(no subject)
Friday:
We head out around 12:30, after spending an hour hanging out at the MP. Kayla drove for about 2 hrs, then passed the burden onto me. We first stopped at the MALAD GORGE, and found possibly one of the coolest digs under a bridge ever. Not that I know of two many "under the bridge" spots. But this one was totally fit for gangstaz like us...graffiti, empty beer bottles, you know...
We had a photo shoot, hung our feet off a bridge under the bridge, which was a little rickety and stood a good 500 feet or more above the ground. We took some awesome "action" photos, where I set up the camera on timed exposure and we would jump off the bridge onto the ground. Unbeknownst to us at the time, we had an audience. When we came out from under the bridge, we were met by two men with confused looks on their faces. They said "We were wondering what was going on under there...we would all of a sudden see legs just appear out of nowhere and then disappear!". We didn't take the time to explain to them just what we REALLY were doing...but apparently, they got some pretty sweet "foot"age of it. Ohhhh...I think I even recall saying "Hope you got some good 'foot'age"....I'm so cool.
We stopped in Boise, blasted some gangsta rap, and found ourselves at the local Salvation Army. Probably one of the best thrifting days I've ever had. On the dollar rack outside, we found some blue and green sparkly pants, so we eagerly proceeding inside to try them on. On the way to the dressing rooms, we found matching shirts and I found some sweet mocassins, which I will lovingly refer to as simply "mocs". I also found some neat neon green knit booties to match my sparkly pants. We put on the outfits and were set. We then found ourselves at Fiesta Guadalajara restaurant in neighboring Ontario, Oregon, and feasted upon one of the best burritos the world has ever known. After that, we continued on to the North North-west. We somehow got onto the right roads leading to GEORGE, WASHINGTON!!! and spent the night at a rest stop. After building our fort of blankets in the Explorer, and "taking care of some business" outside of the car, we slept.
Saturday:
I woke up with a sore tail bone, and to the gaze of two sleazy men. I guess they thought we were sexy creatures, even if we were still in our sparkly pants. Who wouldn't, though? Dizzamn.
So we made it to The Gorge, Washington for the Sasquatch! Festival. Already the sun was beating down and it was so hot I wanted to die...but we went in. It was a pretty cool area...it overlooked the Columbia River Gorge...it was pretty breathtaking. They had three stages set up...the first band we watched, oficially, was Menomena. They are so effing good live, it almost hurts. They got so into it, the drummer almost fell over a few times. The keyboard guy's eyes kept rolling in the back of his head, it frightened me a bit. Hmmmm. Directly after Menomena, The Dears played. Despite being extremely distracted the entire time by the sexy seductress keyboardist, they were amazing. I couldn't look at her for too long, or else I would have self-destructed...especially when she did that dance. Owwww. Haha. We found ourselves wandering around a bit...a little delerious from the sun, but still pretty excited to be there. We layed on the grass during Wilco, trying to decide why it was that we didn't particularly care for them. I don't hate them, I just don't see what all the buzz about them is for. After they played, we made our way near the front for The Arcade Fire. I can't even put into words how amazing they are live. They exuded so much energy, you could tell there was nothing more they wanted to do at the moment but play the hell out of their instruments. Whew. It was rad how ALL 7 (or 8?) of them sang their guts out in each song, even though only 1 or 2 of them was miced (no, not mice...like microphoned)...hmmmm. Yeah. Anyway, after being blown away, we made it over to the other stage just in time to catch one of the best rock n roll performers out there...Bobby Bare Jr...Holy shit. Sike. I could think of a million other things I wanted to be doing rather than watching him...like punching him in the stomach, but I suppose it was worth the wait to get in front for Joanna Newsom. She looked even smaller and younger in real life than in pictures and judging by her voice. Her set was incredible...brought me to tears a few times. She literally played her harp until her fingers bled. It was sad...in between each song, her hands were shaking so bad from the pain. But she kept going and played her heart out. After seeing her, we decided we didn't want to ruin all the amazingness of the day by watching any mediocre bands, so we left directly after. So basically...we missed Kanye West, Modest Mouse, and The Pixies...no big deal, really. I thought it was awesome we left.
Stopped at a Wal-Mart near midnight and shopped with all the other robots for nothing. I think I may have bought a candy bar. Got lost in a scary industrial town that was a hazy orange color. Decided this was what hell was going to be. Driving down an unmarked road, lined with orange lights, that led to nowhere and back. Scary stuff. After getting my bearings back, we found the right road, and almost didn't make it around a turn. I could have stepped on the brakes, but I didn't. Whoops. We stopped at yet another rest stop, built our blanket fort, decided we were really thirsty...bought some water, and went to sleep.
