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By Johnny, August 8, 2007 10:43 pm

Here’s the 5th day of our vacation. We spent our morning walking around downtown Portland. Like Los Angeles, Portland wasn’t crowded and it didn’t seem like it was the primary hub of the area. We cruised over to the International Rose Test Garden. We perused the rows and rows of roses and admired the view at the garden. When lunch came, we headed over to the Nike Campus in Beaverton to see Lori for the last time. She gave us an awesome tour of the campus. We bid farewell and went on our way to Mt. Hood. It was a beautiful drive to the base of the mountain. Still had some snow on the mountain. We then headed over to the Hood River and eventually made it across to Washington.

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By Johnny, August 5, 2007 11:06 pm

Leaving Eureka and heading up to Oregon. We passed by the Redwood Forest. Stopped by and looked at Paul Bunyan and Babe the Ox at the Trees of Mystery in Klamath, California. We eventually crossed the Oregon border and ended up driving to Beaverton, Oregon.

Also, I want to say that I have really good friends. People who came out to join me in celebrating my 31st birthday this weekend. We all had a great time at The Crab Pot and The Boiling Crab (yes back-to-back shell fish restaurants). Thanks for the delicious meal and the gifts (even though I said no gifts). My birthday was exactly how I liked it, low-key with good company.

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By Johnny, July 25, 2007 11:34 pm

We’re currently in Federal Way, WA with my grade school friend, Tammy. Our day started with a visit to downtown Portland, OR. We checked out the Pearl District, Chinatown, and various other locations in the city. There were barely any people walking around the streets and construction work was all over the place. The place was filled with homeless folks and crazy people. We saw a guy walk around with 2 green balloons in his pink blouse and singing. As long as you kept to yourself, they didn’t bother you. We then went over to the International Rose Garden in Washington Park. The city of roses did not disappoint when it comes to beautiful varieties of roses. We went back to meet up with Lori at Nike, and she gave us an incredible tour through the Nike campus. It was awesome and everyone learned alot from her. Kinda makes me want to work there. It would definitely be a different type of lifestyle in Beaverton. Something I would need to get used to. Something I’m not ready to do just yet. Nathan joined us for lunch, and we said our good-byes and proceeded to do the tour of Mount Hood.

That was another 1.5 hours to Mt. Hood. We ended up at Timberline Lodge, which is the base of Mt. Hood and took pictures and bought souvenirs. We drove another 1.5 hours out of Mt. Hood to the Gorge. We attempted to reach the dam in Bonneville. Unfortunately, they were closed by the time we got there. We called it a day and proceeded to drive to Tammy’s place afterwards.

I bought myself a nice messenger bag. No it’s not a purse! I’ve always wanted one to carry things. I can test it out tomorrow when we head into Seattle for the entire day.

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By Johnny, July 25, 2007 6:50 am

Here we are at Lori & Nathan’s place in Beaverton, Oregon. Oregon is pretty green as everyone had told us. But there were other things that us native Californians did not know. At least the uniformed (us).

Lori & Nathan told us that there are a lot of weird people in Oregon. They even have a t-shirt and bumper sticker with the phrase, “Keep Oregon Weird”. Supposedly, there are a lot of people who are homeless here. That was why we saw people walking around the freeways. Jobs like the gasoline fuel guy or the guy who counts salmon exist because the government needed to make miscellaneous positions to improve the employment situation of Oregon.

It seems like people still adhere to the Industrial Age where it was expected after graduating from school you work for one company and stay with the same company until retirement. Complete company loyalty.

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By Johnny, July 23, 2007 8:13 pm

We decided to split today’s previous plan of driving straight to Beaverton,OR into 2 days. 12 hours was way too long of a drive to enjoy what we see.

We are currently in the coastal city of Eureka, Ca. We just finished our dinner at a local Italian restaurant, Mazzotti’s and the girls are getting ice cream at a local ice cream store. Eureka is cold with an overcast. It’s more humid up here with a strong “sea scent”. It’s 9 right now, but the sky is still illuminated.

We were at the Humboldt State Park earlier and drove on the Avenue of the Giants. This was a road that paralleled the 101 with huge Redwood trees everywhere. Simply beautiful and majestic.

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By Johnny, July 20, 2007 12:04 am

For my first major trip of the year, we will be going to watch the Moto GP Round 11 race in Laguna Seca this coming Sunday. Rossi for his first win! We will then drive through the Bay Area to finally reach Beaverton, Oregon. After a couple of days, we’ll be going to Seattle, Washington. We will then go to Vancouver, British Columbia and Victoria Island. We’ll then take a one-way flight back at the end of the trip. This will be my first attempt to blog on the road. Stay tuned for updates!