Meat On A Skewer, Times Twenty

After we left from the least classy place in Nevada, if not the universe, we drove all the way up to Washington.  After a boring night in Zilla, which is apparently an illicit drug hotbed (as the folks in Seattle told us), we made our way up to Seattle.

On the drive up?  Pulled over.  Speeding.  Crap.

The cop was a weirdo.  Very round fellow with a nice moustache.  He told me he was “giving me a break” on the ticket, even though he absolutely didn’t.  He said when he came up to the car that he clocked me at 90 in a 75 zone.  What did he write on the ticket?  90 in a 75.  What a guy…

Since I am unemployed currently, I need a way to make some money (and not just to pay speeding ticket fines).  One of my friends (who ate some delicious Penang with us in Philadelphia) needed some help with an idea of his. 

This fellow:

Note: Pictures will be larger now.  No one clicks on the thumbnail, so I figured this would be more helpful.

He basically wants to develop a cell phone application.  Since my former employer paid me to create things that are pretty similar, I decided to help him out.

I cannot create an application from scratch, so I enlisted the help of some folks who I worked with previously.  Before we left for the trip, and a little bit during the trip, we’ve been working on concepting the application and since the agency that we are working with is based in Seattle, I figured I’d drop in for an in person meeting.

We had that meeting. 

Boring.

After the meeting, we headed out for some dinner with the folks from the agency.  We had a bit of time to kill before the dinner reservations were activated, so we stopped in for a bit of touristness.  The first (and last) tourist stop we made was at this strange little curiosity shop down by the water,  It had all kinds of weird stuff on the walls and for sale.  The best of the weirdness was definitely the mummies:

Actual mummies with hair.  Kind of gross, but still kind of awesome.

After our quick stop at the mummy house, we had a short walk up to a restaurant that I love a lot.  A whole heckuva lot.

Why do I love it so much?  Well, it’s basically a buffet with waiters; instead of a crappy buffet with chicken fingers and pizza or whatever, it’s a buffet with skewers of incredible meat. 

Ipanema is a Brazilian steak house.  On each table is a card with one green side and one red side.  If you or anyone at your table wants a waiter or four to keep on bringing food, leave the card on the green side (green means go, duh).  If everyone is full or tired of eating, flip it to red and get your check.

The food that is peddled is really tasty.  It’s just skewer after skewer of a different type of meat.  The waiter carries said skewers to your table and if you want whatever is on the skewer, he cuts you a nice slice that you get to eat,  It’s a great system.  I wish it was at my apartment.

Pork, lamb, chicken (wrapped in bacon) and all kinds of beef (tri-tip, sirloin, bacon wrapped Kobe, filet minion, Swiss cheese filled tri-tip, pepper steak, and all kinds of others that I’ve forgotten about) made it’s way to our table and we ate until everyone was full.  I was the last one full (it took probably forty five minutes straight of eating) and wished I could continue.

What I have described is awesome in and of itself.  I would eat at a place like this even if the meats were mediocre.  The vast majority of the meats at Ipanema were incredible.  Everything was well cooked (most perfectly so), moist and high quality.  The best of the bunch was likely the cheese filled steak and Kobe beef. 

I don’t have any pictures of the feed, as I didn’t really want to take twenty pictures to capture everything that was offered.  I did snap one of Tom and Amanda (not my wife, but Tom’s lady friend) focusing on their delicious selections:

The best part about having dinner with the folks who own a creative agency after a business meeting?  They picked up the check.  Kaboom.

Regrettably, I didn’t snap a picture of everyone, but thanks for the free food and excellent, non-business conversation Tom, Mike, Ashleigh, and Brad.  Sadly, Dan, who also runs the agency, wasn’t able to attend, but since he is a partner there, the meal came out of his pocket too.  Thanks.

After dinner, a few of the folks (the ones who apparently like their kids/significant others) made their ways home.  Mike and Ashleigh (who are apparently lukewarm on their families) showed us the way to a sterling Ice Cream shop not too far away.  Ashleigh knew of the place and told us it would definitely be worth the stop in:

Molly Moon’s is an organic home made ice cream shop.  They use, I think, local ingredients and despite the fact that it hopped on the organic bandwagon, it doesn’t taste like crap.  It’s super delicious.