Sunday:
Made it to Portland around noontime...drove around a little and stopped at the Saturday (Sunday?) Market. Some of the art and clothes were cool...all I could see fit to buy was Nag Champa incense, though. After that, we went to Whole Foods and got some food. "Can we please get two sleeces of...*goes crosseyed for a few seconds*...errr ummmmm...slices of pizza???" Whoops. That was some good pizza, though. Cute cashier at 3 o'clock. After peeeeeeza, we checked into our hostel. It was located in a super hip neighborhood on Glisan Street. The front desk girl was from Norway and had an awesome accent. We unloaded all of our stuff into our room, and head out to buy a bar of soap. That was pretty neat. Soap. We "freshened" up a bit (which didn't entail much, other than washing our filthy hands), then drove up Burnside Ave. to see the coolest graveyard I know of. It wasn't as cool with all the flowers, though. Oh well. Then we went to the Pittock Mansion. We stalked about the yard for a while, watched a family take their family portraits in front of the mansion...it was odd. Then it was back to the hostel for nap time. We slept for an hour or so, then decided to walk around downtown. We went inside one of the coolest hotels I know of...Hotel Lucia, ate green apples, looked at the cool artwork and photos and revelled in the hip ambiance of it all, then walked over to Pioneer Square and saw one of the coolest things I've ever witnessed. There was this old Oriental lady sitting on a bench and she had bright colored barettes in the shape of dragonflies on her head. This bird kept getting really close to them and flapping its wings super fast...it looked like a hummingbird. The lady didn't even notice, that was the best part. I couldn't stop laughing for the longest time. We sat down on the bench next to her, camera ready to fire, but the bird decided to stop at that moment. So good. We then meandered down to Sushi Takahashi just in time for them to open. Sushi served on a train tastes best. After our sushigasm, we went over to the Backspace internet/gaming cafe. We checked our myspace and audioscrobbler and got bored real quick. Although, watching all the gaming geeks creating their "warriors" was pretty effin awesome. I wished I was a gamer. Sike. We then went over to Hawthorne Blvd and walked up and down. Looked at some super hip hipster joints and got some ice cream from Cold Stone. Yum. Some guy kept laughing and it was one of the best laughs I'd heard in a while. Back to the hostel after this. We met our flatmate, Debra, who didn't offer anything more than a curt "hi". She always seemed busy doing SOMETHING, so as to ignore everyone around her, such as folding clothes or walking to the bathroom, putting curlers in her hair. When she was in the shower, I had my way with some beautiful gowns hanging from her bunk. Right. This forced us into a laughing fit, that lasted long enough to annoy the girl in the next room. Went to sleep. "Whoops. I totally slept with a bottle of juice last night."
Monday:
I woke up to find myself cuddling with a bottle of foreign juice. Japanese? Sure. I don't know. I texted Kayla. Japanese girl finally got down from bunk and I asked her "Ummmmm, is this yours?"...She grabbed it, made a funny noise, and threw it on her bed. Haha. Awesome. Got some eating material at Whole Foods. Hey, there's that cute cashier again. Stares at cute cashier whilst eating breakfast burrito. Good food, good looking. Ha. Decide to try to find the famed Red, White, and Blue thrift store...after much driving around, and I mean MUCH....including finding out the brakes work pretty good. Stopped in 2 seconds flat whilst going 60 miles per hour. The brakes worked. Good. The thrift store of Red, White, and Blue/Palahniuk fame was closed. I stopped at a Shell gas station to ask the attendant how to find Clinton Street. She dropped what she was doing to come outside and put on an interactive show, complete with arm and leg gestures, on how to find it. "Oh yeah...you'll find lots of thrift stores between 21st and 26th streets...*leg kick*"....Thanks, lady. We found Clinton Street...in fact, those directions will be forever etched into my memory. No thrift stores, though? Hmmmm. We ended up, instead, at a killer park. It was so amazingly green...and although close to the street, it almost felt like we were in the middle of a pristine forest. We took some awesome photos...mostly self-portraits and some 'action' shots, and wished it wasn't unlawful to hop the fence and play inside an empty swimming pool. Maybe next time. Afterwards,
