Portland, Oregon -- a cooler, wetter Austin

I (Dustin) flew out of Seattle for Taipei on Tuesday, September 21, 2010. I flew back into Portland, Oregon on Friday, September 24, 2010. Kim drove the Seattle-to-Portland leg by herself--the only part of the trip so far that I've missed!

Kim picked me up from PDX, navigated by our friend and host, Kees (pronounced, "Case"). We spent Friday and Saturday nights with Kees and Kirsten, loving their tech- and book-savvy home. Once again, our hosts have an awesome basement. Yeesh. We need to get one of those...

My head was all messed up from the time travel back and forth across the international date line. So we took it easy Friday night, having pizza and beer and watching a sci-fi thriller in Kees and Kirsten's movie cave.

We slept in, and got a late start on Saturday morning. Breakfast at Toast was outstanding, and then we spent most of the day with our hosts driving us around Portland's best scenic over looks. Here we are, with the majestic, snow capped Mount Hood over Kim's right shoulder.

At 11,249 feet, Mount Hood towers over the rest of the landscape. Here in the Fall, before the heavy winter snows, Hood's glaciers have retreated to their smallest, but are still quite impressive.

Toward the north, we have a brilliant view of Mount St. Helens. It's a little more rounded on the top, ever since the enormous eruption of 1980.

Satisfied with our 360 degree views of Portland, Mount Hood, and Mount St. Helens, we headed for another hillside where we spotted a medieval revival of sorts.

Kim says, "At least this time around they were only yielding swords made from cardboard paper towel rolls covered in duct tape. I think it's nice that these people found each other and can spend their Saturday sharing their passion for history...medieval war time isn't really my thing, but if there's anyone out there that wants to dress up in Victorian clothes and have tea and crumpets in the park...let me know! "

Then, Kees and Kirsten took us to a really cool local video store. The owner of the shop collects props, costumes, and memorabilia from real movies. This Fu Dog was in the mansion on the set of Citizen Kane.

Here are a couple of Mike Meyers' Austin Powers costumes.

And this is the graphic prop for the kid that John Travola's character accidentally shoots in the back of the car in Pulp Fiction.

So our hosts rented a couple of movies and we headed back home for a matinée, the excellent Pixar film, Up.

Kim writes about Kees and Kirsten's fun loving pets... "This is Lola...seriously the sweetest, most affectionate dog I've ever met! She is such a snuggle bug. She parked her self right up against me while we watched Up! and the season premiere of The Office and insisted that I scratch her chin. It was so nice to be in the company of some friendly furry animals. They also have another super sweet dog named, Tucker and three equally adorable and friendly cats. They also have at least 4 snakes, but I didn't get to know them very well as I am deathly afraid of SNAKES! eeek! They looked really cool though!"

Later that evening, Kees' friend Doug came over and they taught us how to play a board game called Settlers of Catan. We had a few hours of good, wholesome fun, drinking local Portland brews and completely dorking out around a board game. Check out Kim's t-shirt above, which says "Talk nerdy to me". :-) I love it!

Sunday morning, once again, we slept in and then went to the Sunday Market downtown. We each had our own brunch of choice at our selected cart cuisine. Kim and Kirsten opted to peruse the booths, shopping for crafts and whatnot. Kees and I bailed, and went to an old-school arcade, where we played pinball, Area 51, Streetfighter, and a handful of other 80's and 90's vintage arcade games. On our walk there, we passed through Chinatown, which, ironically looked more Chinese than most of Taipei.

After Sunday Market, we visited another friend and coworker of ours in the Portland area, Bryce, and his family. We were quite jealous that they have their very own real pumpkin growing in their backyard!

As if that weren't enough, they also have a Doctor Who style phone booth filled to the brim with board games. Having had considerable fun the night before learning to play Settlers of Catan, Kim and I were keen to learn another new game.

All too appropriately, we played a game called Trans America. Being the expert travelers we now are, you might think we would have cleaned house. Alas, that wasn't in fact the case. No, I lost pretty spectacularly. But it was quite a bit of fun playing a game on a map of the United States, laying rail through dozens of the cities that Kim and I have visited over the last few months. It gave me a renewed appreciation of how far we've traveled, and how many miles we still have to go!

On Sunday night, Kees and Kirsten took us to a friend's house to watch the season premier of Dexter. Awesome!

I spent my week working with several of my Canonical co-workers who joined me in Portland for a sprint. Kim enjoyed seeing Portland with her friends, Kirsten and Patty.

On Monday night, Kim and I accompanied Kees, Kirsten, Steve, Patty, and Doug to trivia night at a local club (not a pub -- ask me some time and I'll fill you in on the difference with this place). We knew in advance that the theme for one of the four rounds would be Star Wars, and that was quite exciting :-) We were a little disappointed with our Star Wars round, but still we were good enough to win first prize ($25 cash, actually)! We had a lot of fun.

