John and Ed

This past weekend our friends John and Ed visited us from Colorado. John and I were really close chums in high school and lived in the same dorm for one semester at the University of Northern Colorado. I hadn't met Ed prior to this weekend. He became friends with almost all of my old high school friends after I had moved to Portland. So, while I had heard a lot about him, we finally got to hang together this weekend for the first time. It was a blast. We did tons of fun stuff, and I'm going to write out the play-by-play (links and all!).

Thursday: Piper and I picked John and Ed up from the airport at 10:30. After a quick stop at Fred Meyer, we came back to our place for lunch, during which I was shown one of the funniest videos I've seen in a while. John, Ed, and I then headed out to Multnomah falls. We climbed all the way to the top, which was a first for all of us.

We then took a drive up the Historic Columbia River Highway, spotting many waterfalls and stopping at Crown Point. We made a quick stop at home, and then attempted to head to Amnesia Brewing, but got lost, so I rerouted us to Kennedy School where we got some drinks, explored the uniqueness of the facility, and played a couple games of shuffle board. We then came home and ate some deliciously spicy chili Bryce made. After dinner we headed downtown on the MAX. We made a brief stop at Henry's 12th Street Tavern (haha), then walked over to Ringlers (that's right...2 McMenamins in one day) where we played a couple games of pool and took awful shots of Old Crow. We then went around the block to a dive called Scooter's that the bartender at Ringler's recommended. After Scooter's, we walked back to the MAX, only to realize that the last train had left about a half hour earlier. Thus, I took my very first cab ride!

Friday: After a quick bowl of cereal, we headed to Belmont where the boys enjoyed their first cup of coffee from Stumptown Coffee Roasters. We then crossed the street to Avalon Theaters and Wunderland where we played nickel arcades. Some of the highlights here were: Ed [unfortunately] hurting his back "playing" air hockey, the Kraken undersea adventure game, Jampin' Jamp, Piper winning 60+ tickets on her own, and Piper being John's ski ball assistant. Below you can see Piper feeding the ski ball balls to John like a champ, and Ed suffering back pain (Amazingly this picture was not posed).


After we cashed in our tickets for a bouncy ball for Piper and an LED mouth grill for John, we walked to Pine State Biscuits for a seriously tasty lunch. Then we walked around Laurelhurst Park, taking in the awesome trees and the nice weather. Next, we dropped Piper off with Bryce's mom (who watched her for the next two days - Thanks Mark and Mel). From there, we made our way to Coalition Brewing for a couple delicious barley pops. Then we came home, ate some leftovers, and got ready to go to Branx for a concert. The headlining band was The Thermals, a Portland band with a pretty decent following. It was their last show for this tour, and it was crazy but so fun. I made a bad choice wearing ballet flats...at one point both of them fell off in the mosh pit and I had to find them (thanks for the help John!). My feet are still black and blue from getting smashed. But, it was such a good show and the crowd loved it (including John who wore his LED grill almost the entire time). By the time the show was over, we were completely drenched in sweat and had to throw our clothes in the laundry as soon as we got back to the apartment.

Saturday: We made breakfast at our place and drove 1.5 hours to the coast. We went to Cannon Beach first. We got there right at low tide and were able to climb around tide pools full of sea anemones and starfish.


Ed had never seen the ocean as an adult, and the weather was actually good enough for us to stand on the shore and enjoy it



We then went to lunch at Bill's Tavern & Brewhouse in Cannon Beach. We ordered a round of oyster shooters (always an interesting experience) since John and Ed had never had them before.

Next we drove about 10 minutes north to Seaside where we savored the foggy beach and played with some sort of huge sea plant that had washed up on shore. We walked around downtown Seaside, shared an elephant ear (John and Ed's first), and played a couple rounds of Fascination at Funland. We drove back to Portland through some seriously thick, scary fog. But we made it safely to Bushwacker Cidery where we enjoyed the company of our friends Jen and Casey, a bunch of different ciders (cherry was my favorite), playing darts, and making friends with an (accentless ;) Irish man named Sean. From there we made a quick stop at home and then walked to Boss Hawgs, the dive bar down the street from our apartment. After some tasty food at "the Hawgs," we walked home and decided to smoke our hookah while watching Labyrinth. Despite the awesomeness of the movie, I think I made it 15 minutes in before crashing.

Sunday: We slept in and then made some french toast (which John doctored up in crazy good ways). We stopped for coffee at Bipartisan Cafe so that we would have something to keep us warm while we walked around Mt. Tabor. After basking in the Mt. Tabor beauty and playing on the missile silo (haha), we drove downtown to Waterfront Park where we meandered in hopes of seeing the bridges raise. Unfortunately, no big boats came through. We walked to Voodoo Doughnut, but the line was way too long, so we stopped for a beer at a pizza place down the street instead. We walked back to the car and drove to the conveyor belt sushi place by our house, only to find that it was closed. Instead, we drove down to Hawthorne where we got Chinese food at Fujin, drinks at Bagdad Theater & Pub, and played pool at Watertrough Saloon. After this, we stopped by Blockbuster to rent Step Up 3D. However, we got home and it wouldn't play on our computer. Instead, we watched Darkon, ate lasagna, and smoked hookah. Eventually we headed to bed because we had an early call the next Morning.

Monday: I dropped John and Ed off at the airport at 5:30 AM. The rest of my day was busy, but definitely included smiling about how much fun the weekend had been, missing John and Ed, and one very much needed nap.