my bags are packed again and im off! ok i am still not a great packer. i just can't figure out what to bring, but i think i might be getting better at this packing thing. so this time i am off to portland for the weekend to visit a good friend who has moved there and i am traveling with two of my oldest friends. not oldest as in they are in their 80's, old as in i have known both of them since i was in 6th grade. it is crazy to have people in your life you have known that long, they know absolutely everything there is to know and surprisingly enough you still learn more.
our adventure is going to start from arlington, yep i know this is the wrong direction from my house, but arlington it is. we decide to take the Honda. it's white and zippy, gets better gas mileage and well heath has offered to drive so ummmm....yeah lets go. i take the backseat. i haven't sat in a backseat in a long time. i always seem to be driving. you sure do get a different perspective from the backseat, more to come. we hit the open road, well highway 9 and heath says, "well, we are off and none of us know where we are going?" ha! all we know is that we are going to portland to see our friend keri. sometimes the small details get missed.
the first "discussion" begins. discussion is in paranthesis because the two front seat passengers, driver heather and co-pilot hope have an interesting way of communicating with each other. they both have strong personalities and freely express their opinions. to the outside viewer you might think that they are arguing, but never fear this is just how they talk to each other, it's all good. so the discussion is about where to eat and get gas. hope definitely doesn't want to get gas in lk. stevens too expensive and heather is not a fan of having to stop once we get on the freeway and so it begins, the playful back and forth banter between friends that act more like sisters. i enjoy my view of the proceedings from the backseat not really caring where we go, my only request is that we don't eat mcdonalds. for some reason mcdonalds always gives me diarrhea and i really don't want to crap my pants en route because we couldn't get to a potty fast enough. im not hard to please, this is a simple request, one that benefits not just me but the other passengers in the car.
after a mile of discussion the pilot and co-pilot decide that lk. stevens is the best option. we pull through taco bell, seriously one of my least favorites but it brings back great memories of high school and then to get gas. the next discussion ensues, did we take the right vehicle. the honda was decided because it gets better gas mileage than the expedition (hope's rig), just for the record i didn't offer to drive my car it is old and dirty and i just didn't have time to clean it all out and spruce her up for visitors. so as we are driving to get gas heather informs us that the honda takes supreme. haha... this is so funny, we take the smaller car because of gas mileage and probably spend just as much because it takes the best. again its the small details that get missed. hope and myself go inside the gas station to get some road munchies. for those of you who know me well, i got the big bag of pepperoni sticks, i love my meat. so as we are checking out the register lady says to me, "have a nice trip with your meat." ha! strange statement but funny and i started to giggle. i am easily amused by others and myself.
ok now we are on the road. let's set the scene, we have our economy car fueled up with the most expensive gas one can buy, our gut bombs that we are going to consume so we don't pass out from hunger, waters, sodas, licorice, and of course my meat! time to play the tunes. heather has put together a road trip playlist for our travels. heather primarily listens to country, hope can't stand country. do you kind of see how this trip is going? ha! it isn't as bad as what you might think. heather's playlist does not include any country, but me who listens to folk music alot (ok you can stop laughing at me now), has never heard most of these songs, but as a music lover i rock out anyway. it is surprising how many ways you can say "watermelon" and still sound like you are singing the words to a song!
so i quickly realize that there is something new about heather. when i met heather in 6th grade we didn't drive and when in high school although we were friends, she wasn't someone that i hung out with all the time. as adults, she has moved around a bit and well there just hasn't been that many opportunities where i have been in a car with her. heather is a crazy driver! she tailgates and speeds up and slams on the brakes and is in and out of lanes weaving all over the darn highway and to top it all off, she has a mild case of turrets. heather stands all of about 5'4", she is petite, i may be adding height here, but i don't think she will mind. when she is about to change lanes, she grips that steering wheel as if it might jump out of her hands and she has to secure it, raises both of her elbows and then the profanity starts streaming out of her mouth, "move over f@#$wad"!! this is the funniest thing i have ever witnessed in my life and the whole trip down i am giggling in the backseat at the sight of this. sorry heath, your secret is out.
the drive to portland is LOOOOONG! driving there on a friday afternoon/early evening makes it even LOOONGER! but i am in good company, we have crazy music i have never heard before, i have the pilot and co-pilot "discussing" things, and ive got my meat. as we are nearing chehalis i am reminded of a friend i met about this time last year. Joe. oh Joe, he is a beautiful man. seriously a fantastic specimen of the male race. i spent a weekend with him last year, it was memorable, you can fill in the blanks. quick story about getting to joe's. this is the first time i was going to physically meet him, lots of phone calls/emails, but he lives in chehalis not just a cup of coffee here and there type of friend. anyway, he meets me at the library and i follow him to his house. he takes me down this 2 mile dirt road in the middle of BFE. i would be lying if i said i wasn't a little concerned, but i have shared all his info. with a good friend and well i am an easy truster of humans. anyway, he parks, i get out look around and say, "ummm....there is NO house here." "oh yeah, we have to hike in, i don't have a road to my house." "are you kidding me? do you see that i am in work clothes should i change?" "nah, it is an easy walk." i am in a pencil skirt, heels and sweater, thankfully he carries my bag. so off we go walking through the woods, we cross a bridge, there are chickens in the grass, it is a gorgeous day, when we come to a creek with no bridge. i look at him, "so what now?" "well we have to jump it?" wtf, i am in heels and pencil skirt, but umm ok. "well give me a minute while i figure out how to navigate this without missing and falling ass first into the creek." so i do the mini step run and leap with two feet and land safely on the other side. his place is gorgeous, it sits on a high cliff above a gorgeous river, it is peaceful, serene, secluded; no one will hear me if he goes psycho. anyway, joe is a wonderful man, he was a complete gentleman and well i hadn't thought about him in a while. joe wharton..google him girls, he is gorgeous.
