If you don't know who Red Green is, you won't understand why Randy and I drove 750 miles one way to see his show. Janet, Sara, Jared, Chieko, Randy and I saw him at Kingsbury Hall in Salt Lake a few years ago, and we laughed the entire show. This year his tour didn't come through Salt Lake, and Randy and I were due for a road trip, so we drove to Portland. Very quick long trip. I wish we had stayed one more day and gone to the beach, but alas we did not.
This is how the nondriver spends the driving part of a long road trip. Requires a spare battery or two. We left Thursday evening.
Wait. I have another story: We were planning to leave at 5 p.m. from Randy's house after work on Thursday. I left work a little early, and Randy texted me saying he could leave any time after 4 p.m., so I hurried and headed out the door. However, when I fired up the BMW Z3, it didn't fire up. It didn't even click. Dead battery. Guess I don't drive the car enough to keep the battery charged. I hooked up a charger, but that didn't work. So I jumper cabled to Chieko's car. That didn't work. So Chieko helped by revving her car's engine. That worked. I unhooked all the wires and put them away, Chieko went in the house, and I accidentally killed the engine backing up. So I reconnected all the wires and repeated.
This time I backed up more carefully and headed to Randy's. In his neighborhood, on the corner before his house were a bunch of police, police cars and other people talking and taking notes. I drove through the commotion and found Randy and Leona standing on the front lawn gawking along with all the neighbors. Turns out a lady on the corner was in her car when a guy in a white car stopped and told her his cell phone battery was dead. He then grabbed her purse and tried to take off, but she yanked back on the purse, so he pulled a gun and shot out her back window. And fled in his car. Another neighbor tried to follow him, but he fired the gun back at that neighbor, too.
This story is interesting to me not just because it's interesting, but because if I hadn't had a dead battery, I likely would have driven into the neighborhood right in the middle of the melee. Someone's looking out for me; that's all I can say.
We stayed in Meridian, Idaho, just outside Boise on Thursday night and drove to Oregon on Friday. This is Mount Hood as seen from I-84 next to the Columbia River.
We stopped at the Bonneville Dam, which has a great viewing area of the fish ladder, which the migrating salmon and other fish need to get up the river and beyond the dam. The dam also has a fish hatchery. These are rainbow trout that are bigger than any I've ever caught or seen in any lake or stream.
At the top of the fish ladder is a fish rest stop, which also has a window for people like us to watch the fish swim by.
This is just another salmon resting by the window.
This is what the ladder looks like outside. This is just the top section. There are other sections the fish have to swim up. We saw a few fish leaping over a couple steps but didn't get any pictures of them.
The Columbia River is also home to sturgeon, a prehistoric fish that hasn't changed in over 175 million years. They grow up to 1,800 pounds and can live over 100 years. They are a game fish, but fishermen can keep only those that are about 3-1/2 to 5 feet long. This one is Herman. He is about 10 feet long and over 60 years old.
Next stop near the mouth of the Columbia River Gorge was Multnomah Falls. This is a very popular sightseeing spot. And for good reason.
On Friday night, after seeing all the fish, I had a craving for salmon. We searched Yelp and found a food truck location (Portland has a bunch of bunches of food trucks) with one that served a variety of salmon dishes. So we drove there, found parking and also found a sign that said, "No more salmon." We considered driving to Seattle to the Salmon Smoker, but we do have a tiny bit of better sense. We had white-fish and chips. We also found a video store across the street that had over 90,000 titles and a lot of actual movie props and clothes. This building model was used in a couple of movies, including "Ghost Busters."
We also found VoodDoo Donuts, but the line looked miles long, and there was no parking. So we went to another VooDoo Donut location, found parking and a shorter line. I had the signature Voodoo Donut, which is a body-shaped (sort of) donut filled with raspberry jelly.
Friday night we stayed in an affordable (cheap) motel in Milwaukie, Oregon, just outside Portland. The place was clean and remarkably convenient. It turned out to be only 1/2 mile from the last light rail stop (TriMet MAX Light Rail), so we were able to leave the car in the motel parking lot and take the train in to Portland on Saturday on a $5 all-day pass good for any train or bus.
When we arrived in downtown Portland, a bunch of people were setting up for a modern art display at Pioneer Square.
In this pond this girl is putting a few hundred plastic-coated pictures of frogs held down by rocks from Florida. She didn't seem to be a frog lover or conservationist or tree hugger. A wacky guy was asking her which frogs were edible. She showed him one with big legs and said she didn't care if he ate frogs. I guess this was just her idea of art. She said her parents were witches. That's all I know about that.
We rode the light rail to the Expo Center, which was on the other end of the TriMet line from our hotel. I think this is the intermodal train station along the way.
For lunch we stopped at another food truck park. Randy had something Korean.
I had green curry with brown rice from this place. It was pretty good. Everything here was $6.
Shar Chavira, my coworker, told me I should go to Salt and Straw, an ice cream store in Portland. Well, no trains went there, so Randy and I decided to walk. It was about four miles round trip. On the way we came upon a building full of old restored cars, mopeds, kids' pedal cars, and bicycles. The place had no signs. It was just a collection of cars in a window.
We also stopped at Fred Meyer's for a bathroom break. This is not the bathroom. It's the roof of the building.
Finally, we reached the ice cream store. The line went across the front of the building and a half block down the side.
Inside the line also snaked about the same distance as outside. So, yes, we waited in a line a bit, but it did move quickly.
I got two scoops in a homemade waffle cone, with the second scoop divided into two flavors (so three flavors). For the first full scoop (bottom) I had almond brittle with salted ganache. Ooo, that was good. For the first 1/2 scoop I had pear and blue cheese. That was also very good. For the second 1/2 scoop I wanted to get dill flowers and fennel pollen, but they didn't have any. So I picked wasabi flowers and green apple sorbet, but they didn't have that either. So I settled for cinnamon and snickerdoodle. Good.
Yes!
On the way back toward Pioneer Square we found this hydrangea bush in someone's front yard. I had to get a picture, because Chieko has a hydrangea that bloomed this year for the first time in several years. The Portland flowers grow naturally huge.
This color is more accurate than the above photo.
Finally, on Saturday night we went in to see Red Green. He was not quite as laugh-out-loud funny as before, although we laughed out loud several times, but he was spot on accurate in his depiction of men, women, old people and just life in general. Remember, if the women don't find you handsome, they should at least find you handy.
Sunday morning we left at 5:45 a.m. (6:45 a.m. Utah time) and drove straight through to Salt Lake, stopping only for gas and pit stops. I dropped Randy off and got home about 7:30 p.m.
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