Three years ago our friend Brian went on a one month road trip across America. When he got back to New Jersey we invited him over to share his tales from the road, and that he did - He told us about a hundred stories that night and showed us even more photos. What I remember most from his stories:
-A photo of him jumping on what looked to be the edge of a cliff in the Grand Canyon
-A story where he attended a powwow with some weird hippie dude who ran a hostel he stayed at
-A photo of him holding a cougar cub as big as your average cat.
-And when he proclaimed “Portland is a cool city. It’s like a city made up of a bunch of rejects from other cities and they’re all just living and doing things and wahwahhaahahaa…” and he kept going on in his Brian language and using hand motions I don’t always understand.

Brian has a lot of time to go in his head and think and come back with well thought-out opinions on just about everything in life. Then he tells me “hey Katie, go see this movie, it is good.” and I go see it and hey, it’s good! So I trust Brian’s opinion most of the time and feel quite inspired by him after we hang out (which doesn’t happen often enough these days). So of course after hearing all about his road trip I realized that a road trip was probably the thing for me.

Brian’s definition of Portland sounded great! And on our long list of things to do and places to see, Portland was first on my list. As the road trip neared, I realized I was growing out of Montclair and maybe it was time to find a new place to live. So the search began: I would love to live in New York City but I refuse to live in the semi-affordable Brooklyn and I don’t believe I’ve got the money or balls to make it in Manhattan. Boston is too Boston (it’s the only way to describe it, go there and see for yourself), Chicago is cool and all but it’s too cold (actually it was really warm when we were there, I just hear about the cold), Cleveland is bleeeaaahhhghhhhh, Milwaukee is too drunk and iPhone droppy (well, for me it was), and Minneapolis is just too cool for us losers. Perhaps, I thought, I am one of those other-city rejects who would fit right in, in Portland, Oregon.

Hopes were high when we drove into the city almost two weeks ago.

“Holy crap Mark! Are those purple mountains….majesty??” So I looked up the lyrics and then tried to figure out where the purple mountains mentioned in the song are located. I still am not sure. These looked purple to me.

If you’re road tripping across America, I’ve got to tell you the #1 best thing about the whole journey is seeing landscapes you’ve never seen before.

So my tip to you would be to drive the most during the day. Almost 90% of the time Mark is driving, I am entertained by the landscapes to my right. (This is the Gorge, going into Portland). Have a camera handy.

We spent about a week in the city but only four of those days were spent exploring the place (the others were spent being a baby in the T@B for a day, working the next, and waking up too late the day after that). The whole area is really beautiful, and the weather was AWESOME, so obviously these were working in Portland’s favor that week.

Who could resist falling in love with a city after finding the gigantic farmer’s market, in a good looking neighborhood, in light-jacket weather with the leaves falling all around like that. “Okay, I think we can move here.” “Katie, you haven’t even seen the rest of it yet.” Mark kept on letting me know he was not as impressed with Portland, he’s hard to convince and this is one of many reasons we go well together, I am good at convincing people.

Oh cool, look Mark, a guy playing the sax - that is sooo cool, Portland is great!

Look Mark, peppers in every color! You love peppers and they just so happen to have the best ever right here in Portland!!

A subway that drives on the street?! Mark, that is so awesome!!! Look!

I had enough of trying to convince him, he’ll come around. I wasn’t quite sure I was ready to pick Portland yet either…

….until the Saturday Market!!!

They sell a bunch of overpriced stuff from other countries, like scarves that should only cost $2 but sell for $11.

And on the other side they’ve got a bunch of artists selling their products.

Oh, they’re not all like this guy, he is just freeloading on the sidewalk. On this side artists rent tents for $45 a day (Saturday and Sunday) and sell enough of their work to support themselves. It’s just about the greatest thing I’ve ever heard! Of course I have no photos of this because I was too busy getting excited about how they were making a living.

Mark mentioned that we met a gal (and a guy?) no older than ourselves, who run WardrobeInk.com. And the artist that the girl is, she is already bored of screen printing tshirts and is looking to move on to work on other projects. I think that’s fantastic.

