Yesterday was adventure day, and much adventure was had.
Darius decided that he wanted to spend the last day of his spring break roaming around this beautiful city that we live in, and having an adventurous good time. Our adventure, like most, started when we left the house - minus laptop and cell phone, no less! We headed out to get coffee at World Cup Cafe, but we didn't go to the one near our house, as that wouldn't have been adventurous at all, we went to a different one, where we sat around, enjoyed the new and exciting surroundings, and asked each other the questions from Trivial Pursuit cards. Darius is much better with proper nouns than I am. I did, however, know the number of hearts an octopus has (3) which he found duly impressive. I think I might have gotten a couple of other questions right as well. D, on the other hand, knows more proper nouns than I realized. He's a veritable encyclopedia of trivia. From European bodies of water, to African capitals, to wartime heroes, he pretty much rocked it.
Then we walked a few blocks up and hopped on the streetcar, which we took down to the last stop they were serving (some stupid construction barred us from going further) and headed over to Blind Onion, a pizza place that D frequents, that I've been wanting to try out for awhile. Unfortunately, they aren't open on Sundays, so we wandered around, in search of a restaurant that was both appealing and open, on the last Sunday of March. I would guess, with all of the going back and forth that we did, (that looks like an open restaurant, let's look over there - oh, wait, upon closer inspection, that looks like a trap, let's go away) that we ended up walking 3 or so miles before we eventually landed, starving and weary, at the new incarnation of the Virginia Cafe, which is, I believe, Portland's oldest restaurant. They had recently moved from their 2nd location, which had been open since 1922, (their first location opened around 1908) and D and I had actually managed to visit before they were evicted, and forced to flee a couple of blocks down. We enjoyed the new location, but it really just wasn't the same (for one, it lacked a sufficient amount of grime, and collected dust) I had an absolutely delicious Chicken sandwich with tater tots, and D enjoyed an extra cheesy grilled cheese with fries.
Our stomachs filled, and spirits refreshed, we ventured out again into the city of roses. We tracked down Portlandia, which D tells me is the second largest hand wrought copper sculpture (I'm not sure if this was in the world, or in the United States, but I'm going to assume it's the latter) and I found it to be quite impressive. We also stopped a few places for D to take pictures of things that struck his fancy. I had an American Express gift card that I had gotten from work which was burning a hole in my already falling-apart wallet, so I convinced D to include a jaunt through Pioneer Place, which, as he knew, and I recalled only once there, has almost nothing worth buying or looking at in it. It did have a startling number of advertisements for the “Alvin and the Chipmunks” DVD movie release. (April 1st, or so I read, 30,000 or so times)
We left the mall after spending enough time in there to make D a little twitchy (inanity tends makes him slightly homicidal, which usually exhibits itself in twitchiness, unless, of course the inanity comes from me, which just makes him roll his eyes) but not enough time for any firm plans to help Darwin out on the natural selection front to develop. (Sorry, I should really rephrase that last sentence; it's kind of confusing, and not entirely grammatically correct. Clearly I'm not going to, but at least I apologized, right? Right?) From there we wandered west, then south, then east again, finding ourselves bouncing around the downtown blocks like an out of control pin-ball, and thoroughly enjoying the process, with the small exception of the pain coming from the rapidly forming blister on my right foot, which eventually landed us at a bus stop, and left us debating an end to our adventures. As luck would have it, there would be no buses heading in the direction of our home in a reasonable amount of time, and, after inspecting the offending blister, I quickly decided that it was a small price to pay for continuing in our adventures. (and avoiding the laundry that awaited at home) Pin-ball on the brain, I suggested we try to find a pin-ball machine among the ranks of bars and taverns that seem so abundant in this area of the city, but alas, none of the establishments we passed had any such entertainment – video poker is so much more profitable, after all. Not in the mood to support Oregon schools by inserting fives and tens into machines designed to create, then dash, the hopes of the intoxicated, we didn’t linger.