I had the chocolate, which apparently used chocolate bars from a local chocolate company:

I enjoyed it greatly:

It was rich an chocolaty.  Since it was made using actual chocolate bars, instead of whatever the hell they use in regular chocolate ice cream, it was almost imperceptibly grainy, but in a great way.  The texture was pretty perfect.

Nice work Ashleigh.

After dessert, we went our separate ways.  our way was back to the hotel for some sleep.

The next day, we had some boring hotel breakfast and started to head over to the Space Needle, which was a five minute walk from the hotel.  Luckily, before we even left the hotel lobby, we got to see grown man, presumably about to go to a business meeting (as he was talking business with someone else) wearing this thing:

Yup.

A Looney Tunes, Back In Action Movie jacket.  What?  How is it in such great shape?  I don’t know exactly when that movie debuted, but it was a looooong time ago; I’m sure of that.  What a weirdo.

After that great day starter, we walked over to the Needle:

It’s really tall and all kinds of 70’ss pace age ugly.  Really very ugly.  Luckily, the view from the top is sterling:

After the Needle, we checked out and got down to business.  That business being leaving Seattle and making our way back to Oregon. 

Before we got to Oregon, we had to eat lunch.  We stopped in a tiny little town (Chehalis) and stopped in here:

We ordered our pizza from a tan woman and sat down to wait for it.  There was a stack of local newspapers nearby, so Amanda grabbed one and we flipped through it.  It had some hilarious local stories, as well as some Thanksgiving themed jokes/riddles in it.  What else was in it?  Terrible grammar, of course:

Not only is that “importantly” somewhere in this story, but the editor decided to highlight it.  The editor.  The person who is paid US dollars to make sure that the grammar is correct.  They made the decision to make sure their really awful mistake was the focus of this page.  Ugh.

*Aside* – At my old job, I spent a few hours fighting to get an egregious grammar error fixed.  Sadly, the folks that understood that it was, in fact, an error couldn’t do much about it.  The folks that wanted to keep the error and launch the promotion without editing it used the following logic: “This has been through three outside agencies and no one has said anything about it.  It’s staying.” 

If you’d like to have some fun, see if you can pick out the error by clicking here.  I’ll let you in on the secret at the end of this post. *Aside Over*

The pizza finally came to our table and we dug in:

Half mushroom and pepperoni, half sausage and green pepper.  It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great.  It was also a little on the green peppery side for certain.

Once we’d finished up, we headed out into the tiny town and spotted this:

Throughout the entire trip, I had needed a haircut.  I was holding out until finding a small town barber, complete with spinning barber pole (and bonus barber pole sticker on the window).  This place is what I was looking for.

We went inside and found this sign:

There are a couple of things on this sign that I found funny.  The best thing?  There is a list for “men”.  There is also another column with the price list for “woman”.  Now.  Either Anthony only cuts/styles/colors/etc one woman’s hair, or he has a different price list for every other woman out there.  I wonder who that lucky woman is that gets her prices written while all other women have to guess?

Grammar, again, aside, I sat down in the barber chair, took a deep breath and got my hairs cut off:

Please note the length of the front of my hair.

After the Armenian barber Anthony draped the polyester smock over my lap, I told him what I wanted and he started.  Here’s what I wanted: shave the sides using the number 3 guide on the trimmer.  Once the sides were buzzed, trim the top using scissors and make sure that the different lengths have been blended upwards to get rid of any obvious lines.  Pretty standard.

He very gingerly, like he was afraid to actually touch my scalp with the trimmers, shaved the sides.  And I really do mean gingerly.  He barely pushed them into my head at all.  It was very strange.

Next up was blending the top and bottom.  Again, he very carefully used the trimmers to blend things. 

Lastly, he moved onto the top.  Using scissors, he cut about three strands of hair.  He seemed terrified to cut anything, and so he didn’t cut anything.  He cut about a sixteenth of an inch off of, literally, three spots on the top of my heads, then trimmed up the right side of the front of my hair only (not the right side at all) and called it quits.  I was stifling laughter the entire time.  My sideward glances at Amanda were not helping.