We stopped on Hawthorne Street instead, and rocked the Red Light thrift store. Blonde Redhead was playing. Fate? I think so. Tried on 50 things...a lot of cute shirts and such...but I bought one really ugly yellow shirt with some picture markered onto it, absolutely wretched, and a cute green and black tank top. I'm pretty sure someone thought they had this awesome idea for a shirt, drew it on, and was like "Oh shit."...then sold it. And I bought it. Yes! So after pillaging the Red Light, we got directions to the Holocene to see if we could find a loophole to get into the Boom Bip/Fog (errr ummmm THE Fog) show...since it was 21 and over. We asked a crackhead (literally) who worked there if he thought there was any thing we could do or say to convince the manager. He said something like "Oh yeahhhhhh, just say you're just passing through town and want to get in for free". We were pretty confused. So went in and talked to the manager guy instead. He said they could absolutely not make any exceptions. Sad. On the way out, Boom Bip pulled up in their van, and I waved at Mr. Boom Bip and he smiled and waved back. I guess that made up for it. Sike. Went back into downtown, had some more sushi from Sushi Takahashi, then went to the Compound Art Gallery, was blown away by some amazing Japanese art, then went over to Backspace cafe once again. I burned my pictures onto a CD, so I could free up some space on my camera. Serge Gainsbourg was playing. Fate? Definitely. Updated our livejournals and provided some new pics for our myspace. Myspaced each other a few times, then off we were. Sometime on the way back to the hostel, I mentioned something about Sleater-Kinney playing in Seattle the following night. We had pretty much been barraged by countless magazine features and pictures of Carrie Brownstein everywhere we went, so we took that as a sign of sorts. I had mentioned it a few times before, but this time we both decided it felt right to surrender to our spontaneous nature and Seattle was next on the menu. We cancelled our hostel in Portland for the next night, and booked a night at the Green Tortoise Hostel in Seattle. Woot! It's a plan. We went back to the hostel, not really knowing what else to do after that, and I ended up eavesdropping on two of our room mates instead. I joined in the conversation...really only wanting to find out where the accent was from. Margrit was from Switzerland, and Anastacia (errr ummmm I mean "Dove) was from New Mexico. We sat there for 3 hours or so talking about New Mexico, water and the lack thereof in NM, Idaho, droughts, water again, and ummmm pretty sure water was involved. Dove had lots of useless knowledge on a lot of things. Pretty much everything I said in response was sarcastic and most of the time she didn't get some of my humor, but she laughed pretty hard a few times. She was odd. Margrit was awesome though. She was fun to listen to. She's a school teacher in Switzerland and took 3 months off to explore America. She had spend 5 weeks or so with her friend, but her friend had gone back and now Margrit was on her own for the rest of the trip. Pretty inspiring. After getting kicked out of the room by this weird old lady who decided she wanted to slip into an oversized T-shirt nightgown and take a nap, we retreated down to the "Commons" area and sat on the couch and talked some more. We learned a lot of slang and profanities in German...Margrit had no shame about it whatsoever. Dove said something like "Motherfucker" and Margrit was like "Oh...ja....like...ehhh...FUCKING YOUR MOTHER?" We kinda laughed nervously. It was awesome. Anyway, Kayla and I had big plans to go walk across a bridge and see the view of the city, so we asked if they wanted to come along. We took them along, Dove was weird and kept saying things like "My dad's pretty much a genius", "I grew up in the woods", and of course, gave us useless knowledge about every subject we stumbled upon in conversation. Dove decided she was moving to Portland, despite having never officially been there, and was there for a week to find a job and a place to live. I wish her luck, I guess. She didn't know about the Shanghai Tunnels, though, which made me decide she was all talk. Right. After that, we went back and I helped Margrit on the computer to book her next hostel and helped translate a few things in my broken German. Kayla and I are going to Europe next summer and Margrit offered us a place to stay with her in Switzerland...I'm pretty excited. After exchanging one other's information and email addresses, we went to sleep. Well, sort of. We learned that Dove knows how to snore. LOUD. We laughed about it for 20 minutes or so, then it was like "Okay...this is NOT funny!"...Kayla fell asleep pretty quick. I got to lay in bed for 4 hours and listen to the unsteady breathing and snorting Dove provided with care. Goodnight turned quickly into good morning. Sheesh. Thanks, Dove!
