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.

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It took all day yesterday to simply pack up the car (Katie’s mom’s Jeep Grand Cherokee — soon to be updated to a Saturn Vue, oh how we hope) and say goodbye to family & neighbors.  The night before had been spent vigorously working to get the website up and running, so neither of us had been lucky enough to sleep in a few days.  As I write, though, we have just woken from a nine hour snore-fest at the Holiday Inn Express in Milford, Massachussetts.

There is not a single inch of unused space in the Jeep, save for a small soft cubby hole between blankets in the backseat, where Mister alternately snoozed and watched helplessly as Katie and I ate Doritos in the front seat.  It was a solid four hours of continuous driving — not something we plan on doing too often, but Milford, Massachusetts is one of a handful of stops that was planned out far in advance.  This is where Katie’s dad has been spending his time for over a year, courtesy of Saint-Gobain glass company, where he is the quality control expert.  When we pulled into the Holiday Inn parking lot at 10:30 last night and couldn’t open the hatch on the Jeep to get our stuff out, he trotted outside to help us.  It was that darn bike rack which put so much weight on the hatch, making it impossible to open.  It took so long to disconnect the bike rack, and we were all so delirious from sleep deprivation, that instead of putting it back on the car afterwards, we chained the bikes AND the bike rack to the guard railing behind our parking spot.  I’m sure there will be pictures to prove this bit of laziness soon.

Today we’re headed for Providence, RI.  What will we do?  Who will we meet?  I don’t know, but I’m hungry.