I went to Portland this week for a business trip. I've got so many camps scheduled this summer that I'm not going to be able to make my usual month-long visit, so this quickie trip was a substitute. When we flew in, we had a fabulous view of Mt Hood. We were so close, it almost felt like you could stick your hand out the window and touch the snow.
On the way downtown, I stopped off at my favorite lunch spot - Burgerville. Unfortunately it was too early in the season for their Walla Walla onion rings, so I had to "make do" with a Tillamook cheeseburger and fresh strawberry shake. My friend was at a computer conference downtown, so I skipped going into work and caught up on all the office gossip with her (same information - different perspective).
Since the day was so gorgeous, I decided to hike over to the Rose Garden and do a little sketching. Trouble was, none of the roses were in bloom yet, but the azaleas were HUGE. Portland azaleas are the size of dinner plates and many of the bushes are as tall as a house. Guess it's all that rain.
Even though I took the first day off, I did go into work the next day. It was strange walking up to the building, because my boss is building a 2-story addition onto their current building. I call this Northwest Architecture - a mix of wood, steel siding, and concrete block with lots of windows. The windows are a special kind of glass that darken on the inside when you want to show a PowerPoint presentation.
My boss is also known for his somewhat zany ideas. He is installing a circular slide connecting the software engineering department on the second level with the ground floor. Luckily for the programmers, there will be a traditional set of stairs adjacent to the slide. I told him he should have just installed a firemen's pole - it would have been cheaper, but he said there were too many safety issues.
On Friday, I took the train up to Seattle to see Brian. The Amtrak Cascades run (Portland to Seattle) is very fast and efficient and consequently quite popular (aka. crowded). The conductors made several announcements at the beginning of the trip to use headphones and move to the space between cars to take phone calls, etc, but the one thing they can't seem to control are the people who talk non-stop for the entire trip. One lady kept her poor husband running back and forth to the Bistro car getting her chips and soda and Skittles.
Whenever I go to Seattle, I like staying at the Pioneer Square Hotel, because it is so close to the waterfront. Since I got in around dinner time, I walked down to Ivars Seafood Shop. I'd seen this life-size statue in front of the restaurant before, but I never realized that the man in the statue is feeding the seagulls french fries.
While I was eating my salmon and chips, I noticed that everyone was taking their leftover french fries out to the wharf and trying to get the seagulls to take the fries from their fingers. Most people would get scared when the seagulls flew at them (those seagulls are pretty big), but this one lady actually got them to take the fries from her fingers. The guy behind her finally gave up and just threw all his remaining fries into the water. Boy did that cause a mad rush of birds flying everywhere including inside the restaurant where I was sitting. We had 5 birds trapped inside (I should have known something was up when I sat down and noticed feathers on my table). Luckily a boy who was just coming in held the door open so the birds could all fly out, but I'm sure all the fries in the water were long gone by the time they got out there.
I met Brian on Saturday and we went down to Pike Place Market for lunch. I'd found a place on TripAdvisor that was supposed to have the best seafood chowder in the Northwest. We had the Manhattan style (tomato base), though they had a sampler option where you could try all four different varieties (maybe the next time I go back).
We walked around the Piers for a while, because the weather was so beautiful, but then ducked into the Seattle Art Museum to see the Miro exhibit. Miro was a surrealist painter inspired by Van Gogh and Cezanne. Most of his paintings are very colorful and tend to look like they were drawn by a kindergartner - not everyone's taste, but I like his style. The car hanging from the ceiling is not one of his sculptures, but is one of the exhibits in the lobby of the museum. All of those rods sticking out of the car are actually light sticks. It's probably a much more impressive display at night.
Saturday evening Brian and Amber took me out to dinner for Mothers' Day. We went to a Mexican restaurant near Capitol Hill - high above downtown Seattle. According to my FitBit, it was 23 flights of stairs above the water front (I'm well on my way to earning another badge after this trip).
The flight home was relatively uneventful, except for the 3-hour flight delay in Chicago. First we had maintenance issues (probably they had to check the landing gear after the first pilot practically cracked it off with his rough landing). Then we had to wait for the lightening to clear (Chicago was in the middle of a thunderstorm). The passengers were getting pretty disgruntled, so they let some of them get off the plane (MISTAKE). We had to wait around another hour for them to rustle everyone back up again (the ones who couldn't grasp the concept of "be back in 20 minutes"). We also found out that one passenger got arrested when she started yelling at the security people for the weather-related flight delays. Who needs Netflix. You can just go to the airport and get plenty of entertainment.