After being stuck in the western part of the mid-West for about three weeks, we were really craving some good food. Mid-westerners eat a bunch of fried junk and after about a week of trying to survive on that, we gave up and made dinner in the T@b most of the time. Ugggh, no more fried food EVER. I googled “vegetarian portland” and found out they’ve got a lot to choose from!

Mark was very happy about this.

We ate in about seven or eight different restaurants that week and went into the next week’s budget (and maybe the week after that.) Just kidding, we don’t have a budget, I just know I will have $0 by the end of December, that’s my budget.

At every restaurant we found that although the food was delicious, the waiter or waitress was the worst ever. It wasn’t until our last day in Portland that we came across a waitress who actually cared about her tips (not that we would ever tip anyone under 20%, we’ve both waited on tables before and know the pain). It was a very weird phenomenon, if anyone else has experienced this blasé attitude in waiters in Portland, let me know.

Down one block, Portland was all about these stores - like an antique market where a bunch of vendors come in and sell their stuff in one big market, only these stores were filled up with vintage/retro things that were surprisingly not overpriced (at least, compared to NY.)

We spent most of our days walking around the city (which is more like a town), finding shopping districts, looking in stores and handing out Emotibles. I thought it would be rough handing them out in Portland because, although it’s a city made up of other city’s rejects, they all happen to be a bunch of intelligent and cool rejects and I didn’t feel comfortable about getting all up in their faces to hand out the Emotibles. But it actually worked out quite nicely and for every one person we gave a sample to, four more would swarm around us shouting, what is she handing out? and OOH COOL CAN I HAVE ONE!?. Portland is also the city where we received the most rejections - it’s like drawing caricatures at Great Adventure all over again, only the rejections come more rapidly on the streets. Sometimes people are offended that we want to give them a sample, some are freaked out, some are too cool and walk by quickly with their hand up blocking their faces. The most awkward are the ones where I say something awkward to them first like “heeey guysgirlssss..” No confidence is heard in my voice at this moment because I am out of breath after spotting, and running towards, a group of four girls across the street who were perfect candidates for receiving some Emotibles samples “want a free sample of…” Of course I can’t figure out what to say next, because who even knows what Emotibles are? One girl stepped in and spoke for everyone as she cut me off “NO THANK YOU.” They began to walk away when her friend turned around and asked “wait, what is it?” I explained Emotibles to her and she walked away with a set of Zippy Emotibuds - and her bossy friend? I could see she was jealous.

While Mark paid for (with my money) some merchandise at this cat store (yes we were shopping in a cat store, for one of YOUR Christmas presents) and explained the Emotibles samples to the cashier (possibly owner), I played with these cats. I’ve never played with cats before and the experience was very similar to playing with Mister. Mister is weird.

Okay, some more Portland scenes:

If everyone in America had a pink car, we’d be a pink car nation - Not my joke, some bum in NYC’s.

It was definitely not Halloween yet, Elvis.

Humans drink out of these crazy water fountains too. They might be called “drinking fountains” out here, not sure.

With all of this exploring of Portland, we barely even scratched the surface. At first it may not have been the utopia I was imagining (their travel website read “Our hills are alive with indie music” I imagined something magical from reading that) but after talking to it’s people and witnessing the completely unique vibe of the city, I have to say it’s been my favorite city we’ve visited thus far. Everyone is relaxed, everyone is friendly, cars let you merge on highways or pass in front of them without witnessing a single sneer in our rear view mirrors, and the living is AFFORDABLE! Yes! I thought, I do want to live here! But it was during our stay in Portland that Mark and I realized we wanted to continue living on the road longer than the three and a half months we allotted for this road trip. I just can’t imagine settling down in any one place yet (even if just for a few years). How we’ll go about affording life on the road has yet to be seen, I can’t imagine it would go on much longer than two years. We will be back in New Jersey for Christmas, but I’m hoping we can get back on the road as soon as possible. That way we can spend weeks at a time living in Portland, but leave whenever we feel like it. I’ve got a business plan. I think Portland might have inspired us.

   

Tags: Emotibles, food, forever road tripping, Jou Jou, journey, OR, Oregon, Portland, T@B

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