Pre-Travel Day
On Wednesday I hung out with one of my close college friends and his wife and we went to go see the Brian Eno documentary at The Brattle in Harvard Square (Cambridge, MA). I was flying out of Logan the following morning and they were kind enough to let me stay over. He had the day off so I arrived in Boston at ~1:30 in the afternoon and we spent an hour at the Museum of Fine Arts. What a great museum, I always forget how much I enjoy it until I visit again. I ended up leaving his place at 5:30am trying to be as quiet as possible as I slipped out the door and into an Uber.
My Uber driver was from Myanmar and taught me 3 important things about the place: Don’t leave the capital, anytime someone gives you a price ask for half off and if you want a better exchange rate, you can find one on the black market lol. Armed with that random knowledge I left for Portland. The flight was somewhat uneventful. Always a good thing.
Welcome to Portland!
I had to check my bag on my last flight, which is normally not a big deal but I’ve never checked a bag at the gate before. My friend gave me a ton of anxiety around whether or not my luggage would be on the carousel after. Thankfully he was wrong and it was there lol. My bag is also super easy to spot. I’m not sure why more people don’t put stickers all over their luggage. I hear a lot of “I think that’s mine?” at the carousel, which is wild to say for something that can be fixed by adding a bunch of stickers. Not my problem though. After that, I met up with my friend Matt and we hopped an Uber to the hotel where our friend Joe was waiting.
There was a wing place near the hotel my friend wanted to try and they have a food challenge, which he is prone to do every trip, so we decided to head that direction. He claimed his GPS said it was 0.3mi which it ended up being like 0.7mi — I guess fate decided I need more exercise. So I had their September Sauce which was called “High Thai’d”, and it was pretty good, but their hottest sauce was some of the weakest sauce I’ve had in a while. Sorely disappointed for a place called Fire on the Mountain, but it must be more biblical than volcanic lol. All good. Our friends Dave and Paul met up with us there and had some wings too.
The Hostel
The hostel we’re staying at is really nice. It’s got a great bar in it, and the staff is really nice. I’m typing this from there now. There’s apparently a sauna here in the basement. Tomorrow morning I’m absolutely going down there. I wanna check it out! Gotta take advantage of the amenities where they exist.
The room sleeps 5-6, there is a queen bed and 4 bunk beds. Joe won the stupid game competition so he gets the queen bed but I feel like I lucked out. The bottom bunks have this nice curtain you can draw and have some privacy so I can play my brand new Steam Deck into the wee hours of the night without bothering anyone else. After dropping our bags off, we ended up just sitting around for a minute and figuring out our plan for the evening, which involved a reserved karaoke room at Voice Box. Their song selection is so sick lol. More on that later.
Bars, Plants and Photo booths
Before Karaoke we decided to go bowling. I looooooove bowling. But like, halfway through the first game I jammed my fingers when the ball touched the lane before I was ready and it still hurts this morning… I thought it was going to be black and blue. Either way, I couldn’t bowl the third game and barely suffered through the second one. After that we checked out the small arcade they had. It had guitar hero, the punching bag game and this weird beer pong game with metal cups. Like, I legitimately think I could make the beer pong game at home, it’s super simple and was pretty cool. After that we left and it was something like 7pm with our reservation starting at 9 PM, so we had a couple hours to kill. We walked around and there was an open market outside a nearby bar and this cute girl approached me about buying a plant terrarium. I actually might. I spoke with her for a while about a ton of different stuff but most importantly she explained how the plant attracts and kills fruit flies. If I get back into kombucha making, this plant would actually be really nice. I’m going to ask her what the name of the plant is and then check if I can bring it on a flight in my carry on lol.
Karaoke
Karaoke is always a good time. I try to do karaoke on every trip I go on because A) It gets people out of their shells and B) you learn a lot about what kind of music they like. Turns out they all grew up listening to a bunch of stuff I never got into lol, which is fine, but maaaaan… I just wanna have Against Me, Bane and Dashboard singalongs. I didn’t try looking for Bane but they had Dashboard and I was the only Against Me fan I guess. Super good time though. Hands Down it was the best thing I can ever remember lol.
Obviously with karaoke there’s drinking involved. I told my friends at the start of the trip that I’m not drinking so if they see me with a drink to slap me. After everyone got pretty drunk it was hard to say no, not gonna lie, but that’s why I’m awake and typing this at 9:45 AM and they’re all probably gonna be sleeping until noon. I don’t miss the part of waking up feeling like shit, getting nothing done and getting stuck in it. Typing this out is more for me than anyone else, but it’s good to write it down. Oh and holy shit the bills they got for the booze. I don’t miss that part for sure lol. Everytime I see that I keep thinking I’m in the wrong business (I’m unemployed).
We got back to the room around 1am-ish, everyone went to bed almost immediately. I can’t find my toothbrush I bought, but that’s a problem for later whenever they wake up. I have no idea what I’m gonna do until then but it probably involves going for a walk and getting a coffee somewhere. Looking forward to the rest of the day!
