Portland Travelog: Ch. 2

For Chapter 1, go here.

Our initial plan was to utilize the wonders of light rail to slip into downtown Portland with plenty of time to hit the OSU Bookstore on Morrison (because you can NEVER have too much orange in your wardrobe!) and conveniently enough, Rock Bottom Brew Pub would be our dinner supplier and it is just a half-block away. But TriMet had ‘issues’ that prevented that. We missed closing time at Beaver-Marche, and Rock Bottom was slammed. Portland is becoming quite the foodie-paradise so we didn’t have to look far to find… Buffalo Wild Wings!

Talk about knowing your target demographic and smacking it out of the park. I don’t remember seeing too many women there, but my sight line was filled with my choice of hockey, Ultimate Fighting, Golf, Baseball and of course SportsCenter all on HUGE flatscreens. The walls were covered with framed sports jerseys of note. Mike Ditka’s Bears jersey, a number of Blazers (of course), Mariners, and others. From the college ranks I looked around and I saw the Ducks, Dawgs, and Cougars…. hmmmm something is missing.

The only nod to the 2-time defending NCAA College World Series Champs and the only northwest team that had a WINNING record in PAC-10 football in 2007 was a Miller Light beer sign. I called the waitress over and told her that I wanted to talk to the manager because I was going to get up and leave. This flustered the poor girl a bit and I quickly pointed out the other jersey and asked where the Black n’ Orange was located. She actually went around and looked! The manager didn’t come over until we were almost ready to leave and he seemed a bit smug (probably a Duck) as he gave me a rather lame excuse. he said that some jerseys were still out for autographs and the OSU jersey was one of them. A likely story!

Buffalo Wild Wings has a dozen or more different temperatures of HEAT that you can order your wings in, they range from Sweet BBQ to THE KILLER. We ordered our wings in some of the mid-range sauces Jamaican Jerk, Spicy Garlic and Honey Barbecue. But because we are stupid men who never learn, I thought that we should at least TRY the KILLER. The waitress was asked to bring ONE wing in that sauce. She showed up with SIX. As you can see in the picture to the right, there is a very small bite taken out of the wing toward the bottom of the basket… that small bite burned… and burned… and burned... and BURNED! For the love of God, why do they serve this stuff?

You will also notice the glass of ice water and the pilsner glass of Black Butte Porter… none of it helped douse the flames. I don’t think that my lips stopped burning until we stopped for a beverage at Hooters after the game… but that is tomorrow’s chapter.

All we got for our flaming lips (sounds like a personal problem, huh?) from the Wild Wing folks is some snappy hats…

That is the 2nd class of Black Butte…

It didn’t help… didn’t hurt though

To be continued…