The Road Trip Part 8. Of Space and Needles.

This was one of several
clever little signs in Seattle

Alright boys and girls. Looks like we've got some catching up to do. Let's get to it.

So the 4.5 hour drive from Portland was all in all, pretty decent. Listened to some music, talked on the carphone. I left in the afternoon and spent a pretty dark evening driving through rainy freeways. Honestly I would not recommend doing it that way if you ever choose to make that drive. My car skidded on rain-slick roads at least six times and my heart jumped a good eighteen inches or so each time.

Truck Lunch

At any rate, I arrived in Seattle damp, but largely unharmed. I went to bed in my hotel without really paying much attention to my surroundings and then when I awoke, I was pleased to wander outside into the gray city to find a food-truck brandishing a host of delicious food-meats.

I partook and was genuinely pleased.

I wandered around town a little more looking at shops and stuff, but come dinner-time there was really only one reason I chose Seattle:

Pictured: Heaven.

Soup, mother-effin' Dumplings.

The Seattle Branch of the illustrious Din Tai Fung was all in all, pretty cool. It was bigger than the one I was used to in Arcadia, and the food had a slightly different flavor. They also had some Soup Dumplings infused with Truffle Oil which I tried. They were on the border of way too rich and were a fascinating experience in decadence.

Books!

My Seattle Adventure continued in the truly tremendous Seattle Public Library, which was a great time. The building was this big triangular number and was filled with books and escalators and college students.

Ye Olde blogging material.

After that I went to the pier where I hit up a Curiosity Shop, which I suppose would be a convenient time to mention the Kickstarter that recently opened up wherein I did some writing for my sister and her husband's awesome illustrated book thingy. Also, the shop had a dead guy in it.

Holy snap deliciousness

Then I went to the Pike Place Market, which was fabulous. It had bookstores, and Truffle dealers and buskers galore. I had a delicious lunch at a place called Pike Place Chowder, which had a gigantic line but I didn't have anywhere else to be that day. I waited in line and read some Hero's Guide to Saving Your Kingdom until I managed to get a seat, followed quickly by a cup of chowder and a crab sandwich. They were FANTASTIC.

Don't swallow your gum, kids.

Then I saw a gum wall.

The cool thing about it was that every few feet there were little gum murals asking people to Prom or other such pronouncements.

Art?

I went to the Seattle Fine Art Museum and saw some Fine Art

Also: Blue trees. 

Art.

Then I went to get some hot chocolate because I'm cool like that. There was a little bar at the back of the chocolate store where I was expounded upon the distinction between hot cocoa and hot chocolate. Fascinating stuff, really.

The line to the top was
too long.

Then I went to the Space Needle. 

This gun, is the best gun.

Which was conveniently located near the MUCH MORE INTERESTING Museum of Science Fiction.

Seriously, they had Unhinged
Box sets.

All in all, it was a pretty good trip. 

My last night in Seattle was pretty awesome I was out on the edge of town where there was a little street with [little shops]. I stopped by a truly fantastic gaming store in time for Friday Night Magic, bought some more dice, and just ogled at their selection of games and cards. 

Then I went to a Diner called Beth's. 

I wish I could convey how awesome this diner was. Instead I'll just leave you with this:

This Diner is the Best Diner.

The Road Trip Part 7. Epilogue Portland

So let's wrap up the Portland leg of this trip. 

Portland in a nutshell

My last two days were pretty good times, primarily focused on seeing buddies and saying goodbyes.

Deschutes Brewery

I went and managed to catch Kyle, an old buddy from High School and we spent the evening hanging out, getting a bit drunk and wandering the streets. We hit up Deschutes brewery and grabbed some beers and also saw a resin-zombie thing next to a half-pipe at his buddy's place. All in all, pretty good times.

The next day I woke up with a tiny twinge of a hangover and decided to go grab lunch with Kyle and say goodbye. We went to this little Deli near his house where he introduced me to this stuff. 

I have seen the face of god.

Pictured: Lunch, and Kyle's thumbs.

Secret Aardvark Sauce, Unique to Portland, it's like, a habanero sauce thing, spicy but not aggressive. It left a pleasant burning sensation in my mouth that didn't hurt, it just tasted good. I immediately purchased a bottle for the road and intend to pour it on damn near everything. 

That was a pretty good meal. 

That night I went over to another friend's house. This guy I had only known on the internet until a few days ago. We met about five or so years back when I was doing a bunch of OCTs on Deviantart. He ran the club I was a part of, he brought together a group of people who really seriously influenced my growth both as an artist and a storyteller. So yeah, he's a pretty decent guy once you get past his truly biblical self-deprecating streak. 

