The weekend turned out better than I could have expected, and short of bringing along my camera (why do I have that thing if I’m not going to use it, anyway?) I wouldn’t have changed a thing.
Friday after work I headed over to Paddy’s with a few of my coworkers and we had some drinks, and then right as I had to head to Erika’s, it began raining harder than it has in weeks. Great timing. I slogged through the water to my bus stop, fortunately a bus came within a few minutes, and then the rain stopped right after I got to her apartment.
I say again, great timing.
The plan for the evening was a dinner at Clay’s Smokehouse on Division, which had come highly recommended by Erika as well as Portland CitySearch when I Googled the place. I got the Combo Platter that came with a few ribs, a piece of chicken, and some sausages, and I was very, very impressed with the food. The sauce was sweet and spicy at the same time, the meat practically melted off the bones, and of course, everything was stick and sauce got everywhere. Erika’s friend Kim and her French boyfriend Cedric came, and it was hilarious watching them eating the BBQ with knives and forks. Dig in! Act American! Get your food everywhere! Heh heh. Cedric’s a great guy, though, and it’s nice to be able to bend his ear on all things French as well as get a different perspective on the US. Also there was Erika’s roommate Katie and Erika’s friend Bonnie who’s been in France for the last nine months and who I’ve heard many, many stories about. Nice to finally put a face to the name.
In any case, to sum up: BBQ = yummy. If you’re ever on the east side of Portland looking for good BBQ, I highly recommend Clay’s Smokehouse on Division. We even got to eat outside since the rain had stopped and the sun came out. I felt a little weird since my pants were still a little damp from my trip to the apartment, but the weather held, and this is what we get to put up with as Oregonians. The sun may have been shining but the trees and eves were still dripping for the torrential downpour of an hour previous.
After dinner, we headed into the city to for a little barhopping. It’s been ages since I barhopped, especially with a large group, and what followed was a pretty fun night. It was also nice to go with people who knew the nightlife of the city, considering that when I think of going out to a bar it’s usually followed by a discussion of which McMenamins we should go to this time. Our first stop was the Shanghai Tunnel where we were met by Erika’s cousin Owen who I’ve met a few times, his friend Mike, a coworker of Erika’s, and a few of Katie’s friends. The Shanghai Tunnel is a nice combination of a dive and trendy at the same time, and of course, very very smokey. They did, however, have a nice selection of beer so I treated myself to a Boddington’s Ale and a Newcastle Brown from the tap. We managed to squeeze most of us around a big table, though Katie’s friends secluded themselves into a dark corner. That was OK with me, not only because our table was full but because I’m still reeling from one of her friends once lambasting my fondness for KISS’s music at a party Katie had.
Then again, he drinks Pabst Blue Ribbon exclusively because it’s trendy, so what does he know?
After the Shanghai Tunnel, we walked around looking for another bar we could all fit in, wandered through a few that were a bit too upscale for us, and ended up not too far from where we started. Most of us had had a few drinks by this point, some in the group more than a few, but of course, the night went on. Erika and I took shots of vodka–really really bad vodka, too–and then I tried to nurse a tequila on the rocks that tasted worse than any tequila I’d ever had before. I eventually had to go get a glass of cranberry juice to mix it with just to hide the taste of the crap. We eventually decided that place wasn’t for us, and instead realized that the perfect end to the nigth was karaoke, so we walked over to the Boiler Room and squeezed ourself into the crowd there. I was done drinking, though, as not only was the night getting expensive (and come to think of it, I was never reimbursed for covering dinner at Clay’s….) but I decided that I just didn’t want any more to drink. I wasn’t anywhere near drunk by that point, but I didn’t feel like pushing myself just for the hell of it.
So instead of ordering another drink I perused the songbook, which of course prompted the group to insist I sing something. Erika, Bonnie, and Katie all signed up to sing Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer,” but I couldn’t find anything that struck me until I started looking for specific songs that I knew I could do. I eventually settled on “Personal Jesus” and sang a solo rendition that would have made Dave Gahan of Depeche Mode proud, though for me it wasn’t really a surprise that I did it so well not because I sang in choirs for ten years and know my own voice, but because I’d been breathing smoke in bars for the last three hours or so and knew that my range wasn’t really all that solid. In fact, I was sort of croaking between the smoke and yelling over music all night. Plus, it helped that I already pretty much knew the song by heart and it’s fairly monotone to begin with.
