Thirty Days in the Air

I’m not terribly good at taking pictures. Neither is the camera built into my cell phone.  As a result, I haven’t posted many photos.  Some of you may, in fact, be wondering whether any of this adventure is real or if I’m just sitting around at home, occasionally photoshopping myself into exotic locales.

Fair enough.

I offer into evidence this photo of me and my friend ileana.  It is bona fide in that a) she lives in Portland, and b) if I were going to photoshop myself into a picture with her, I’d shave and glamour-shot out the double chin.

This is us, atop Mt. Tabor in the middle of Portland.

And here’s what Portland looks like from there:

It sure is pretty.

So, we climbed a mountain, my right knee screaming the whole way up and worse on the way down.  What was that Einstein said about hot stoves and pretty girls?

We ate…..ugh….healthy…food….at a place called the Whole Bowl and it was actually pretty damn good.  It was a taco salad with brown rice at the bottom instead of mystery meat and I was full for hours afterwards.

Then on to a play reading at the Milagro theater where her boy and a few friends of hers were workshopping a piece called “Tio Pepe”.  To my South Texas ear, it was a little jarring to hear them pronounce the Spanish correctly instead of talking like Puerto Ricans, but the play is actually really well written and I could easily expect to see it finding its way onto the regional theater circuit…unless Jenny From The Block or somebody options it into a film.

Meh.

We went to a bar called the side door, where the tables were all doors…on their sides….and I drank too much Jameson.  Illy carted my drunk ass to her place where she had made me a bed in the basement.  Deepest sleep I’ve gotten the whole trip.  But I woke up to this:

which was a little disconcerting.  So we got coffee elsewhere and Illy dropped me off at the airport.

PDX is a great airport.  There’s food and souvenir shopping outside of security, there’s locally-owned fare available. There’s a 6′ blonde in the security line that I debated on pissing off on the off-chance of a pat-down….

Eh.  On to Long Beach.