Portland Travelog – Ch. 1

This past weekend; Bryan, The Boy and I made a trip to Portland, Oregon. As Bryan was unable to produce a man-child, he almost brought Youngest Daughter with him (they’re not really interchangeable). It was to be a glorious weekend of manly endeavors with tickets to see the Portland Trailblazers take on the Dallas Mavericks at the apex of our testosterone drenched revelry. We had permission from from The Wives to be gone just 24-hours, so the weekend had to be properly planned.

We had a tremendous time. Almost nothing (except the Blazer game) went off as planned, but that ensured a memorable trip and a wealth of blog posts.

Bryan and I went to our first Blazer game back when Jack Ramsay was still coaching. We “survived” the Mike Schuler years, reveled in the Rick Adelman era, tolerated the PJ Carlisimo year, had high hopes for Mike Dunleavy (but Bob Whitsitt wouldn’t allow those) and I would rather not talk about the dark days of Mo Cheeks’ Jail-Blazers. After so many games over the years we have a routine: park at Lloyd Center, ride MAX to the Garden, watch shoot-around, check out the gear and settle in for the whizz-bang opening. Bryan tells me that he ‘heard‘ that there were ‘people‘ watching those who park at Lloyd and walk to the train instead of into the mall. But then, he’s from Idaho and they think the black helicopters are watching them. Well, we didn’t want something like that messing up our 24-hours in the City of Roses.

Let the record show that I will confess that it was MY IDEA to park at the Gateway Park & Ride, ride MAX for the 15-minute trip downtown, have dinner at Rock Bottom (another tradition) and then get to The Garden in time for shoot-around. But, I want to put the blame for the adventure we were about to begin on the helpful and courteous TriMet employees who were wandering around the Gateway station. They could have interrupted us when we were plugging $15 into the ticket machine to tell us that MAX was dead and that we and several hundred of our fellow passengers would soon be jammed into a bus and sent bumping around narrow surface streets between MAX Stations. And that MAYBE we would like to get in the car and go to a Park & Ride that is accessible by MAX?

Folks, it was 4pm on Saturday afternoon on the FIRST glorious day of the Spring. So there were thousands of Blazer fans, people going to and from Saturday market and other awesome things in the Rose City and of course the people getting off work. YOU WOULD THINK that they would find bus drivers that knew their way around Portland. YES it DOES get better.

We spent 40 minutes traveling from Gateway to 7th & Halladay, a trip that would have taken less than 10-minutes on MAX. The funniest part was the driver was not familiar with this part of Portland, much less navigating narrow streets to transport a sardine stuffed bus from one MAX station to the next. You have not lived until you have seen an older, heavily accented Asian man giving a large black lady bus driver directions. We finally made it to the station where we could catch the MAX into downtown. We went to dinner and the game… find out about dinner tomorrow!

Once the game got over, we decided to wander around The Garden for an hour or so watching the workers pick up after 20,000 fans, hoping to see a player, checking out the gear again. We did this so that the rush at the Rose Quarter MAX Station would die down before we made our leisurely train-ride out to Gateway. SURELY whatever caused the issue with the trains earlier in the afternoon had been cleared up… RIGHT?

WRONG!

This time there were no TriMet employees around the station, the train was no too full and we were having a great time recapping the game. The Boy was especially fond of his Thunder Sticks. As we were approaching 7th & Halladay the conductor announces that the route is still closed and there are buses to take us to Gateway. This time our trip was only about 15-minutes long as the driver chose to go on the freeway. The trip also featured entertainment! There was a man pontificating on the history of R&B,  Sam Cooke, Lionel Ritchie (with a few appropriate musical numbers) and how Jesus appeared to the Walla Walla Indians (God, I love Big City entertainment!). But, I digress… as I mentioned before, the roads around the MAX stations aren’t really made for buses, and the highlight of this trip was the driver going up and over 2 concrete islands meant to direct a bus from a different direction to the proper position at the station. There was a brief moment when the entire bus gasped as the metal scraped across the concrete and made a ssssssssssccccccccccccrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeecccccccccccccccchhhhhhh! and the bus tipped violently to the left then right as the tires went over the islands.

Not much was said as we quickly made it to the car. Sighing deeply (thankful to be alive) the car was quiet and comfortable. Well, quiet except for The Boy… I have GOT to go to the BATHROOM!

Where does one find a bathroom at 11pm on a Saturday night in Northeast Portland?

To be continued…