Apparently in Armenia, hair cuts hurt or something.  Maybe Armenians have nerves in their hair?  I don’t know.  All I know is:

That’s my current haircut.  The hair on the top of my head was exactly the same length as it was when I walked into Anthony's.  I am very happy with the results. No I’m not.

After the cut, we headed back to the car and drove back into Oregon.  Scenery everywhere.  The coast is super nice.  I recommend it highly.

The next update will include a bunch of different panoramas of the west coast.  Heads up.

Oh, and here’s the grammar mistake in that link: “WIN A SUV”.  It should be “WIN AN SUV”.  Since the first letter of the acronym in that phrase starts with a vowel sound (“es”), “an” should be used.  The reason that they stuck with “a”?  “Since when you say ‘sport utility vehicle’, you use ‘a’, it should stay ‘a’.  What a bunch of idiots.  Just say it out loud and you know it’s not correct.  WIN A ES YOO VEE.  This infuriated me for days.

The Strangest Town Ever. Ever.

After our day or so in Portland, we had a date with Amanda’s family in the one, the hopefully only, Winnemucca, Nevada.  Why Winnemucca, Nevada?  Because her grandparents live there, duh.

Winnemucca, Nevada, is really far from everything.  It’s literally in the middle of the Nevada desert.  Because of this, it is many many miles from Portland, Oregon.  Also, related to this, we left our car in Portland, rented a car* and drove the eight hours to Winnemucca.

*We rented a car because we still wanted to see the Oregon coast (where I am writing this now) and not burn a bunch of miles (of which I have a limit, as the car I have is leased) driving to and from the middle of nowhere.

After a pretty exhausting eight hours (most of which I was driving 100 miles per hour in a straight line) in the rented Corolla S, we made it to our destination:

And all lit up at night:

Amanda’s grandparents had reserved us, as well as Amanda’s sister, Emily, and sister’s boyfriend, Bobby, a room at the finest Inn Winnemucca had to offer.  It’s also a restaurant and casino.  No biggie…

We dropped our stuff off, rinsed the road off of ourselves and headed down to the restaurant for some fine dining with the family.

I ordered, and subsequently was brought, chicken and mashed potatoes:

I did not know that there would be that much gravy involved, but as a lover of most things gravy, I didn’t complain.

Too bad the food was cool, and thus, the gravy was coagulated and crappy.  It all tasted like cool gravy and kind of sucked.  Also, somehow, beneath all of the semi-liquid and mostly fat gravy, the chicken was dry.  Strike one Winnemucca.

Since we were in a hotel/casino/restaurant/etc, Amanda decided to try her luck:

This game of skill consisted of a fake football player kicking a round marble sized white ball.  After it was kicked by the fake football player, the human interacting, in this case Amanda, would have to use a knob on the left side of the machine to move another fake football player left and right to “catch” the falling ball.  The game was made even more challenging because the ball did not have a direct flight to the receiving fake football player; instead, above the receiving fake football player, there were pegs that impeded the ball’s descent, and much like Plinko, on The Price is Right) the balls behavior was rendered unpredictable.

After a few tries, Amanda hit the jackpot:

A hard earned, and value-less rubber ball.

Of note: This was a '”play until you win” game.

One our way out, I tried to snap a few pictures of some locals, to give my future self an idea of what the folks in Winnemucca are like.  I actually got a pretty good sample.  An old woman glued to a slot machine:

And a fake cowboy (bonus: he’s Mexican!  I think!):

Emily, Amanda’s sister (left in the picture) tipped me off to the cowboy.  Thanks Emily.

After dinner, we headed over to Al and Eleanor's* house for some rousing Wii Bowling (yes, they own a Wii.  Their grandkids are all in New Jersey) and baseball watching.

*Fun Fact – Amanda’s grandmother goes by Eleanor.  Her given name is Christine.  She changed her own name to Eleanor.  Awesome.