Having given up on pin-ball, we headed in the direction of the Max station, thinking we might just hop on the next bus, streetcar, or train that we saw, and see where it took us – which we did. We were lucky enough to encounter one of the antique streetcars that run in a loop from the downtown blocks to the Lloyd center (just on the other side of the river) on Sundays from 12:08 to 6:08. These are truly beautiful pieces of Americana, all brass and wicker, wood and steel. They are equipped with a driver, as you would expect, as well as a tour-guide, which I, for one, was not expecting, but was delighted to find. He provided us with all sorts of delicious trivia bits, most of which I forgot instantly (that proper noun thing again) but which made the ride so much more enriching. We rode almost the entire loop, getting off for the 20 minute stop at the Lloyd Center long enough to grab a soda, but getting back on before departure. D took a couple of photos of the interior and exterior, I hope they look just as magical on film as they did in person. On the way back downtown, the weather, which had been innocent enough through all of our travels, depositing a few rain drops on us, but otherwise behaving itself, decided to make up for lost time by first pouring, then mixing a little snow in, and then adding some hail for effect. Darius calls this the “Precipitation Variety Pack.” This continued for about 15 minutes, while we marveled at it from the comfort of the toasty warm antique streetcar. Conveniently enough, all of the precipitation stopped in time for us to hop off of the streetcar and head over to Powell’s City of Books, where I purchased 1 each of books in 3 series I already know I like (#3 in Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files, #5 of Eoin Coifer’s Artemis Fowl series, and Guards! Guards! #? Of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books, using the aforementioned American Express card. The only thing better than buying books you want to read, is buying books you want to read with free money.
We worked up such an appetite book-shopping (even though D didn’t get anything, despite my offer to share the wealth – he’s trying to be good since he knows he won’t have time to read for pleasure in the coming months) that we headed to our sometimes-favorite happy hour locale: Henry’s. We tried to decide between the Mac & Cheese (the best we’ve found anywhere in Portland – and we’ve looked) and the Gorgonzola Fries (Criss-Cut fries with a cheesy white sauce poured over the top, and then sprinkled with crumbled gorgonzola –heaven in a heart attack!) and finally decided on both, to which I added a Hard Pear Cider, and Darius added a Double Chocolate Porter (I think) which we selected off of the list of the 100 beers (and ciders) they happen to have on tap. We ate, drank, and were quite merry.
By this time it was rather late in the day, and we decided to head on home, our thirst for adventure nearly quenched.
Once home, we spent an hour or so, trying to figure out what to do about our downstairs neighbor, who has had a package from the VA medical clinic sitting on his doorstep for about a week, which is a little disconcerting, as it has made us wonder weather or not he might be dead. We eventually decided to take the package, to save the contents from possible weather destruction (the box has already started to deteriorate a little bit, and while we have no idea what the actual contents are, it seems like hanging out in nearly freezing weather, and getting the occasional splatter of an errant raindrop can’t be healthy for the most likely contenders for contents of packages from the VA Medical Clinic) and leave a note to that effect on his door. It’s a very nice note. I sure hope he’s alive to read it.
The neighbor situation sorted out to our semi-satisfaction, we spent a little while lazing about the house, entertaining ourselves with the usual sort of Sunday activities, books and video games, and resting our tired feet. Darius quickly decided that he didn’t want to spend his last evening for a long while as a homework-free man staring at the computer screen, so we headed out once again, this time with a destination. A destination with pin-ball, no less! The Bitter End is fairly nice, for what it is, which is a dive bar. It’s very smoky, fairly dirty, and I’m pretty sure even their beer is watered down, but they redeem themselves with yummy grilled cheese sandwiches, free pool Sundays, and Attack from Mars, which is on the top 3 list of my favorite pin-ball games ever (also on the list are Mars Attacks – which is the next incarnation of Attack from Mars, and Medieval Madness) We played some pin-ball (and by some, I mean a lot) some pool, and eventually met a guy who was really creepy, (but amazing good at pin-ball, I mean, seriously) spent far more time with him than we really wanted to, failed to respond appropriately to things that we probably should have been offended by, (by which I mean we laughed it off, instead of punching him in the nose) and concluded our adventure day, walking home, hand in hand, happily recounting what a weird guy he was, and how somebody probably shouldn’t have told him where we usually hang out.
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