Recently in travel Category

I tried to figure out how to go home to Texas for the week of Christmas, really I did.  But it was just excessively expensive, and I thought a nice quiet Christmas in Seattle actually sounded really nice.  (Note: my family's big holiday gathering is at Thanksgiving, and we do presents and everything at the end of November so we don't have to fuck with it in December. It hasn't been required to go home for Christmas Proper in about 10-15 years.)

I planted the seed in my sister's mind that she should consider coming up to visit me, seeing as she has the whole week off, too.  She is smarter than me, and was able to find a decently priced plane ticket.  And I suggested that maybe, just maybe...she and I could spend a couple of days in Vancouver while she was here.  Vancouver holds a special place in both our hearts.  For no apparent reason.  Once we played one of our dumb list-making games during a long trip in the car.  One particular round's list was our top 3 vacation spots, and we both chose...Vancouver?

Staci and I have been on vacation to Canada together once before.  It was 2002, aka Wrestlemania XXIII.  We bought a WWF Travel Club package to go see Wrestlemania at the SkyDome in Toronto, and spent 3 days immersed in total WWF-itude.  It seemed appropriate to try to incorporate something wrestling-related into this trip to Vancouver, too, so that Staci could have the privilege and honor of saying that she attended wrestling matches every single time she ever set foot in Canada.  I set to work finding a regional wrestling alliance in the Vancouver area.

And lo and behold, I found Extreme Canadian Championship Wrestling!  And fortuitously, there are wrestling matches on December 26 when Staci will be here!  Tickets were only about $12, but of course I sprang for the $15 "FRONT ROW" seats.  No crappy Canadian wrestling match seats are too good for my sister!

Epilogue:

When I was buying the tickets, there was a typo in the PayPal checkout and "Extreme Canadian Championship Wrestling" was transformed into "Extremely Canadian Championship Wrestling."  I think I prefer that name.

We didn't really have concrete plans for my second night in LA, so we did what seemed most logical: to head down to the neighborhood of THE Church of Scientology International Celebrity Centre and snoop around.

1. We walked up to the center, fully knowing every move we made would be videotaped, and every word we uttered would be recorded. I took that opportunity to loudly reiterate my confusion between "dianetics" and "diuretics."
   
   
   
   
2. As we walked around to a dimly lit side street alongside the complex, a bicycle cop / security guard / Scientology Overlord stopped in his tracks, turned around, and started slowly trailing us.  I still managed to snap off this shot of both the parking dungeon and the castle where they keep the snails or Xenu's ashes or whatever.
   
   
   
   
3. There was a set of apartments directly next to (maybe even physically connected to) the compound.  We wondered if that was just an unfortunate location for some tenants...or if this was some sort of safehouse for wayward thetans.  Then we came across the most exciting find of the evening.  What appeared to be an actual E-meter machine sitting on a cart just inside the apartment gate!!
   
   
   
   
4. Then suddenly, a real, live Scientologist shuffled past us!  I'm not sure if I'm remembering correctly, but I think he had on a tuxedo.  (For some reason, in my mind all Scientologists always wear tuxedos.)  He hurried by, and did not offer to audit us although he was clearly making a beeline for that E-meter.
   
   
   

The next day we watched this documentary on a disillusioned (and highly vocal) ex-Scientologist, but...it put us to sleep.  No one could stay awake through this thing.  I looked over at Kris when we both woke up and realized we had both nodded off and she said, "Shit.  I think I'm a Scientologist now."

Remember this dumb idea?  Where my friend Kris and I were going to attempt the impossible and get me from LAX to the theatre downtown in about an hour, with the goal of making it in time to see the beginning of the "9 to 5" musical at 8pm?  Well....welcome to the exciting conclusion!

I flew on my first Virgin America flight ever, and I must say I'm pretty impressed with the airline.  The seats were roomy and comfortable, the aesthetic was really space-agey and clean-looking, the in-flight entertainment system (particularly the game Anagramarama) was truly entertaining, and the cherry on top was the fact that I was surrounded by about 25 twenty-something boys from Italy. But I was not impressed with their airspeed.  We were supposed to touch down at 6:20, and when Kris called me at 6:25 asking if I was on the shuttle yet, I had to sadly report that I was still on the tarmac.  My confidence level on a scale from 1 to 10 slipped to about a 6.5 that we would make it to 9 to 5 on time.

