wanted me to pick her up at work to go have lunch with her; it was something she had been reminding me of in the weeks and days leading up to our drive up, so of course I was not about to forget it. To make sure I got to her place of work, came along, navigating me through the back end of Nike’s buildings and across a few train tracks. See, the whole day was worked out so that we would get everything done in time for me to leave tomorrow. Of course, things not being equal, I added an extra night’s stay and as it turned out, it was probably an intelligent thing to do. After all, one does not drive ten-plus hours to only get in a single day of enjoyment. A drive like that requires more time in direct response to the sheer amount of having to move at seventy miles an hour on the interstate.

Before I left the Hilton, I removed the Do Not Disturb sign from the outside doorknob that Todd put there, as the housekeeper was right down the corridor. Todd was sprawled out on the bed in his PJs (polo shirt that he forgot to take off and underwear). I figured he would get a good scare when the housekeeper walked in on him like that. I died laughing, thinking about it on the way out. Anyway, we picked her up and brought her back to the International House of Pancakes. I haven’t been to an IHOP in a long time, as well. Since she had to be back at work, and we had plans to go back to the hotel to pick up Todd and actually go into Portland to do some sightseeing, we had to order fast and scarf down food so we could maintain our little timetable. We had to go to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry to pick up the tickets for the 1830 showing of Episode II on the OMNIMAX. In short, we had a long day ahead of us, thanks to ’s planning skills. In there, we were also going to drop off his car, then pick him up and go to Wunderland Avalon to play DDRMAX2, then go to Powell’s City of Books, meet there, wait for to get off of work. We did things in that order, following through a series of highways and streets in Portland. Todd and I kept looking around at everything, remarking about how it reminded us of a much flatter version of San Francisco. Especially with all the one-way streets and inability to make left turns to get to your destination, instead of making three right turns or right-left-left. It was kind of cool, though. I miss the chill in the air that San Francisco always seems to have. We dropped off his car at Lloyd Center, and then he guided us from the back seat to Avalon, where Todd and I used up some nickels nearly killing ourselves in playing DDRMAX2. We’re really off our game, considering that my feet cramped up in a much shorter amount of time than it usually did, but I was attributing that to the fact that I’ve been eating a lot more lately and not getting enough exercise. We don’t play DDR that much anymore these days.

After Avalon, we went straight to Powell’s and let me tell you about how huge this bookstore is. I counted three stories, and I only visited four out of the who-knows-how-many rooms they have. We entered through the Orange room, and ended up in Gold, where all the science-fiction books were, and that’s where I picked up A King’s Captain and Sea of Grey from the Alan Lewrie series. After that, Todd went up to the religion fiction section to see if they had any of the latest Peretti books in the Rose room. I ended up also getting the complete Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which also has all the other books written by Douglas Adams within that particular series. Todd, unable to find the book he was looking for, ended up getting a couple of Japanese language workbooks that I use at Foothill, to try and learn the language a little better. I think his primary motivation to learn is because of the fact that TokyoPop is just FUBAR’ing all of their titles to better accommodate American readers. Changing the names to Americanized ones is just enough to make me scream out loud, I mean, not even Viz does this. Thank the stars that they will leave the Japanese names alone for the subtitled/Japanese language edition. But meanwhile, the manga will undergo the change to tie-in with the Anime.

Once we had completed our purchases, we took them into the coffee room and sat down to await and . I had a hot chocolate which was way too hot for me to drink, so I had to steal ice cubes and put them in it to cool it down. took off to go get his car, and then a few minutes after he left, walked in from the street and sat down at our table as we waited for him to come back with his car. Then, we got a phone call from who said that the busses were running late and that she would have to catch the next one. Given the time we needed to get in line, we had to be out of Powell’s by around 1730 so we wouldn’t be too far back in line and could get good seats at the OMNIMAX theatre. As I was told at the very beginning of this little trip, the OMNIMAX theatre is a gigantic IMAX screen that is curved, so it presents itself as though you were looking at the inside of a bubble, where the film is placed for you viewing pleasure. I was pretty excited about this prospect of seeing this movie on such a screen, and as I was educated by the Portland-area natives, the good seats were as close to the projection box as possible. practically scaled the interior of the theatre to get us good seats, and since and were on their way in his car, we saved five seats so they would not have to go through the process of having to look for them. It was very cool to see all of the action sequences on that screen, but some of the dialogue scenes were really hard to watch. I mean, talk about gigantic close ups of Hadyn Christiansen… I don’t mind close ups of Natalie Portman, though. Down, boy! Ahem, anyway…