Apparently, California is trying to persuade Nevada to let it throw it garbage in Nevada.  Here’s how the grandparents feel about it:

Frankly, that sign could use some swear words for emphasis.  Garbage is smelly.

The next morning, we all met up at, you guessed it, the best place in Winnemucca, Nevada, the Winnemucca Inn, for some sloppy breakfast.  Same table and everything:

The eggs seemed fake, but the sausage was very real.  The patties had an almost McDonalds’ sausage taste to them, which, trust me, is an exceptional thing.

After that, everyone, except for Amanda’s (and I guess my too.  Weird) grandparents headed out to explore what Winnemucca, Nevada had to offer.  but first, I got yelled at for riding my skateboard in the parking lot by the guy on the left:

I was laughing at him when this picture was taken.

After my miscreantsy (not a word), our tour of the town began.  We started by kind of driving around and staring out of the window.  We parked the car and started walking around.  Our travels too us to the Winnemucca, Nevada Chamber of Commerce.  We went inside and we greeted immediately by this:

Off to a good start.

Wandering around the building brought some more gems as well.  This is Winnemucca, Nevada's idea of a good Hall of Fame:

Yup.  The Buckaroo Hall of Fame.  I have no idea what a Buckaroo is, or what makes on have a Hall of Fame career, but good for the folks enshrined behind these two pieces of Plexiglas.

Since Winnemucca, Nevada, is basically a mining town, there also a short video and display of some mining information:

All were enthralled.

With all of this gold mining around, I bet you’re wondering just how many different mining companies are in the area.  Well, you’re in luck.  I was wondering pretty much the same thing, and came upon this nice fancy display:

Yup.  Belt buckles.  Of all of the mining companies.  Jesus.

With all of this excitement, one’s back may get a little tight.  Not to worry though, there’s plenty of room at the Winnemucca, Nevada Chamber of Commerce to stretch it out a bit:

Mr. Stotzer (Amanda’s dad) doesn’t really care where he is; if he has to stretch, he will stretch.  It’s kind of charming.

After we had had our fill of the lovely Chamber of Commerce, and had sufficiently limbered up, it was time to test out those skateboards we bought in Portland.  Even though us skateboarding miscreants get yelled at in parking lots all over town, the town decided to build a teeny skate park:

Amanda and I grabbed our boards, gave the video camera to Bobby and tried not to break any bones (since we’re unemployed and thus, uninsured).  Amanda did a pretty good job not killing herself and made it down a tabletop ramp without incident (but with many tense seconds).  I skated around a bit and decided to try something I had never done before: dropping in.

Now.  I used to skateboard a bit in college.  I was not good at it at all, but I used to be fairly comfortable throwing myself down a few steps or whatever.  I strictly stuck to ‘street’ skating, so no ramps or anything like that; just sidewalks, public squares, etc.  Looking over your feet to drop into a bowl is terrifying.  Completely terrifying.  I tried thrice.  Here is the final attempt:

I didn’t die, or hurt myself at all, so I feel like I won (even though a little bit of my youth and fearlessness has apparently vanished).

Skateboarding finished, we piled back into Mr. Stotzer’s rented Ford Fusion and headed for Spare Time; an incredibly cleverly named bowling alley:

Gorgeous.

Two games.  Two bets. 

The first bet?  The loser of the individual score over ten frames has to use a Neti Pot.  If you are unfamiliar with what a Neti Pot is, please go to YouTube immediately and search for it.  It will be worth your time, and disgust.  Emily lost.  She has to use a Neti Pot sometime soon.  I am excited.

In between games, we ordered some sweet bowling alley lunch:

This hot dog was fantastic.

The second game brought a team bet (Amanda and I versus Emily and Bobby).  It was a team bet that Amanda and I were weary of, because Bobby is a really good bowler.  He does the crazy hook thing that good bowlers do, instead of rolling it straight down the lane like us tards.  See?

Capital form.

The bet was this: the losing team has to jump in the outdoor hotel pool together.  We made the bet because even though it was nice and warm during the day, it got down to about 50 or so in the evening (and colder overnight), as it is the desert after all.  neither team wanted to jump into a frigid pool.

