Portland

This sign welcomes people to Portland, TN, not Portland, OR, but still.

Day one of the pro-blog retreat, which negates on-time posting, meant provisioning myself with the basic necessities. These fall far short of HST's packing list, but at least I was on the right track.

- Six-pack Budweiser tall boys
- Hard pack Camel Lites

The train ride involved sitting next to a sixteen-year-old girl with braces who quickly busied herself by coloring in a Barbie coloring book, mainly sincerely (which I didn't know teenage girls did, but that is one demographic I'll readily admit I have no connection with). So I fell asleep easily, having ingested three of said tallboys shortly before boarding the bus. Intermittent wakeups brought about the general impression that natural wonder abounds in Tacoma's environs, but that the gritty mud flats stave off any green infestation. The windows allowed, to my left, a glowing yellow light from flowering plants that must have been deliberately planted alongside the tracks, and to my right, the interrupted flatness of the Puget Sound. Mountainous islands jut out from the water like jagged rickety ladies - gray, hard, and beautiful in their hardened delicacy. A newborn waah'd from time to time. He was British and his name was Mitchell, but his mother insisted on calling him Mitch; his distress was, to me, certainly understandable. Only several months old and already named after David Hasselhoff's character from Baywatch. A double-edged sword, at best.

My main concern during my train ride was that I was snoring, but I couldn't do much about it since I was asleep, and so I kept right on sleeping. Waking in Portland meant an easy time navigating and plenty of eye candy. Compared with Tacoma's hardened bartenders, waifish meth addicts, and Mickey-D's-fed wo-men, Portland is a menagerie full of leopards and cheetahs (rowr!). My second visit confirms my initial suspicion that the town is expert in giving a utopian impression to the visitor. A high school immediately abuts a park in which thirtysomething dog owners play fetch and children merely hang out (is there anyone over forty in the entire city?). The one homeless man I saw there kept to himself on a park bench, too at ease (poetic license, perhaps, but bear in mind this is an impression) to even ask me for a coin. The sun shone through the leaves onto the deep green sidewalks, and cars were smart and rare.

Spent several hours in a (gay?) bar watching beautiful (gay?) men and women cavort about. Drank about six Mirror Pond Pale Ales (recommended), slightly hoping to get picked up on by someone so I could embark on a night of betrayed fantasies (theirs) and ribald adventure (mine). I would have had to stay longer for any such eventuality, however, and I still needed to figure out how to get to PDX - my excuse for spending time at the bar was to solicit this information from the bartender (it worked!) - so I cut it off there, and retired to my friend Jeffro's newly acquired apartment, which I must add is an incredible find. Way to go Jeff.

Tomorrow means a relatively early wakeup, some breakfast at one of Portland's many Brooklynesque (if I may venture the comparison) diners, then a hop on the trolley (west coast is crayzee) to the airport for the real fear and loathing to begin.