In any case, it turned out well and I was impressed with myself, if I do say so. We all talked about going back another time and doing more songs which I would be agreeable with, though I’m not certain if people were serious or just having a good time because they’d had a bit of the sauce that night.
Saturday, Erika, Bonnie, and I piled into Erika’s car and drove over to the beach. After an hour of pestering her, both half-seriously and also because I know she hates it when I do, I got Erika to stop at the McMenamins Lighthouse Pub in Lincoln City for lunch, both because Bonnie needed some food and I wanted to call up my Dad and say the smug “Guess where I am?” that we both do to each other when we’re sitting in a brewery and the other one isn’t. Erika had a pretty good idea of where we should go to camp, and luckily, there were spots available. We camped at Beverly Beach, about halfway between Lincoln City and Newport, and though it was a bit crowded for my tastes (when isn’t the coast, really?) I hadn’t been camping in so long I was up for anything and didn’t care as long as we were camping. It was in a good spot, the campground had easy beach access, and was cheap ($17 per space). The beach is always fun to walk on, but all up and down the coast there were thousands of jellyfish that had washed up on shore that made a very unpleasant smell.
I had never seen anything like it before. On both Beverly Beach and the beach we went to south of Newport the next morning, there was a solid carpet of jellyfish stretching up and down the beach, twenty wide wide and stretching as far as the eye can see. As long as we stayed upwind it wasn’t too bad, but once we hit that carpet, man, it was pretty gross. I wish I’d had my camera to take pictures both of the carpet on the beach as well as the piles in the tidepools further south that we saw Sunday morning.
Rotting jellyfish aside, I had a great time. I took my sleeping bag and foam pad, and Erika had a large tent we could use. We went to the store and bought some dinner to cook up over the fire, plus S’mores fixins and some beer. Generally, it was time well spent, and I didn’t have any trouble falling asleep or staying asleep with the exception of a symphony of crows around 5 AM that made me long for either a slingshot or an air rifle to shut them up. Of course, when I awoke from the racket I realized why I’d been dreaming about Scrub Jays and their annoying squwaking. I’d also forgotten how interesting it is to sleep in sleeping bags, especially since mine is essentially a mummy bag and I can’t really move unless I flip the whole thing as I toss and turn. I awoke more than once with a zipper in my ear despite using two of what I suspect are airline pillows I smuggled off a plane at one point to use while camping. Since I was sleeping on the ground, though, at least I didn’t miss my futon since it has a similar feeling. Ba-zing.
Sunday, we got up, had a breakfast of Kettle Chips and cold hot dogs (not me! I had Kettle Chips and an apple), and took off around 9:30 and headed down to what Erika called “Piddle Beach” because it was where her family would always stop to let the dogs pee and run around for awhile when her family would drive up and down the coast. It was a great beach that had slightly less of the stink of dead jellyfish, plus some excellent rocks for tidepools. I got to poke at starfish and green anenomies, feel the texture of mussels and barnacles, and of course step in the water when I wasn’t looking carefully enough–thank goodness for waterproof boots. Erika said that she was watching me walk and thought to herself “Where’s he going? Into the water?” as I took a wrong step and started splashing around trying to find the dry-ish sand again.
After I dried off (and truthfully, I was going to change into shorts anyway) we headed north up to Newport and had some lunch at the Rogue Brewery public house. Well, one of them at least. We were on the wrong side of the bay to go to the brewery itself, but I wasn’t about to make a fuss and make Erika and Bonnie drive around the bay just so I could go to another brewery–I’ll save that for another trip, perhaps. We wandered around the shops, watched the sea lions bark at each other for awhile on the dock next to the Undersea Gardens, and watched some fishermen crabbing in the bay.
A great time all around, from Friday evening to Sunday afternoon. The first thing I did when I got home (OK, the second–I had to start some laundry, first) was to take a shower, and since I’d been wearing a hat all day I hadn’t reaized that my hair smelled so strongly of campfire smoke, and in the heat of the shower it was almost overwhelming. After a shower and a shave, though, I felt human again and not so grimy.
After de-camping myself, I ran back out and had a couple of drinks with a friend who I hadn’t seen in a bit and caught up on things.
Erika took the day off today and is going shopping and getting her hair cut with Bonnie, so I’m going to meet her for lunch downtown and show her my office. A good ending to a great weekend. Or is it a great beginning to this week? I don’t know yet. I’ll have to decide as the week goes on.