P-Town Adventure

Ash....

That was the sound of me standing up and stretching gracefully as the sun poured into my room yesterday morning...bright and early...ten a.m.

My good friend and soon to be co-worker Brian Rach and I had decided the night before last that a day trip to Portland was well needed, and totally doable. So, we filled up his 2001 Hyundai Elantra at the Space-Age gas station on Eleventh and Wal-Mart st. in west Eugene and headed out onto the freeway to begin our adventure.

We drove about forty minutes with the Fascination 1 c.d. playing in the background. Fascination 1 is an incredible worship c.d. put out by Ihop (not the pancake house, the prayer house). We jammed out and head banged to that for a while before realizing that neither one of us had eaten anything, all morning. "Ouch" I said as my stomach growled fiercely. "Oh" Brian grunted with authority as we decided to take the next exit where we would venture off to find the A.W. that the sign said existed. (I am a bit of a skeptic of the validity of those 'restaurant' signs, my hearts been broken to many times on family road trips. 'McDonalds' ahead, then we go, and the McDonalds is a Jiggles Bar and Grill. Yeah, I hate the Highway Maintenance Staff, they lie!)

We soon departed after waiting a few minutes for them to partially cook the kelp or hamburger or whatever the piece of meat was they were attempting to grill was. I didn't really care, Brian and I pounded our burgers down quickly and continued in the head banging and rockin' in the tradition of awesome road trips.

We arrived in P-Town some time after 1pm. Our first mission was to find ourselves a place to park. We found a little pull in garage only a block from Powell’s Book Store. Neither one of us really cared how much the parking would cost us. We both just came from cities this summer where parking was well over $30 for the day. So, we knew it wouldn't be that much, so we didn't care. (I was in Munich; he was in New York City.)

We strolled over to Powell's and spent well over an hour just walking around ooing and awing and the awesome display of literary supplies. I could seriously put up a tent in that place and stay there forever. I was absolutely amazed and just how much one person could learn by spending a few hours daily reading. Politics, arts, science, history; their is seriously endless potential. So much to know, so much to learn.

I bought a few winners myself. One about a guy who travels the states as a homeless person just to see what it’s like to be a transient. A test of faith to say the least. The other is a Penguin publishing bi-lingual short stories book (deutsch and english).

We then walked over to Stumptown Coffee House off Burnside and 3rd Avenue. Walking into this place was almost better then actually tasting the coffee. The twenty-something foot high ceiling and abstract art plastered across the modern style walls, the alarming amount of apple computers gave it a "Macintosh" commercial feeling. I felt right at home. I ordered a triple Americano and Brian ordered a large house coffee. We sat and rad out books for about an hour or so (downing our drinks like Kenny Rogers at Happy Hour) before I decided to buy a pound of the espresso whole bean coffee, "Hair Bender Blend."

Brian and I then frolicked over to where the car was parked and paid the comfortable $5.50 and drove up to 23rd street to do a little window shopping and dessert eating. One of our first stops was my absolute favorite gift shop in Portland, "WhAm!" This place has thousands and thousands of hilarious and artsy postcards. Everything from good clean fun to profanity filled "I hate you" cards, very exhilarating. I wanted to purchase this magnet with George Bush saying, "They misunderestimated me." Not because I don't like Bush, just because I realize my president couldn't win a spelling bee; that's all. Go George W!

Simple Misunderestimation.

We walked around a bit more before heading over to Papa Haydn’s Restaurant. I must honestly say I haven't been in a place that nice for years; it was super classy. And there's me, with my Dolce shades and my Munich Hard Rock Cafe t-shirt. I ordered some wildly delicious Georgian Peanut Butter something and Brian ordered some Strawberry delight thing. We drank coffee and talked about life and friendships. I spoke a bit about the frustrations of re-entry and he related it a little to his returning from Africa with YWAM some three or four years ago. Very interesting, very helpful.

After this we did some more window shopping and then jumped in the ol' green machine (Hyundai) and took off for Eugene. The road trip back was comfortable; laughing often at the crazy amount of cops out and laughing even harder at the people that were pulled over. "Sucks to be them...." "Yeah, sucks to be them." Good times.

So yeah, that was my trip. It was more fun than writing this obnoxiously long blog. Believe it or not...
You can leave a comment if you’re able to relate to sweet one day vacations; if not; please refrain from leaving me a comment. lol. That was a joke. Comment away.