Tuesday:
Woke up bright and early and head out to Seattle. Went down the wrong way on a two lane street, thinking it was a one way in Olympia, WA. Drove past Sleater-Kinney Road. That was pretty awesome. Arrived in Seattle and with some directions I had written down the previous day, made it into the city. The directions placed us directly in front of the Moore Theater and were both like "Whooooooa, our hostel is right next to the venue"...then we realized that the directions I had copied down weren't for our hostel, but ummmm the Moore Theater. We felt silly. But we drove a block down and we found our hostel. Whew. Parked Trishelle under a bridge, grabbed our gear, and walked to our hostel. We looked like bums, it was awesome. Found the hostel and checked in. Serge Gainsbourg was playing. His ghost is haunting us, I think. Ultra hip atmosphere, though. Found our room, picked our bunks, and did a little exploring of the hostel...especially the bathroom. Changed, freshened up, we decided to hit the mean streets of Seattle. Walked over to Pike Place Market, looked for wedding rings and belt buckles. I bought an awesome Wapiti belt buckle and Kayla got one with Fish. Noticed someone from Salt Lake...we both looked at each other, exchanged strange looks for a few moments and kept walking. It was this girl that works at Jamba juice in the parking lot by my work. It didn't quite occur to me that quickly, though. I found it funny and ironic, because from the start of the trip, Kayla and I were dying for a Jamba and I we didn't have any luck finding one. So instead of getting a Jamba, we get Jamba girl from SLC. Good stuff. Strange little occurrences like that happened frequently on this trip. A lot of them are too hard to explain...just small moments or fleeting thoughts. Yeah. So when we were done with the Market, we walked around some more...went to the Moore Theater and bought our Sleater-Kinney tickets, shared a moment with a boy with extremely large hair, and then found ourselves in a wig shop. Had an awesome photo shoot...pretty sure the guy who worked there was more than a little baffled, but he tried not to notice us. Walked around some more, saw another wig shop, got creeped out majorly by the realistic eyes on the mannequin heads, walked past two Native American women who appeared to be sleeping while standing? Ummmm. About that. Hmmmmm. Went into a Chinatown shop and bought wedding rings and I tried on a mask and became Darth Geving. Went back to the hostel and ended up meeting my bunk mate Les, who happened to be from Scotland. Who happened to drink. A lot. She told many stories of falling off her bunk in the middle of the night and showed us some of her battle wounds. Pretty gnarly. She was rad. Turned out she was going to Sleater-Kinney, too...sweet. We hung out in the commons area for a bit, did some myspacing and lj-ing, then got ready for the show. After the robot dance party in the bathroom, of course. Set out in search of food first. We walked a good 10 blocks and strangely, we couldn't find a single restaurant. Finally, we found one...Mama's Restaurant...yummy Mexican food, and probably the biggest burrito I had ever seen...Kayla loved it. My enchilada was kinda hard to locate under all the cheese and sauce, but I eventually found it and ate maybe 1/3 of it. Then we found ourselves next in the balcony at the Moore Theater just in time to catch a few songs from Mary Timony. She was alright...a lot of her songs were repetitive and redundant, but that's okay. Next, Sleater-Kinney took the stage. Their new stuff is pretty rad, super hard rockin' yet ambient at the same time. Carrie Brownstein has some killer awesome sexy dance moves and kicks, but her skat across the stage was my favorite. I was pretty much in love by that point. I wished I could have taken some photos or videos, but the security guy was pretty daunting. After the show, we got in the merch line so I could purchase a poster, but decided the line was too long, so we went outside. Tried to get back in and was told no re-entry, so I was a little bummed. We decided to leave and go get a few things from the car on the way back to the hostel. Took a few photos in the parking garage, then some magnetic force drew us back towards the Moore Theater. We didn't quite know why at the time. Walked past a bar and they were playing that one Joan Baez song...we decided that was a sign of something. So we start walking by the entrance of the Moore, and I look over towards the door and guess who is walking out at that exact moment? Carrie Brownstein! Holy shit. What are the odds? I was about 5 feet away from her before she got into her getaway car, a black Jetta, that drove off without its lights on. How inconspicuous. It was pretty awesome, though. It's not like me to be starstruck...and I can't say that I exactly was, it was just strange to think about all of the steps we had to take for something like that to happen. Perfect timing. Happened a lot on the trip. So after all that excitement, we did a little more surfing of the web, hung out on the hostel balcony, did some quality talking and conversing, then headed to bed. Goodnight, Seattle.
Wednesday:
Woke up, packed our things, and went down to the commons room to make breakfast. After eating and eavesdropping on various conversations, we blew that joint. Headed out and stopped in Portland for one last moment with the city. Had some sushi at Sushi Takahashi and then vanilla lattes from Coffee People. Walked past some girls who were panhandling for milk. Their sign said "Got milk? We don't." and they had a guitar and a harmonica and would randomly strike the guitar and blow into the harmonica whilst singing tales of empty fridges. It was pretty hilarious. We saw a pregnant man, and another man struggling to get onto his bike for a good 5 minutes. We said our last goodbyes to our dear Portland and finally got a start on our demon hell-ride back home. Stopped at Multnomah Falls, revelled in the glorious beauty, took some photos, and saw some fish spawning. Drove, drove, drove, then stopped at the huge grove of trees that lined the freeway. Had a "band" photoshoot. Stubbed my toe. Ouch. Drove, drove, drove...stopped at a view area and had yet another photo shoot...this time it was wedding portraits. After several minutes of straddling and cheesy smiles, we were off. Our next stop was, again, at the now famed Fiesta Guadalajara Restaurant. Same thing as before, please. Gracias. And the rest is history.
It was easily one of the best trips I've ever had the pleasure of going on. Things went almost too perfectly well. Although my week-old mocassins now look as if they've been worn every day for 3 years. I like it, though. Thanks for the laughs and the geekiness Kayla. There's definitely more where that came from, right? Next stop: NYC. After that: Europe. Look out, world.
Damn, it feels good to be a gangsta.