a familiar face - Dan O'Connor, who I met last year during Spontaneous Global Combustion. I watch the last part of his commercial for 'Dial', possibly some sort of manly ashershave or something. Very odd ad - all I remember are men standing the background chanting "manly men" or something...

Kev's gets home late, we go for dinner at "Schmick & McCormick's Seafood Restaurant" - excellent clam chowder, crap calamari. We're then too full to swim, so we watch X-Files and go to sleep.

Friday

Ooooh, our final day in Portland, what should I do?? Should I go to the Brewer's Festival, even without any intention to pay for and therefore drink beer? Or should I fork out $7 to see the Chinese Gardens which I shunned on Wednesday?

I go shopping.

But first I have breakfast (scones and tater-tots again) and sleep until 11:30am (better...). I then pack our bags up all nice, and watch some sort of sitcom channel (back-to-back Drew Carey followed by back-to-back Yes Dear followed by Home Improvement, which was probably also back-to-back...) by which time it is 1pm, and Kev is supposed to be home at 1:30-2pm. So I decide to wait for him and we'd go to the Lloyd Center together to buy light shoes to match my light jeans.

At 2:10pm Kev calls to say he's taken a Geek High Priest to lunch and he'll be done in about an hour.

Considerate, huh?

So we plan to meet at 3pm outside the Lloyd Center. I manage to scope out the shoes before I go back out to meet Kev. We go back in and I buy pink shoes.

I own pink shoes.

Then we go to Denny's because I really wanted to go to some ultra-American burger place while I still could. I was impressed, since I was expecting a McDonalds-esque fast food place. But this place was much nicer (still white trash, but eh) and I even got to have a specialty soft drink mixer called a Fizzy Navel. Oooh, and an "only in America" peanut butter pie! And I also had a cheeseburger.

So now we're back at the hotel, Kev is snoozing off his post-geek-orgy low. We're going to check out Theatresports at The Brody Theater if they're not sold out, and I also want to get in a swim before we leave, but bathers drying time is getting shorter and shorter... Might have to wait until we're at the Hawk Lake cottage in Canada, which isn't such a bad thing.

Our flight tomorrow is at 6am so that will be... interesting...

Another night, another state.

The drive back from Olympia was quite nice. We stopped at Centralia, a town of factory outlets, and found a Levi's outlet. I bought myself a nice pair of jeans for US$27 inc tax, and Kev scored two pairs of jeans and two t-shirts for about US$80 all up. We can already see that we’ll have trouble packing everything into our already expanded suitcases and bags, though from the looks of things it won’t be because of all MY purchases… I will be doing some shopping during this trip though since the more clothes of my own I try and wear, the more I see that my stuff is too big for me now. I’ll just have to be careful of the cost – I’m hoping to stick to factory outlets etc., like the Levi's one so that I am actually getting good deals on things. Meanwhile the weather has been quite warm, too warm really, so I can live in skirts – they take longer to become ‘too big’ so they mostly still fit. I am running out of t-shirts and shirts fast though.

Getting into the city of Portland was a bit mad because we were running late for Kev’s 1pm tutorial (we’re in Portland so he can attend the OSCON = Open Source conference = geek orgy). The blocks in Portland are tiny so what I thought would be a good 10 minute drive down the freeway took about 2… And then we had to make our way up through the city, which is peppered with one-way roads and sporadic construction areas. But we got to our hotel shortly before 1pm, got all checked in and deposited our baggage, before Kev fled off to get the tram out to the conference centre (at the Lloyd Center for those of us who might want to look it up). I was left to entertain myself for 4.5 hours.

I looked at a map, saw that Chinatown was close to our hotel (Embassy Suites, very awesome, I feel like a cashed-up bogan) so I wandered up. Yeah, um, not so much Chinese, a bit more of a lean towards Dodgy-ese… Lots of strip clubs, strange blank buildings, odd looking men very keen to say hello… So I did a bit of an about-face after a few blocks, got back to the main road near the hotel, and opened up the map again.

A guy pushing his bike saw me staring at my map, and came over to ask if I was lost. I said I was “just browsing” but he didn’t hear me cos he was on his phone via hands-free (which I didn’t immediately realise, causing a moment of “oh yay another nutter ESCAPE!”). He asked where I wanted to go, and since I didn’t really know I was all like “uh, shopping or whatever” and he was all like “shopping for what?” and I said like “like clothes and stuff, whatever” and yeah. So he said, “Well, I can point you to a shopping centre, actually I’m going there now so I’ll walk you.” Considering the scariness of Chinatown this guy was relatively harmless so I went with it.

He had a strange accent, so when he said his name I pretty much missed it. It was something like Ronaldo, so let’s call him that, shall we? We chatted as we walked, with Ronaldo pointing out interesting things like an Irish pub and dropping in anecdotal tidbits such as “On St. Patrick’s Day they close off this entire street and it’s a huge party. Sometimes people die, like the real Ireland.” I giggled, but he didn’t notice… He asked me about myself – he was surprised when I said I was from Australia, revealing a hearing aid which had stopped him picking up my accent. I told him I was learning to be a drama teacher, which for some reason inspired him to start gushing about Plato’s “The Apology” for about 5 minutes. That tangent is as yet unjustified…

We reached the downtown shopping centre area where we had to part ways. Before we awkwardly said goodbye he managed to slip into the convo that he often sold items via ebay to Australia, especially when he sells Vietnam war memoriabilia. And then he reveals that his latest sale involved a Nazi war helmet, and admits that maybe it wasn’t an appropriate sale to make… With that he removes his bike helmet to reveal a kippah… Yes, ethics, interesting.

