Second Day: Portlandia
Not that there’s anything wrong with Eugene but after buying the bike I wanted to head straight to Portland after hearing so many positive things. My urges overcame my better judgment which would have told me to get the oil changed ASAP. As stated before the bike had been ridden 100 miles throughout the previous owners entire ownership of the bike and he had never changed the oil. In any case I took care of it the morning after arriving in Portland at a shop called Fast Bikes Inc..
Fast Bikes on the east side of the river and I showed up as they were setting up for the day. The shop owner looked like a roadie for Pantera and he was accompanied by 2 massive Marmaduke dogs (sorry cant remember the breed name). These dogs seemed to have a 6th sense of who is a paying customer and who isnt because in my 40 minuets of waiting in the shop they would only bark at passers by and never at paying customers. At some point I mentioned I was from Minneapolis and he was familiar, “Ohh Twin Cities! I know Mankato” I was surprised he knew about Mankato and it turns out he knew of it from spending time at Brainerd raceway which he said was the best venue he’s ever been to both track quality and people. Later on a business type showed up with a couple of button up stripped business shirts, I heard the business type say they’d look good followed by an inaudible repose from the shop owner to which the business man replied “well you need to have sleeves” I assume this guy was helping him buy a new shop space or start a new business and I must say that I agree with the man stating sleeves are a necessary evil when it comes to negotiating loans. Not long after he wrapped up my oil change and I was on my way.
My initial reaction to Portland the first night was “this is a cool city but I feel that people oversell it” this changed after I stumbled out of downtown in search for a pair of noise canceling earbuds at Freds Audio in the (I believe) Hawthorne neighborhood. This area is helped in shift my attitude towards Portland from being a cool town to an awesome town. Everything about the area reminded me of uptown in the late 90’s, you know when it wasnt just an outdoor Rosedale. After picking up some excellent earbuds I hit up some shop called Swirl which as a Froyo place where you pay per oz of yogurt after loading up on goodies. This was excellent and I have yelp to thank for that recommendation.
After walking up and down the street in that area I decided I’d roll around a bit and see what else was up. I found Mt. Tabor Park and found a place to read a good chunk of Akira which is oddly fitting for this trip due to the frequent inclusion of motorcycles throughout the comic. After finishing an issue or book or whatever you call the massive portions of that series I headed back into town where I came across a bike race that was going on where they blocked off parts of the city, the race was called The Portland Twilight Criterium. While cool I can only watch circle racing for so long so I moved on to grab some grub.
A couple blocks away I found a nice rotating sushi bar called Marinepolis Sushi Land where I filled myself with enough to my stomach hurt for a price less than half of the rates in Minneapolis. I finished up my meal and hit up one more stop I intended on visiting while in Portland and that was Tanner Goods. I had purchased some stuff from them before online and their flagship store is in town and I’d figure I’d stop by and check it out. The shop was top notch and as classy and awesome as I’d imagined it to be, I picked something up from them and headed back to the hotel to get some sleep for the longish ride to Seattle in the morning.