The second game was hotly contested, with Amanda stringing together what might have been her best bowling performance ever.  She crushed me and beat Bobby by a few pins.  I beat Emily soundly and Amanda and I rejoiced knowing we would stay dry that evening.

We drove back to Amanda’s grandparent’s house and tried to get in touch with the local Bingo hall (which triples as a hotel and casino, duh).  Sadly, they didn’t offer any more awesome Bingo games for the day.  We missed out for sure.

Instead of Bingo, we kind of hung out at the grandparent’s house until dinner.  Which was here:

This place is apparently ‘Basque’ style dining, which I had never heard of until this trip.  Apparently, it’s a Spanish family style cuisine.  Big portions with all kinds of sides.  We ordered all kinds of food, and we brought some bread (good) and cabbage soup (OK):

The bread was freshly baked, so it was very good.  The cabbage soup, despite the soggy cabbage, was OK, since it was basically a beef broth soup.  Oh, and a salad that was complete Barf City.  The dressing was mostly vinegar.  Blech.

Dinner:

 

Clockwise from the top of the plate: Pork, chicken, french fries, baked beans, rice with sausage, meatballs.

The pork was dry.  The chicken was OK, but not good.  The french fries were delicious (as apparently Winnemucca, Nevada has native potatoes).  The baked beans were really gross.  The rice was OK (if you avoided the rice and stuck to sausage). The meatballs were foul.

I learned that i do not, in the least, like the taste of Basque cuisine.  The flavor, sadly for you, is indescribable for me.  I have no idea what ingredient they use in their sauces, but everything tastes a bit off.  The sauce on the chicken, the meatballs, the beans and the rice was really off-putting and made me want to throw the plate back into the kitchen to show my displeasure.  i didn’t, but I think it would have been an appropriate gesture.

No matter.  It was time to demand payment from Emily and Bobby.  Videographic proof of payment:

Stupid heated pool.  Farts.

After the supremely disappointing results, we parted ways with the older adults and headed out for the real reason that Winnemucca, Nevada exists: gambling.

When I first met Amanda’s grandparents, the day before, I shook her grandfather’s hand, and, literally, three seconds later, he handed me a crisp one-hundred dollar bill.  I tried to refuse, but apparently this is customary for him.  The purpose of the bill was to gamble with it.  he is not, by any means, a degenerate gambler (he bets on sporting events five dollars per weekend), but he encourages it.

Since he had given all of us one-hundred dollar bills, we left the Winnemucca Inn and headed here to spend them:

Winners.  Aptly named.  Just kidding.  No it isn’t.

Winners Casino is not only a place where the vast majority of people do not win (like all casinos), but it is a place that is packed with complete and utter non-winners.  Winners in life that is.  Sad people hunched over blackjack tables smoking cigarettes and slowly handing chips to the dealers.  guys like this (who is smiling only because he just got there):

Do these folks look like they are having a ‘big time’?

They certainly don’t look that way to me.

Despite the almost certain depression that would come from it, we sat down at a blackjack table together, handed over our money and took some chips in return.

I had never played blackjack before.  I had no idea what I was doing, plus I am terrible at fast addition.  Seriously, I stink at it.  Add to that the fact that an ace is worth both one and eleven?  Forget it.\

I lost the fifty bucks I put in after yo-yoing up and down for an hour or so.  After that, we watched Bobby, who enjoys gambling, continue on.  I had put my name on a poker list earlier, so I was passing time until a seat opened up for me.

My name was finally called and I went over to sit down at a Hold ‘Em table with a crazy cast of locals and non-locals.  A man in a beret, who was apparently friends with the square shaped middle eastern man next to him, would not shut up.  He was playing that night because he had crashed his car and needed to pay for the repairs (unbelievable.  What a dunce).

In addition to the two fellows described above, there was also a beefy, seemingly corn-fed Nebraskan fellow in his early twenties, a few fellow in cowboy hats and one fellow with a cowboy hat and a handlebar moustache.  The cherry on that man’s personal style sundae? The handle bar moustache was dyed (with Just for Men I presume) jet black.  Also tinted jet black, presumably by accident? The skin under the moustache.

