Vancouver, Seattle, Vancouver

Caught back up with Mel in Vancouver and stayed with a couple friends in East Van. We really didn’t do much, and it was the best way to spend my time there. Good company is all I need when I’m in my second home.

We did, however, head back down to the States for a quick shopping trip and sight seeing tour as a day trip. The best story to come from this was the ever-friendly US border security guys. It’s a long and boring story to recount, but just imagine the usual intimidating guards suspecting you of anything and everything, pulling us out of the queue, making us wait around for some immigration officer (who realised we were fine all along and waved us through), and then the officer at the boom gate basically calling Mel stupid because she didn’t go to ‘college.’ For a country that could really use tourist dollars, they’re doing themselves no favours with having those guys on the frontline.

So after all that, we made our way down to some outlet shops, bought loads, caught up with Mel’s mate for a feed then went on over to check out Kurt Cobain’s old house.

It's somewhere in there poking out from behind those trees.

Seattle

Got in a quick day trip down to Seattle the other day before I headed off for China. I mainly went down to see the Nirvana exhibit at the EMP.

Early fan club letter

from the Smells Like Teen Spirit clip

Turned out to be a brilliant sunny day down in Seattle, went exploring a bit more and trying to check out a few things I hadn’t seen or done in Seattle previously.

Seattle Center Fountain

Olympic Sculpture Park

An interesting little discovery I hadn’t come across before was the gum wall down this side alley from the Pike St Markets.

Portland.

Hi, my name is Mike and this is the story of my trip to Portland.

Bee had come down to Van for the weekend so she could come to Portland with me. We ended up catching a much earlier bus than originally planned so we spent about 6 or so hours in Seattle eating awesome Asian food at Bambusa (damn that place does good food) and checking out some of the sites.

First off we found my sign again:

Then we went and had more pictures with other quirky monuments such as the Fremont Troll and the bus stop people:

We killed some more time drinking beers and enduring terrible karaoke at the pub, before heading back and spending a mostly sleepless night on the freezing Greyhound. We arrived to Portland around 4:30am, sat around in the terminal waiting for the sun to come up to find somewhere to eat.

It didn’t take us too long to get bored of sitting around and soon we just left to try and find anything open. Turns out Portland can be pretty shifty when the sun is yet to come up, especially the part of town that the Greyhound is in. We found this awesome little 50′s style diner, complete with a surly old greek couple serving us. Pretty awesome pancakes were had.

I really enjoyed Portland, it’s a really relaxed, clean city. It’s not touristy by any means and I’m sure I would have struggled to find things to do had I been on my own. Thankfully Bee was there to laugh with me rather than at me when I decided to make my own fun. Like chasing geese and gulls:

Or posing with bronze animals:

Or a flashing woman:

Right after this shot was taken a creepy guy sauntered my way and whispered "putchyer hand on her bewb."

Part of the reason for heading to Portland was to catch Thursday on tour playing the Full Collapse album in full. With a bit of emailing around to managers and publicists I scored a free ticket to review the show which was cool since I haven’t done the writing thing in close to 2 years so I was happy to give it another crack. I also won a competition to meet Geoff and Tucker before the show and listen to some of the new album that isn’t out yet. They were good dudes and the new record was sounding pretty cool. The show itself was cool, a little lacklustre to be honest but whatever, I was enjoying just being in Portland and hanging out so all was good.

The next morning we headed out to Mill Ends Park. This is it:

I may not take the best pictures around, but the camera is intentionally tilted down from that lush green park… since Mill Ends Park is actually that 2-foot wide thing with a half dead bush in the middle of the road. It’s officially recognised as the world’s smallest park.

I am Gigantor

A would-be highlight of the trip was Voodoo Doughnuts, something every travel site about Portland recommends. I like doughnuts, and Bee does too, so this seemed relevant to our interests.

Unfortunately for us, Murphy was hard at work seeing that his law was not about to be proven wrong:

We ended the day with a trip up the skycar that takes you from the university’s lower campus to it’s upper campus/hospital, and has some pretty sweet views along the way. This was the point it seemed like a hilarious idea to text the folks “Just thought I should let you know I’m at the hospital in Portland. We’re both fine, I’ll fill you in soon.” They didn’t find it as funny as I.

View over Portland, toward Mount St. Helens.