Also he can kick my ass at Magic the Gathering any day of the week. 

Greg's the guy on the right
with his head in his hands.
Such is the life of a Party Healer.

I met his dog, his nephews, sister, brother and parents, who are all tremendously kind people, and also his brother's friends who came over to play some D&D. 

And then we played D&D. Most of them haven't played since 2nd Edition with THAC0 and everything. It felt remarkable watching them roll up Dwarf Fighters and learn the ropes of 4e. It was honestly a pretty tremendous experience. 

Seriously. Teal as hell. 

The next morning I woke up, said some goodbyes and went off to visit Rhiannon and Mel for the last time. We played some Smash watched some Korra, talked about books and then I bid them farewell. 

Them and their INCREDIBLY TEAL house. 

So yeah, Portland. It was pretty fucking awesome all told. I can't wait to go back sometime. 

But not tomorrow, because next stop: SEATTLE!

~Ying

The Road Trip Part 6. Portland: The Return of the Bootblack

DISCLAIMER: It has come to my attention that my parents are concerned for my health as of this trip and I have not been eating healthy enough. Your concerns have been taken into account and it is with that in mind that I apologize for this. 

I have never eaten a Reuben before.
What a fool I had been.

So going along with a convenient Star Wars chapter theme, here's one of my most interesting days of the trip.

To start it off I got a delicious Reuben from Kenny and Zukes, I've made it a habit to sort of ignore the menu and just ask the waiter/waitress "Let's say this is going to be my last meal. What would recommend?"

Their nervous laughter is usually followed by a pretty good suggestion for delicious food.

It hasn't steered me wrong yet.

For real this time.

Anyway, after that, I decided to wander around the block, and as luck would have it, I was literally not two blocks away from THE ACTUAL Powell's Books! Awesome!

I went inside and it was like walking into The Strand in New York, but with a higher budget. Each wing of the store was divided by broad colored walls, so you'd be in Purple for Self-Help and Reference books. Red for History and Cooking, and Mauve for your speculative alternate history travelogues.

It was pretty freaking awesome. I walked around for awhile just marvelling at the selection. They had an entire shelf that was JUST different editions of Jonathan Strange & Mister Norrell (Fantastic book by the way)

There were some
pretty choice gems here.

They also had a phenomenal gaming section. Seriously, this entire shelf was filled with goddamn Tabletop RPGs, the upper shelves were all ridiculous vintage shit. Like, we're talking first edition Weird West RPG Deadlands.

Pictured: a friendly NPC

I went outside afterwards and there was a guy who offered to shine up my boots. I was totally ready to just ignore him and move on and then I stopped and thought: "Wait, what the hell. My boots have been through a fair bit this trip. Also this guy has an awesome moustache. Also honestly, do I have anywhere else to be today in a hurry? I've already decided that I will prioritize all of my decisions on what will make a better story. What do I have to lose?" So after standing there awkwardly pondering for like half a minute, I was like. "Sure!" and he settled me down and began a shining.

Turns out he was a professional Bootblack who had been featured in the local paper. He had gotten like, serious apprenticeship stuff and did a lot of cool work.

Pictured: A donut covered
in Captain Crunch.

We had a lovely conversation where I mentioned that I was gonna go to Voodoo Donuts, (Again, at my sister's suggestion) He was like

"Dude! Awesome! Okay here's a trick: ask for a bucket of day old donuts. It's five dollars and it's a whole bucket of donuts. Seriously, it's awesome."

Oh god what have I done.

So I did.

~Ying Out.

The Road Trip Part 5. The Portland Strikes Back

Never before have I felt more
like Food Network

So my trip to Portland has been pretty exciting so far. I woke up that morning, got a call from a friend inviting me to hang out that evening and go to some hippie street fair. I was all "Sure." and since I had a whole day to kill, I decided to check out a few places my sister recommend. First up, as usual: LUNCH.

I went to this neat little place called Meat Cheese Bread, which served exactly what it says on the tin. I got a locally made not-coke and a french onion soup with my delicious sandwich. Overall this was probably the most satisfying meal of the trip so far.

You can't see it, but over to the right there's an actual physical newspaper which I perused so I could feel retro, and I saw an article about Last Thursday. What do you know? The article talked about how the City was worried that a profoundly Portland-y event might become commercialized or somesuch. Anyway, interest thoroughly piqued.



After that I wandered around town a little before heading off to the world-famous Powell's Books!

Still has books? I'm good.

Wait, whoops. Turns out that I went to the wrong Powell's books. There's more than one apparently. This one was a somewhat smaller establishment but pretty cool regardless. Powell's Books on Hawthorne. With the "On Hawthorne" in italics so you know it's emphasized. As though the sign is saying it with extra emphasis to clarify that you're dumb and should quit just going to the first location that showed up on Google Maps.