Kim writes, "While Dustin worked during the week, Kirsten and Patty took extra good care of me and showed me all around town and entertained me all week long with fun girly activities! One of our first stops was the Pittock Mansion, which was the home of the owner of the Oregonian newspaper. It was an extremely beautiful mansion with many rooms to ogle at."



Kim continues, "This is the view from the other side of that lovely picture window. The music room was amazing! Hey ladies, I wonder if we could rent the space for our Victorian, costumed tea party?"

The gardens were very beautiful, too.

On Tuesday night, we joined my Canonical co-workers for dinner and beer at the warm and friendly Deschutes Brewery in downtown Portland. I really enjoy their Cascade Pale Ale, but I had a few of their other brews less frequently exported.

Our friends in Portland arranged an open invitation to a number of Linux and Free Software people in the area. A smattering of Canonical and former IBM co-workers joined us at the Lucky Lab brewery for another night spent in the Portland way. Well, we spent the night in the Portland way -- that is enjoying locally brewed, fermented, carbonated beverages. Kim, however, was spirited off with the rest of the girls to a local drag queen comedy show!

Kim says, "While the guys went 'beering' the ladies went to Darcelle's 'That's no lady, that's Darcelle XV'. She's almost 80 years old and still preforming several times a week. It was a lot of fun to see Darcelle and the other ladies perform their musical debuts. Even though it was mostly very silly and funny, you could really hear the sincerity in her voice when she talked about how much she enjoys putting these shows on. It was quite touching, surprisingly enough! I would recommend a visit if you're ever in the area."

We picked up the girls a few hours later. It sounds like they had a lot of fun.

I was stuck deep in the belly of a giant office building with bad lighting and worse WiFi. Kim, however, enjoyed some of the bluest skies Portland has seen in September. The weather was just spectacular. This octagonal shaped building provides some amazing views of the entire Columbia River Gorge.

The Gorge...

The girls also visited Multnomah Falls, which claims to be the second tallest waterfall in the United States. I visited Multnomah Falls some years ago, and really enjoyed it. I talked it up to Kim quite a bit, and I think it still lived up to its billing.

They also drove most of the way up Mount Hood, and visited Timberline Lodge. For the third time on this very trip, we were told about a building that was used in the filming of The Shining. (We heard very similar stories in Estes Park about the Stanley Hotel, and in Montana about another lodge in Glacier Park.) I had come to believe that locals in all mountain towns just point visitors at large mountain-side lodges and claim some link to The Shining. However, we did verify at IMDB that all three of the referenced lodges in Estes Park, Glacier, and Mount Hood were in fact used in The Shining. Hmmph!

Here's the peak of Mount Hood from up close. There's no way that this photograph can even remotely do justice to the incredible size of this crag. These glaciers are positively enormous, and you're looking at thousands of feet right here.

I'll try to dig up some winter time pictures of Hood (I've been skiing here 3 times). It's a gorgeous mountain!

From Hood, you can see many of the other peaks in the Cascades range, such as Mount St. Helens, Mount Washington, Mount Adams, Mount Bachelor, and the Three Sisters. Kim took this picture, and I'm not exactly sure which of them this is :-) It's pretty nonetheless.

The fall foliage is just starting to turn colors. Check out the size of this leaf :-)

Life is hard being a door knocker. Your name, "knocker" is unfortunate enough. Your purpose in life is to bang your ring against yourself, which is really quite noisy and probably unpleasant. Left outside to fight the elements of extreme cold, heat, moisture, and rust. And all of that just was enough. No, the girls had to go and take pictures of themselves digging in your nose. Ask Rodney Dangerfield about getting some respect...

From Timberline Lodge, you can see a few stats about the mountain.

During the day on Thursday, Kim ran a few errands (like getting new tires on the Jeep, and doing laundry).

Thursday night, we attended another pub quiz at a sports bar. I was excited that they were showing the Texas A&M vs. Oklahoma State game on ESPN. I was not so excited about the disappointing result. We did win trivia night again (this time winning 10 mini-bottles of Jim Beam bourbon whiskey). Some of the questions were recycled from Monday night, actually, which took a little of the wind out of sails in celebrating our "victory". Oh well...

Friday was another long work day for me. Kim went to the outlet mall with Kirsten. After I finished my work day, we left Portland.

Having spent a full seven days there, it was one of our longest stops of the trip. This was also the fourth different city where I've met up with Kees along the trip -- Prague, Boston, Chicago, and now Portland. (This ties Tim's set -- Prague, Jackson Hole, Helena, and Taipei). Portland is almost a second (or third) home to me at this point. I like almost as much as Austin. I think it would be nice to spend summers in Portland, and the rest of the year in Austin, actually ;-)

We left Portland in the early evening heading south toward Crater Lake for the weekend.

Thanks Kees and Kirsten for hosting us! And a big thanks to Kirsten and Patty for showing Kim around Portland. It was great catching up with everyone we saw while we were up there ;-) Cheers!

:-Dustin