I finally got off the plane and speedwalked to the shuttle stop, hoping I would just catch the one going by since they start at Terminal 1 every half hour on the hour.  I figured since I was outside at about 6:35, there was no way they could make it from Terminal 1 to Terminal 6 in five minutes, and I'd be gold.  I was not gold.  I must have just missed the last one, because I ended up waiting/pacing there for 25 minutes.  Confidence level dropped to 5.0.

Once on the shuttle and on the freeway, I saw nothing but a sea of brake lights, and my confidence temporarily dropped to a 3.0, until I realized we were allowed in the HOV lane and were blowing past everyone and it returned to a 5.0.  I was on the phone with Kris, giving her a play-by-play of which exits I was passing so she could coordinate train timing.

I pulled up to Union Station at 7:50 or so, watching Kris sprint past the bus to the ticket counter to buy my tickets.  Once I was allowed to disembark, she and I took off running to the underground subway tunnels.  We breathlessly arrived on the platform, only to see that the next train didn't arrive until 7:57.   Confidence level 2.0.

But at 7:54, our train was inexplicably early!  We got on it and stood at the doorway as if we were in sprinter's blocks, ready to explode out of the train at our next stop and haul ass to the theatre.  It stopped.  We ran.

We didn't exactly know which way the theatre was, so we took a few gambles and ran up several flights of stairs.  After running so far with my heavy bag and Kris in heels, we started to slow down.  Confidence level and lung capacity sank to a 1.0, when we finally made it to the doors of the theatre, only to find it was a whole theatre COMPLEX and we were at the wrong one!  We still had about a block to go...fuck!  I was just ready to lay down and die and forget the whole caper.

We limped and stumbled to the right theatre, and surprisingly the front doors were still open and attended by ushers.  No music.  7.5.  We realized we had to walk up three flights of stairs to get to the balcony.  7.0.  We made it to the top and were greeted by a smiling usher who uttered these magic words...

"You just made it."

We were all wheezing and sweaty, and sank breathlessly into our seats at 8:10.  Literally one minute later, the lights dimmed and the curtains opened...

Tomorrow I run away to Texas.  We have a client meeting in Austin on Tuesday.  The rest of my workie friends are heading down on Monday night.  I am leaving tomorrow.  You're probably thinking that's a bit early to arrive 5 days early for a meeting.  (15 minutes early?  Yes.  5 days early?  Slightly excessive.)  Well, Seattle "summer" has been disappointing weather-wise, so I decided to take advantage of a free trip home and the holiday weekend to go bake in the heat for a few extra days.

My sister understands how badly I miss the heat.  She delivered this weather report to me today:

Weather Forecast from NBC5 meteorologist Jennifer Lopez...

Thursday 98 - sunny

Friday 98 - sunny

Saturday 96 - isolated storms (which means nothing)

Sunday 98 - stray storms  (which is less than isolated, so again, probably nothing.)

Apparently JLo can't predict out to Monday, but there seems to be a trend of 98 degrees.  Can we get any more boy band and pop diva in our weather this week!!!  WHOOO!!!

Last entry about Portland, I swear.  Yesterday (Saturday) the weather was totally perfect...the sun was out, it was about 80 degrees...it's the kind of weather I've been waiting for for the past 8 months.  I purposefully spent most of my day walking around outside, soaking up some much-needed sun. 

• I walked up and down 21st and 23rd streets, which are part of a funky little neighborhood full of independent retail shops and weird bars and cafes.  The Goodwill Store had a very high percentage of Jim Nabor albums in their vinyl section.
  
  
• Powell's Bookstore - my god.  Someone said it was the biggest bookstore ever, and shit, they were not kidding.  It reminded me a bit of Recycled Books in Denton...rooms leading to other rooms which lead to nooks which lead to secret hallways, which lead to a whole other set of rooms!  Every section was color-coded, an organizational detail which I of course appreciated.
  