What a cast.

After a few tens of minutes, I lost my money (on a bad beat, obviously), got up and headed back to the blackjack table, where Bobby was slowly, but surely, hemorrhaging the money he had won earlier in the night.  If he had any money left, he would still be sitting just like this now:

Either that, or he would be admitted to the hospital, since beer is free when you’re at a table.

After everyone was out of the free money from Amanda’s grandfather (not true, I still had ten dollars I wasn’t going to blow), we walked back to the hotel listening to Bobby complain about dealers and turned in.

The next morning, we went back to Amanda’s grandparent’s house and cooked a huge breakfast for everyone.  Bacon, eggs, pancakes, toast, etc.  It was sterling.

I titled this post thinking that Winnemucca, Nevada is the strangest place I had ever been.  With a little more time to dwell on it, that may not be true.  It is certainly strange, but maybe strange isn’t the most apt word.  I think that the phrase “least classy'” is a more descriptive term. 

*Aside* - Classy is a word that is throw around a lot, and I think that it has mostly lost its meaning in society.  Italian people have murdered the word classy and morphed it into something that it shouldn’t be.  Fake white marble columns and gold leaf on your entertainment center is not classy, but that’s what Italians, who have bogarted the word, have deemed classy. Nice work greasy Italians.  You have ruined a word.  *Aside over*

I remarked to Amanda during our long drive out of town that I didn’t know if there was anywhere in town that could be considered a nice place to eat.  She said that there isn’t a nice place to eat there.

Generally speaking, women like to go out on dates.  Whether married or otherwise, women like to be taken out to a place that has nice things in it.  They like to get dressed up and go to a restaurant with nice linens or out to a nice setting for a walk or something.  Basically, they like to dress up like little girls like to do.  There is nowhere in Winnemucca, Nevada where you wouldn't feel out of place in a dress and heels.  There is nowhere there where you would feel comfortable in a well fitting suit.  The entire town is dressed down.  Well, not just dressed down, but more like dressed lower classed.

I am, and will continue to be confounded by Winnemucca, Nevada.  It is like a tiny, self contained little society.  A society that thrives from prospecting both in the surrounding desert (gold), and at the slot machines.  A society that allows indoor smoking (I was shocked when I walked into the hotel and smelled the smoke), and hands out free alcohol for gamblers.

While Amanda’s grandparent’s are excellent people, I cannot figure out why they would want to spend their remaining retirement years holed up, hundreds of miles from anything redeemable, in that place.  People are weird.

Destination: Portland: Reached: Hooray

Hipsters.  Effword hipsters.  Portland is a hipster hotbed.

What is a hipster?  It’s one of those dudes (or girls) who cares more about his appearance than contributing anything valuable to society.  They shop at Urban Outfitters, wear clothes just a little too tightly, have giant tattoo sleeves on their arms and wear the dumbest hats imaginable.  It used to be trucker hats.  Those are now passé to the hipster.  Now it’s eighties painters hats or tiny brimmed biking hats. 

Their shoes are becoming almost exclusively royal or navy blue canvas, with no sort of sole on them (even some folks in my old office wore them, betraying their ‘productive member of society’ guise). They are the dumbest shoes I can think of.

The older the bike they ride (because cars are for people with jobs), the better.  These people ride their bikes all of the time, but they ride the least efficient ones possible.  Hey guys, bikes from the seventies aren’t good bikes.  Bicycle technology has come a long way since then, put down your moustache comb and learn all about it.

Speaking of moustache combs, their facial hair is preposterous.  Handles bars, mutton chops, etc.  They looks like idiots.  The worst part of the facial hair?  It’s grown ironically.  These folks do things ironically.  You know what would be ironic?  How about going to college and getting a job that isn’t in a corner cafe?  Or maybe go to a technical school and learn a skill instead of living thirteen to an apartment?

Idiots.

At least homeless veterans were once in the military and drew a paycheck.  Ugh.

I really have a distaste for hipsters.