Still, what the hell. I went in and picked up a few little things. Most notably this pretty damn cool book. Also for clarity I also purchased the Serenity: Official Visual Companion which had the shooting script for the Big Damn Movie. As well as this charming and beautifully illustrated book. I'll talk about those later probably. 


So after hanging out at the bookstore for a bit I grabbed a coffee and headed over to my friend Kyle's place. He apparently hadn't gotten off of work yet, so I hung out with his housemates. We ended up just playing Mario Kart. I got my ass kicked handily in several rounds before someone suggested we play Smash Bros.

I managed to redeem my prowess with my Falco skillz. Which was comforting. It was around this time that Kyle showed up. We drank a few beers and he then informed me that he had forgotten that he had made plans to catch dinner with a lady. Gentleman that I am I did not want to intrude, and so he went off and I played more videogames and caught an episode of The Walking Dead with his super-cool housemates.

Pictured: Awesomeness

Anyway Kyle sent me a text to meet up with him at a bar called The Alleyway on Alberta. So I went, I had to park a couple of blocks away, and even that wasn't easy. There were a lot of goddamn cars.

Oh and 8-foot tall hippie children.

I swear, the random encounter table is getting kind of weird these days.

Anyway we wandered around Last Thursday, which was basically an impromptu convention festival thigny. Street vendors hawking wares, jugglers, musicians, there was this one vaudeville thing too!

Or maybe Epic Meal Time

Conveniently on the same street though, was this neat little place my sister recommended: Pine State Biscuits Wherein I got a biscuit with bacon, cheese, egg, and fried chicken, with a cradle of cheese fries and a locally brewed beer on the side.

If lunch was the most satisfying, this may have been the most transcendentally empowering and decadent.

The rest of the evening was spent recovering from this meal.

I regret nothing.


~Ying Out.

The Road Trip Part 4. Land of Ports

Pictured: Everything
being great.

So I made it to Portland after a long and somewhat uneventful drive. It turns out that the trip between Eureka and Portland is exactly long enough to listen to The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Presents America (The Audiobook): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction in it's entirety. Which was convenient. Highly recommended.

I managed to spend my first night couch-crashing at my friend Mel's house. I know her from The Internet. She was very cool and she had two extremely friendly cats. I had settled down to fall asleep when one of them literally leapt on top of me and made himself comfortable. It wasn't so bad until he started doing that thing from that cartoon with the bulldog. I had to put on a sweater so the claws didn't get through. Once that was settled, everything was great.

BREAKFAST OF
CHAMPIONS.

The next morning was pretty fun. Mel took me to a little local diner-y place where I ate a rather nice breakfast. But after seeing their 7 foot tall rotating jewel case filled with Pie I decided "what the hell" and got a slice of strawberry pie for breakfast. It was delicious. I hung out with Mel and another Internet buddy named Rhiannon.

I realize that there's a lot of links in this text. Hrm. I should probably slow down.



Anyway we had a good day of hanging out, drawing, and eating sushi off of a little model-train. Then later on I was informed that there was one place, above all others, that I needed to go in Portland.

That place was called Ground Kontrol. I seemed to have lucked out, as it happens, that the last wednesday of the month is free-to-play night, where all the machines are free and you just pay a five-dollar entrance fee. Also (like everywhere else in Portland apparently) they have liquor.

So I went in and got my wrist stamped, immediately assaulted by neon-retro-joy. The upper floor was all pinball machines and a few crazy old games. The kinds of things that used dials instead of buttons and had the kind of brutality that you never see in today's games.




I went up to the bar and checked a little plastic menu. I saw something that looked fascinating and ordered it with a White Russian because I am manly like that.

I regret nothing.

This is what I got.

It's a Nutella and Banana Sandwich with melted marshmallows on toasted sourdough.

So anyway, Videogames.

I spent some time playing your standard classics: Gauntlet (Warrior), Marvel vs. Capcom 2 (Gambit/Venom/Warmachine) and a little bit of Simpsons (Homer) and Turtles in Time (Donatello, duh.) But no matter where I went I always ended up coming back to this damn thing:

Fig A. distilled arcade euphoria.

FOUR PLAYER PAC-MAN BATTLE ROYALE.

Oh my god this is the best arcade game ever, we played for like two hours and the machine has little cup-holders for beer. 

I have decided that if I am ever a billionaire genius playboy philanthropist I want this thing in every room.

Also the bathrooms were cool and Tron-designed on the inside, but I found myself more impressed with this.


Anyway that was pretty awesome. But we're just getting started.