  
• On that note, I should also mention that 21st and 23rd are part of the Alphabet District, where all the east/west street names are in alphabetical order: Burnside, Couch, Davis, Everett, Flanders, Glisan, Hoyt, Irving, Johnson, Kearney, Lovejoy, Marshall, Northrup, Overton, Pettygrove, Quimby.  I love the organizational aspects of that, too...but if I were a city planner I totally would have mandated that all the establishments on those streets had to start with that letter, too. 
  
  
• We went down by the riverside and watched elderly hippies juggle sticks, then went for a sky tram ride to the hospital.  (Why the destination of the sky tram is the hospital, I'll never understand.  That doesn't give me a tremendous amount of confidence in the safety of the sky tram.)
  
  
• And probably the best part of my day other than the $1.75 PBR tallboys and pinball I enjoyed at the bar later that night, was the Velveteria Velvet Painting museum.  I highly, highly recommend this to anyone ever visiting Portland.  The two people who run it (who I had read about on the website) were there, and could not have been nicer or more interesting.  The place was pretty dead, so they walked me around and told me all sorts of neat stories about all the paintings.  Of course it wouldn't have been right for me to take photos, but goodness me...they had some ridiculously amazing stuff.  The best I can do is share my list with you, and let your black velvet imagination run wild:
  
  
• Dog the Bounty Hunter
• Mr. T with actual gold beads glued to the painting for his necklaces
• Macho Man Randy Savage
• A slightly monoloid-looking Hulk Hogan
• Dolemite
• Jack Lord
  
• A overly manly ballerina who looked like a love child of Gorgeous George and Ric Flair
• The Heaven's Gate Cult leader
• A whole section of black light paintings, mostly focused on sad and/or gambling clowns
• A whole section of nudie paintings, mostly focused on Filipino boobie girls
• A whole section of Elvis paintings, mostly with him crying
  
• A whole section of bandido paintings
• And most importantly, a whole section of unicorn paintings called "Unicornucopia" which included:
• Glam rock unicorns
• Satanic unicorns
• A genie lamp with a vaporous unicorn coming out of it
  
  and the pièce de résistance...
  
  
• A unicorn with an extra long mane, which ebbs and flows into a giant wave, which then becomes the long hair of a beautiful woman.  Carl and Caren lovingly refer to this one as "Unicorn Combover" and I am happy to be able to show you a half-assed picture of it:
  
  
  

Also, I should stick in a plug for them as I'm sure my massive readership will really add a spike to their sales...but they've written a book on black velvet paintings that will be coming out soon.  Note to whoever: I would love to have this for my birthday.

And thus concludes my visit to Portland.  I will definitely be going back, as I did not get to go to Big Al's bowling alley or to try the macaroni and cheese at Savoy.  And next time, I'm going to take the long way home up the coastal 101 for some scenic beach driving with the sunroof open.  Summer, please hurry up.

Something everyone should think about is...if you are going to be executed, what would you choose as your last meal?  I would choose macaroni and cheese as my entree, and S'mores Pop Tarts as my dessert.  Macaroni and cheese has been my favorite food since I was old enough to chew.  And many people have told me that Portland has the greatest macaroni and cheeses in the whole world, particularly the versions from these three restaurants:

1. Gravy
2. Montage
3. Savoy
   

I was anxious to investigate these claims during my trip to Portland, and was dedicated to eating as much macaroni and cheese as possible.  Unfortunately, after eating nothing but macaroni and cheese on Friday...I totally overloaded and was not able to eat it again the rest of the weekend.  So I can only present my reviews for #1 and #2:

Gravy

• Portion Size: a very very deep, very hot bowl that I would approximate contained over 2 cups worth of noodles.  (I could only put a dent about 20% of the way in before I began to feel the onset of a coma.)
  
• Pasta: big textured, curved macaroni noodles, as you can see in the picture one noodle was about the size of my thumb.
  
• Cheese: some sort of hybrid...the orangey color and mild sharpness suggests there was cheddar involved, but the texture was too creamy to be only cheddar.  But not too creamy to be runny.
  