I say farewell to my lovely deaf Jewish ex-Mexican friend Ronaldo and walk pretty much straight home to the hotel as the heat is exhausting. I decide that since I’m already sweaty I may as well check out the fitness room at the hotel. I enjoy impressing a couple of 50 year old business men by performing sit-ups while brandishing large hand weights , but the rest of the session is dull as the machines are squeaky and the weights machine is hard to adjust. So I go back to my room and shower.

My final adventure for the day was to go to a nearby Subway. The lady behind the counter was inspirationally bubbly in a very focused and intelligent way. I love those people. She comments on my accent (I’ll eventually get used to people finding it so interesting… and then I will use it to manipulate them). I delight in confusing her by asking for ‘capsicum’, but the man in line behind me explains that I’m really asking for “green peppers, capsicum is what they call it Down Under.” The woman is overjoyed in learning a new word. (Kevin has gone to the same Subway for dinner tonight, I’ve worded him up that if he is served by the same woman, he should order capsicum and watch her response).

On my way home, I saw a transvestite. A bad one. Askew black bob, black halter dress that barely covers his underwear, really rough face… And the grumpiness of his expression made me wonder whether this was a life choice, or perhaps this was the American equivalent of a “nuddy lap” after losing a game of pool.

So this is Portland. I’m here for 3 more days. I think tomorrow I’ll go do some Uni study in the famous Japanese Gardens.

It begins

Short note on the trip so far:

Sydney Airport - Crapness the first: our plane arrived very late so we were BORED for ages. The captain continually assured us during the flight that he planned to make up the time so we would arrive as scheduled. I also felt really sick during this stopover, I was worried I was getting the flu but I seem to be ok.

Honolulu - well, a stopover we weren't told about until mid-flight. Fun. It was special to see and feel the atmosphere though, but as we were already running late there was no time to stop. Crapness the second: Kevin managed to lose his passport, our boarding passes, itinerary and luggage tags while we were waiting for our bags. To quote Mr. 'This always happens', "I was holding it in my hand and I probably just forgot I was holding it and dropped it." After 15 minutes of freaking out and informing staff and hunting under carousels, Kevin finds said documentation in the side of his laptop case. New rule #1: Let Jess know where you are stashing important documents, BEFORE you stash them.

Los Angeles - we had 45 minutes before our connection to Portland departed. Strictly speaking we'd already missed it cos you have to check in an hour before departure... I tell Kev that we should run for our connection and then send for our luggage, but instead we sit and wait for it to come through to us. With about 20 minutes before departure we get our luggage and try and find the Alaska Airlines departures. LAX is disgusting, so badly laid out and signposted. And the elevators are unforgivably slow. We get to check in with about 10 minutes before departure, and are of course told that we are too late. The next plane to Portland is in the morning, and Qantas is to put us up in a hotel as it is their fault. We try to find a Qantas customer service desk, but there's nothing but ticket counters with hundreds of people queued up. Kev gets in line and about 30 mintes later gets to talk to someone. There are 4 others from our flight who have also missed their connections, so that was somewhat comforting. After about an hour we get a hotel coupon, and grab a shuttle to the Marriott.

LA part 2 - Crapness at least the third - we get to the Marriott and stagger with our bags to reception, only to be told "Err, I think you have the wrong hotel". There are a few Marriotts about, so the reception girl calls through the the 'financial third party' that they use in these cases to ensure the airports pay for the rooms. The third party informs her that no such booking was made through them whatsoever... We stand around for about 30 minutes and then give up and go to the hotel sports bar and have typical American fare, including muchos fries and bottomless soft drink. We go back to reception and three others in our situation have decided to pay for the rooms and hope for reimbursement, so we do the same. The room was gorgeous but it's already midnight and our flight is at 7am so we have a quick shower then collapse.
Our alarm was set for 4:45am but apparently Kev's watch was only partially set to our new time zone. We wake up at 5:30am and freak. A slip has been pushed under our door to say that Qantas has reimbursed Kev's credit card, so check-out is easy and we quickly get the shuttle bus to the airport. Check in etc is fairly easy, though by the time we get to the gate it's about to close so there was a last minute realisation panic of 'shit we nearly missed it again...' We also had to upgrade to first class cos there weren't any other seats together, so that was nice and only US$50.

Portland - we get to Portland, "the big city with the small town feel", and contact Nathan, Kev's friend who owns a B&B that we'll be staying in up in Olympia, Washington (where the State Capitol building is.) He begins to drive down, a 90 minute drive, but then we decide to hire a car and drive ourselves so we call and let him know. The car is expensive but Sitepoint will cover it.

Olympia - the drive was nice (US radio sucks though) and the B&B is gorgeous. We went out for lunch and dinner with Nathan, Kasey and Hayden (a girl, might be spelled differently) and had a nap in the afternoon. It's soooo hot though, really muggy. Apparently the US is experiencing a record heatwave but it's on its last legs now.

I hope to send updates every few days if interesting things happen. In the meantime, it's snoozeville for me. Kev is also keeping his blog up-to-date with our adventures, so if you want to see his spin on things, check out http://yesimcanadian.com He is also using our travel photos in his blog, so you really should have a squiz. You know you want to.

Jessi