After the movie, we all split up. I took and Todd, while took back to his place. Now, told me how to get back to Beaverton, but uh… well, I got lost. You could probably read ’s journal to read her version of events, but let me just say that it was like driving with Todd and Todd’s female version in the car. “Okay, which way do we go to get back, now?” “Right, no wait, left… I think.” I may have seemed a little frustrated on the outside, but the truth was that I didn’t have to be anywhere that night and I don’t mind driving. However, I was a little afraid of getting lost and ending up in Seattle by accident. Not really wanting to drive there and back, I did want to be in the general Portland vicinity, and even though we double-backed a lot of times (hence triple and quadruple-backed) over the same roads to eventually get to our destination, we did eventually get to our destination, so it was all good in the end. At least we got to see Portland at night. We ended up getting food at the McDonald’s down the street from our hotel, and went back to the room and laughed about the drive while we ate. As for “Cochrane’s cars”, well, let me explain: We were driving down one of the roads that goes right into Beaverton, and down the road, I saw what I thought were the tail-lights of cars in front of us. Except, they were travelling up in a straight line and I swear they looked as though they were headed for the stars. I made a comment, “We gotta go up that?!” When I explained my incredulous tone, laughed and pointed out that they were towers, not cars. Hence the little in-joke.

Thus ended Day Two.

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I work twelve hour shifts, three days a week; those three days being Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I start at nine in the morning and get relieved at nine at night. So, Sunday night before we left on Monday morning, I got home and did whatever laundry I could prior to leaving. I did not sleep until almost midnight. The drive to Portland, according to the Mapquest map we printed out, suggested a drive time of around ten hours. Knowing the way that I drive, I figured we could come in under that. It was my intention to arrive in the Portland area around three in the afternoon, therefore our departure time had to be before five in the morning. This, of course, required us to be awake and somewhat coherent to walk out the door, and I allotted an hour of uptime in order to bring myself to a state of being capable of driving. Todd, on the other hand, stayed up all night playing Super Smash Brothers Melee on the Gamecube that I bought last week. He and Jody are absolutely insistent upon breaking that game apart and collecting as many of those trophies as possible. They’re getting pretty good at it, and usually if we play in versus mode, I’ll get my ass handed to me more often than not, but I’m starting to get back into the swing of things and learn as I go. I used to play the original Super Smash Bros on the N64, but this version is far superior than the original, not to mention all the neat little features and new characters you get to unlock.

We each packed a single backpack of clothes, enough for the intended three day-two night stay in Beaverton. I had planned on staying in Portland proper, but given the fact that most of the WNOHGB-ites lived outside of Portland, I opted to stay somewhere where perhaps I could depend on these three (, , and ) to guide me around and show me a little of the sights that I’ve been hearing about. When we arrived in Beaverton, we checked in to the Hilton Garden Inn. I’m a big fan of the Hilton chain, so I usually like to stay there whenever I go somewhere. It comes from having to go to as many Anime Expos as possible; each year I usually end up at either a Hilton or a Hyatt, both of which are really nice and usually pretty good about being understanding during some of the more difficult situations I’ve encountered with cash payments versus credit card payments. Anyway, the drive up was pretty uneventful, Todd slept some of the way but not all. We did get to see previously unexplored parts of Northern California (read: previously unexplored by me). When I drove to Seattle, I took US 101 most of the way up, because I wasn’t pressed for time. I recall the last time I drove it, it taking around twelve to thirteen hours thereabouts, and so I figured that since from the Oregon border to Seattle was only a couple of hours of drive time, that the figure of ten hours was a decent one to go on. Of course, we had our little problems along the way…