• Topping: slightly sweetened breadcrumbs held together with melted cheddar to create a protective covering that was very effective at holding in the heat of the dish.
• Optional Side: the most deliciously savory tomato soup that has ever passed mine lips; it was so, so creamy and chickeny and had the perfect ultra-pureed consistency, no nasty tomato chunks to navigate around, or weird onions to dodge.  I could have eaten it with a straw.
  
• Price: $7.75

Montage

• Portion Size: a bowl that I would approximate contained roughly 1 cup of noodles.  I was able to polish off the entire dish.
  
• Pasta: medium-sized curved textured macaroni noodles, closer to the size of my pinky or ring finger.
  
• Cheese: a smooth white, creamy cheese...perhaps maybe a hint of alfredo sauce thrown in?
• Topping: a mound of shredded parmesan or romano cheese, sprinkled with a bit of paprika for color.  The saltiness of the parmesan/romano nicely offset the dairiness of the cheese.
  
• Optional Side: n/a
• Price: $6.50

I told my boss that I would come up with some weighted formula to mathematically calculate the winning macaroni and cheese variant, but sometimes math can't explain everything.  I can state it best like this:

The macaroni and cheese at Montage was so good it made me happy to be alive...but the macaroni and cheese at Gravy was so good it made me wish I was dead.

WINNER: Gravy. 

Road trip!  I forget how car-free life in Seattle is, and it's been a long time since I drove anywhere.  Yesterday I went on a wonderful drive from Seattle to Portland  The sun was out.  There were trees.  There were many casinos to look at, including the legendary and mythical Emerald Queen Casino.  There was music.  And singing.  And I backed myself up on percussion with the tambourine!! 

I met up with some friends I know from Texas, and we spent the evening at one of the most magical places I've ever been in my life.  It's called the Kennedy School, and it's an old elementary school building from the 1920's that they have converted into...well, I guess you could kind of call it a hotel compound?  A lot of the classrooms have been converted into hotel rooms.  (We scored the music room.  There were no instruments in there, though, and I left my tambourine in the car.)  In addition to lodging, the place has:

• a tiny movie theatre
• a small concert venue
• a restaurant (although somewhat disappointingly, it is not cafeteria-style)
• a non-smoking bar called "The Honors Room"
• a smoking bar called "Detention"

We pretty much hung out there all night, there was really no reason to leave...they have everything!  I had pizza and raspberry beers.  We giggled a lot.  Then I went back to the room and slept well and happily.  I think I could live there.

Today I'm working from the Portland office, and it's awesome.  I'm like the new girl at school and everyone is being really nice and over-explaining everything to me.  The office is in an odd area of town that is a hybrid of super-industrial, a tiny bit ghetto, and hipster-ish.  I think my analyst comrade here and I are going to "work" from the brewery across the street for the afternoon.  Expect the quality of my typing to decrease as the day goes on.

I met my dad and sisters in Vegas last weekend.  (Well, I mean I met up with them, I've actually met them before.)  That in and of itself is not that amazing, I think that's about the 20th time I've been.  It becomes difficult to separate all those trips in my mind, but two extraordinarily memorable things happened so I doubt I will forget this particular trip.

Amazing Event #1

I didn't hit any jackpots.  But...a jackpot did hit ME!?!  We were at a blackjack table at Fitzgerald's (which seems to be a recurring setting for all the Vegas drama in my life).  I was sitting at first base.  During play, a security guard walked up with one of those chip caddies to refill the dealer's stash.  That usually takes them a minute to check their math and sign their slips of paper, so I turned to my sister when suddenly...crash!! 

Hundreds of chips had spewed all over the table.  My first reaction was that I was a criminal and I put my hands in the air.  I expected lots of heavies to emerge from the shadows of the casino with guns drawn...but no one else showed up, and the pit boss, dealer, and guard honestly laughed it off like it wasn't that big of a deal.  They picked them all up and recounted, and everything was fine.  The pit boss leaned over to me and said, "When was the last time someone dumped $10,000 in your lap?"  I said, "I just got off work at the Crazy Horse II about 2 hours ago, so...two hours I guess?" 

