Portlandia

Next stop was 'weird' Portland (they stole it from Austin), where some ex-pats ex-colleagues live. They were kind enough to offer us their sofa but as we brought our own bed we parked up in their driveway instead. The first day they drove us into town and we wondered through the hip street markets, then we met another old friend and hit a few swanky bars before heading to the Portland Timbers game. It was their 100 consecutive sell out game & the atmosphere was pretty amazing - starting with an incredible rendition of the Star Spangled Banner (almost made us feel patriotic!) & their mascot even had a chain saw slicing off big bits of tree during the game! They won an entertaining game 1-0, so everyone was happy (apart from RSL & Sounders fans of course!) We grabbed a v late dinner and pint after the game at funky joint called Radio Rooms.

The next day we all went for a run to flush out the night before and we borrowed their cool electric car to go back into town. It was a pretty amazing silent vehicle with a lot more zip than Elvis's tired and overweight hips. We explored downtime some more and headed back to the cool area we visited the previous night and ate at Bombay Theatre for some super tasty Indian street food.

It was so weird (and nice) to get back into what would have been a fairly normal weekend routine after so long on the road.Read more