Southern Oregon is something I’ve never experienced before. I gassed up in Eureka the first time up, but this time, I was taken aback by the scenery to not realize that I needed gas right in the middle of Grant’s Pass. Grant’s Pass is up past Crater Lake, deep in the mountain range. I pulled over to this little podunk gas station and I experienced two things: mini-serve and hostility. Mini-serve, for the uninitiated, is something like full-serve at a gas pump, except it’s not. Simply put, you’re not allowed to pump your own gas in Oregon. This is something I’ve never experienced, because well, I didn’t gas up on Oregon last time through. I got out of the car to self-serve and the guy at the pump asked me what kind and how much. I just said, with the startled expression on my face, “Premium, and fill ‘er up.” All right, no problem. I did, however, really need to stretch my legs. So I got out of the car, stretched, grabbed my jacket and my ballcap (both of which were San Francisco Giants paraphernalia) and put them on as the winds gusts started to kick up and it was an overcast day. As he gets done filling my gas tank and bringing my the credit slip to sign, two hicks pull up in this beat-up old Volkswagon Rabbit, with a “permanent disabled” license plate on the front. The driver pokes his head out of the car, with his grizzled looks and unkempt hair and ratty red ballcap with a tractor logo on it, and through missing teeth (I shit you not), asks me which way I’m headed: north or south. I replied, “North,” and proceeded to sign the credit slip. The guy then retorts to the both of us, the mini-serve guy included, now that Todd had come back from the bathroom, “I wouldn’t do no business from nobody from San Francisco and California.” I did the only thing I could think of: I laughed. It was right out of a movie, but then I guess art imitates life. I simply had no idea, and I’m not even sure right now if the guy was simply being jovial in his own way or whether or not he was just being the stereotypical asshole. Either way, it was an unnerving experience, as down in the Bay Area, you just don’t find too much intolerance, jokingly or otherwise. We got back on the road, and made it all the way up on that tank of gas and pulled into Beaverton at just after 1530 PST.

The check-in process was incredibly simply and when we got to our room, the first thing we did was flop onto our respective beds and relax and revel in the fact that we had a room that came with a mini-fridge and a microwave oven. The possibilities were endless, and we were looking forward to making full use of the amenities soon enough. I gave a call, first, to let him know that we were in town, finally, and he came over within minutes, ’s son Jaxom in tow. We met and greeted, made the necessary introductions, and then he had to leave to go pick up herself. was still at work, apparently, but would meet us later at Benihana’s, where I had intended to take everyone out to dinner, except that Todd had had only an hour of sleep in the last thirty-six, and promptly crashed out on his bed in under an hour after we arrived. He made a single request of a to-go order, which I was only happy to fulfill. We met at his apartment, and he took us across the street to Uwajiyama’s, a grocery store/indoor mall-type kind of like Mitsuwa’s back home. Inside there was a Kinokuniya bookstore and since Oregon has no sales tax… I went hog wild. I pikec up Inu Yasha volumes 2 through 7, Chobits 1-5 and 7 (they didn’t have volume 6 in stock), the first two translated volumes of Saint Tail for Todd, and the latest Mai Kuraki album. After the spending binge, we hit one of the Coffee People places to sit and chat before we had to go over to Benihana’s for our reservation at 1930. I hadn’t been to a Benihana’s since my birthday. I miss the massive portions of meat and shrimp and banana tempura, along with all the birthday wackiness and singing. Of course, now I’ve been to four Benihana’s… Cupertino, San Francisco, Anaheim, and now Beaverton. I’m supposed to visit the Denver one when I fly out there next year. Everyone had a good time, including Jaxom. I ordered myself the good ol’ Imperial Steak, cooked medium rare, and I got Todd his Splash and Meadow cooked medium well to take home, plus the delicious fried rice and some shrimp sautee. Of course, when and I returned to the hotel room to sit and chat for a bit, Todd’s snoring drove us out of the room and out walking and exploring the various floors of the hotel. By the time I took her home and got back, I was so exhausted that I could barely keep my eyes open and fell asleep as Todd abused his access to the Cartoon Network all night.

Day Two coming soon.

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