we finally make it portland, yahoo! there is keri, yahoo!! it is almost 9pm. we drag all of our crap upstairs into her cute apartment and off to hit the town. keri lives in this area of portland that is so stinking cute. the main block is littered with boutiques, cafes, pubs, two starbucks (one is the biggest i have ever seen), and salons. if you are going to live in a foreign town, this is one to move to. you are bound to meet people quickly with so much to see and so many places to go. we end up at a place called "matador", yep you guessed it a mexican joint. i wanted to know if they passed out capes, big fat no. a little disappointed, i kind of wanted a cape. anyway, this restaurant is pretty cool, nice ambience, big crowd of folks, there is one big downfall, the staff is just rude! first of all we are waiting to be seated and even though we are making eye contact nobody seems to be helping us..seriously? then our server, well she is just not friendly, she doesn't come back to check on us and takes our chips and salsa when she picks up our plates. really? i thought chips and salsa just kind of hung out on the table until you left, but apparently that is not the case in portland.
after our interesting time at matador, which by the way my prawns were so freaking hot i could barely eat them, i seriously thought my head was going to explode or at least i was going to breath fire across the table at keri, we strolled around to some bar/pub. when we walked in it smelled like smoked meat, ummm hello i loved it, the other girls did not, we didn't stay. continued to a place called muu muu's. we didn't actually eat anything here, but apparently this place mashes all your food into a roll of some sort (burger and fries) and you eat the whole concoction together..weird!! at muu muu's this guy and his friend sit with us. the friend, can't recall his name is sitting next to heather and he is a "spitter". heather who does not have a high tolerance for a spit shower is beyond irritated with him and he reads it pretty quickly and well they do not exchange a word the rest of the time we are there. we are texting each other about the spitting and well seriously i just can't stop laughing. this is also where we get to see this old photo of heather in her "singlet". i am not sure i have ever laughed so hard in my life (stomach pains). the singlet will come up between us over and over again throughout the weekend, where heather swears up and down that hope borrowed it and hope insists that she did not EVER borrow it.
bring on saturday, we get a lot accomplished today. breakfast at starbucks, which is just below keri's place. this would be a complete disaster for me if i lived that close to starbucks, then cleaned up and off to go shop. we all got a little something at victoria's secret! sorry not sharing. then lunch. we were wanting to go to pf changs but when we got there it was closed due to a mechanical fire! wow! plan b, off to henry's. super cute place with more beer on tap than i have ever seen and a build your own sausage. i would eat here all the time, good thing it is almost 4 hours away. then off to get pedi's. its a girls weekend of course we got our nails done. keri brought us all a pair of flip flops, well my feet are much larger than keri's and well my feet hung off both ends, but they were dry :) back to keri's to get dressed for our night out on the town. we had to wait 30 minutes for a cab (busy night in portland) so while we were waiting we took pictures. tons of pictures of just how crazy and silly we are. so much fun.
we went to couture, a place keri heard about. we got there and it echoed, nobody was there. our server who you would think would've been delighted that someone had shown up, was not at all thrilled to have us. until...heather says to him, "do you like your job?" well his attitude completely changed and he was a peach. this place was dead then pretty cool and then turned sour really fast. so off to ladies night at the beauty bar. ummm...this place was disgustingly gross and we walked in and walked out. back in the cab, we figured we would go back to muu muu's and night cap. somewhere on the way home things went drastically wrong.
the thing about knowing someone for 20+ years is that we fight like sisters sometimes. we will just say that our very loose tongued cab driver did not help the situation. somehow we ditched our cab, there were some words exchanged and the four us were walking home. now i am not a confrontational person and chose to walk the center line of the street. i have never done this before and well why not, it was late and there were no cars. i suggested "hugging it out" and well that didn't go over so well. we walked quite a ways, probably a good thing since a healthy amount of alcohol had been consumed that day, and made it home safely, but not in better spririts.
sunday morning; patched up the hurt feelings over some coffee, packed up our gear and headed home. it was sad to leave keri, knowing that she was now alone again in her new digs. it was sad to see heather leave knowing she had another 3+ hours drive to make it home safely, and she too is going to a place where her friend base is not. i got home with lofty ideas of cleaning, grocery shopping, laundry and ended up in bed by 630. hope i am sure turned on the mom switch interacted with her family and then was off to play her sunday night soccer game, she is super mom.
all in all we had a great weekend. we laughed so hard we were crying and our stomachs hurt. we got on each others nerves enough to scream and holler and walk home in the middle of the night. we made more memories and continue to be friends and we can't wait for our next adventure together. thank you ladies for a wonderful weekend and being my life long friend.
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