And that’s the story of my trip to Portland.

- THE END -

Life’s a holiday

Somehow I still find myself out on the road, and increasingly less motivated to update this thing in favour of doing stuff… or taking a break from doing stuff and trying to find some time to do nothing. So if I’m not doing stuff then I’m doing nothing. Capiche?

Leaving Gainesville became somewhat of a mission, resulting in having to wait for a Greyhound by myself for a bus that didn’t arrive till 9:30pm. Hours whittled away at the bus station, laughing with the guitarist from Fake Problems at the drunk guy who couldn’t buy a bus ticket (the office was closed) so spent about an hour trying to convince a taxi driver, or any random car for that matter, to take him to Tampa. A good 2 hours away.

New Orleans was a little less eventful this time around, no hazy all nighters or crazy German guys, but I did manage to see a couple things I somehow missed the first time around. Like the first thing pretty much any visitor to NO will go see: The French Quarter. In my defence, I didn’t realise there was much more beyond 2 or 3 blocks past Bourbon St (admittedly and expectedly one of the lamer parts of New Orleans). The place turned out to be pretty rad, with all the old buildings and livelihood I expected the first time around from all the pictures and travel shows I’ve seen documenting the city.

Statue of Andrew Jackson

Some kind of Disney-esque palace. Not really.

Moonwalk something something.

Something about a steamer. If this was earlier in the trip, I probably would have posed squatting next to the sign. Apparently I have recovered some sliver of shame left.

Laura (friend of a friend who was at The Fest) was also in town so we hung out for a bit and she showed me the super rad Cafe Du Monde. It’s famous for some reason I don’t particularly care to know, but they made rad Beignets (“bane-yays”) and somewhat sub-standard coffee with chickory, apparently this is some kind of New Orleans style of coffee.

Also had the chance to checkout the cemeteries, which I missed last time too. A lot of the guides recommend these, mainly because they’re unusual in the fact that with New Orleans sitting in such low terrain graves had to be built above ground. In actuality they were kind of cool to glance at for a couple minutes, but beyond that it seemed little different to any other cemetery. Maybe there are a few famous dead guys in there. We ended up going to the pub across the road instead which turned out to be a much better idea, but I still squeezed in a few kinda cool shots:

Evidently, New Orleans has somewhat of a zombie problem.

And a couple of night shots.

Cafe Du Monde with a jazz band playing out on the street

Paddle steamer on the Mississippi

From there I headed further west again to Austin, TX. Love that city so much. The place, the people, everything. You should go. And when you do, please take me.

Spent the weekend with my pals from last visit, Emma and Jessie, at Fun Fun Fun Fest:

It truly was fun!

Bull riding

There really isn’t much else to post, the only photos I really took were of bands so I won’t bother with those, except for GWAR. Pretty amazing costumes and a great theatrical set. Thinking of seeing them again in a few weeks when they’re in Vancouver.

For some reason Bees in Austin like me. Or more specifically, my drinks. Little bastards. I punched one to teach him a lesson.

Not this one. He was one of the lucky ones.

Post-Austin I returned to Seattle and hung out for a couple nights. Beautiful Seattle weather when I first arrived:

In an effort to escape the rain I headed underground. Everything’s happy underground. And dry. So I went on the Seattle Underground Tour which sounded pretty badass, like some kind of lost city. It was sure to be awesome, something like the lost city of Atlantis, but with the ghosts of Cobain, Hendrix and Layne Staley all jamming and smoking bongs instead of mermaids and sunken treasure. Reality was a little different.

Fortunately the next day was a little nicer so I had a bit more chance to explore. Number one priority was to head down to Fremont, a little urban hippie type area.

This guy is called the Fremont Troll. He lives under the enormous Aurora Bridge, and that is a real VW Beetle.

This was once a real rocket. Nowadays, it is one big pile of gimmickery. I thought it was photo worthy.

Also, a lot of people seem to be surprised by this next landmark in Fremont. Personally I’m not sure why, I always thought a 10 foot tall statue of a communist leader (Lenin) would just scream “SEATTLE!” but some people don’t seem to think so.

View of Seattle from Gasworks Park

The less-cool sign at Pike St Markets

And finally, the place that turned terrible coffee into a worldwide phenomenon. CURSE YOU STARBUCKS!!