Amazing Event #2

We went to see Penn & Teller.  Awesome show.  I love those guys.  As you know, Teller's gimmick is that he doesn't talk.  They do this one mind-reading bit where they pass a bunch of joke books out in the audience, and ask everyone to pass them around at random in order to choose their mind-reading victim.  My hard-of-hearing dad was on the aisle seat, and I saw someone kneel down beside him to say something.  I leaned over, knowing that I'd probably need to translate for Dad, and I found myself staring into this face with these words coming out of the face's mouth:



To reiterate, I heard Teller speak.  Holy shit.  I knew he wasn't really mute and that was just his character, but STILL. 

My friend Jenni is coming to visit me in Seattle for New Year's, and I am most excited about this.  We've been plotting and planning for a couple of weeks, and we officially decided a few days ago that we will be defecting to Canada for a couple of days.  We've been trying to line up the details, one of which is the increased security at the border, and how you can no longer just say "Um, yeah I'm...American?  Sure." at the border crossing and be let through.

Which sucks, because Jenni's passport is expired.  So she has been on spazz patrol, scrambling to get a renewal expedited.  Apparently she had an appointment at the passport office this morning, so I got a frantic message from her when I arrived at work that we needed to dig up some sort of supporting documentation, stat.  Options:

1. Hotel reservation - The problem: The hotel we are staying at is a very small operation, and they don't have automated email confirmations.  I begged the lady on the phone to send me something, anything.  This request (and presumably the concept of email) was quite confusing to her and I suspected the email confirmation would consist of something like a message saying "yeah, you have room 131 on 1/4" from her personal AOL account.  This email never arrived.
   
   
2. Train booking - The problem: When making a booking on Amtrak's website, if you're crossing the border you have to enter the passport ID numbers of all the travellers as part of the checkout process.  I don't have my passport with me today, and obviously Jenni doesn't have one, period.  So we can't get a train reservation without a passport, and Jenni can't get a passport without a train reservation.  Fuck.
   

Jenni had to leave for her appointment as I was still on the phone trying to figure all this out, so she wasn't able to print anything to take with her to the passport office.  I managed to talk to a human at Amtrak, and she was great and got me set up with a reservation under the stipulation that I call back with passport information in a couple of days.  This Amtrak angel also sent an email confirmation, which I promptly and frantically forwarded to Jenni hoping like hell they might let her check her email from their computer really quickly at the passport office, just long enough to print the proof they needed.

So it was a very hectic morning.  All this buzzing around and stressing out....then silence.  Finally Jenni calls me excitedly explaining that she got everything taken care of, and she would get her passport next week!  Yay!  I just assumed she was able to print that Amtrak confirmation.  No.  The only documentation Jenni was able to print before she left for the office was a stupid itinerary I crudely put together in Google Spreadsheets.  Ladies and gentlemen, may I present the "official documentation" that the passport office ACCEPTED AND PUT IN JENNI'S OFFICIAL FILE:

I have no idea whether to be totally impressed or totally disappointed in the passport office.

Oh.  My.  Goodness.  On the soul of Jerry Reed, how did I not know about this????

"The good folks at YearOne, along with Restore A Muscle Car, Motortopia, and 78TA.com, have organized the first Bandit Run to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the release of the original Smokey and the Bandit film. It'll be a recreation of the route Burt Reynolds took in that American cinema classic, taking participants from Texarkana, Texas to Atlanta, Georgia, passing through Arkansas, Mississippi, and Alabama along the way. East bound and down, indeed.

The cruise is open to all makes and models, but Trans Ams are especially coveted, particularly black '76-'81 T/As and SE models. The Bandit Run starts on May 15 and ends in Atlanta on May 17."

Smoke. Key.  And.  The.  Bandit.  Cross.  Country.  Road.  Trip.  Trans.  Am.  I.  Can't.  Breathe...  Skip to the -6:00 minute mark on this clip to see the part that almost literally made me pass out:



I left out a detail up there. It was on May 15-17, 2007.  MY 30TH BIRTHDAY WAS THE SAME DAY AS THE 30TH BIRTHDAY OF SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT AND I DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT THE BANDIT RUN AND I MISSSSSED IT!!!!!!!!!

But you know what?  Just like their was a sequel to Smokey and the Bandit, they're doing it again this year.  Vacation plans and birthday present to self for 2008?  DONE.