Now that I’ve told you all about hipsters and how badly they live, I’ll tell you about where they live: Portland, Oregon.  Portland is super duper extra mega uber super (again) weird.  Here’s our adventure in the land of the effword hipster:

We drove into Portland with some time to kill, as Amanda's non-hipster friend Jocelyn  was working until later in the evening.  We hadn’t had lunch and wanted to go to Voodoo Doughnuts at some point during our visit, so we decided to eat doughnuts for lunch.  Healthy?  No.  Smart?  Debatable.  Delicious?  Mostly.

We parked nearby and headed in:

Inside was super cramped and kind of hipstery (surprise!):

On the walls however, was a sign, or rather a few printouts, that told everyone their stance on vagrants:

I’m with them.  Vagrants are the worst.

*Aside* – Portland, and so far, the Northwest, was crawling with drifters.   Tons of seemingly homeless later teens/twenty-somethings with enormous backpacks and drug habits.  I hate to admit it, since I don’t like hipsters at all, but drifters with drub problems are the worst.  The Northwest seems to be OK with them.  *Aside over*

We ordered a half dozen doughnuts, plus some milk and headed outside to eat some lunch:

You may be familiar with Voodoo Doughnuts, since the shop has been featured on TV a few different times.  If you are not familiar, it’s a doughnut shop that makes strange doughnuts.  We ordered five strange doughnuts (and one boring one):

A cake doughnut with vanilla icing and Captain Crunch with Crunchberries and a chocolate doughnut with chocolate icing and Cocoa Puffs.

A raised doughnut with chocolate incing, Rice Crispies and peanut butter sauce, a plain boring lame glazed doughnut, a Maple Bar with actual bacon on top of it, and a jelly doughnut in the shape of an unhappy person with chocolate icing and a pretzel stabbing it.

Amanda and I dug into the assortment and here’s the aftermath:

The best one, as far as I could tell, was the Crunch Berries one.  All of the doughnuts were really high quality, and the icings were great as well.  I was most looking forward to the Cocoa Puffs one, but that was a slight disappointment.  The taste was good, but the Cocoa Puffs were stale.

The worst one?  The Maple Bacon Bar.  It was foul.  How anyone can eat that disgusting mixture of doughnut and maple icing is beyond me.  I love bacon in most applications, but that was terrible.  Shame on them.

Afterwards, we headed to the doctor for some diabetes tests, Amanda tried not to throw up from being sick with sugar, and I basked in my gluttonous lunch.  It was sterling.  With the one mentioned exception, all of the doughnuts were great ones.

To burn off some of the sugar, not to mention kill some time, Amanda and I walked around a bit and headed to Powell Books, which is billed as the largest new and used book store in the world.  One the trip, I snapped a couple of pictures of things that interested me:

Let’s see.  I want to run a lunch truck, but I don’t want to offer anything that might make me cook something and I hate to sweat.  What should I do?  Oh, I know.  I’ll sell cigarettes.  Perfect.

I have wondered for years what happened to the actor that scared Kevin MacCallister in Home Alone.  I thought that an actor was brought in to play the part, but apparently they found an actual guy that pushed around garbage cans to do it.  Instead of cans full of salt (like in the movie), he works for the city of Portland pushing around cans of garbage.  I wonder if he has foiled any burglaries in real life?

We made it to the book store, while dodging homeless people who wanted to accost us, and headed inside:

It was actually quite big.  Three or four floors of books everywhere.  Impressive.

After that, we hopped into the car and met up with Jocelyn for some dinner.  We walked to Chiana Mai, which is a semi-nearby Thai food restaurant.  i got some Roti for an appetizer (sorry Chiana Mai, but Penang in Philly crushes you on the Roti front):

The Roti itself (the bready part) was a little soggy and thick for my liking, but the filling (chicken and potato curry) was delicious.

For dinner, I got some chicken curry:

It was pretty good, with the exception of the crazy amount of coconut milk they dumped on it to garnish it.  It was a little much.  I ate around it as best I could,m and when I got a normal amount, the food was very good.  A little spicy with plenty of curry.

After dinner, we headed back to Jocelyn’s apartment, met her boyfriend Matt for the second time and watched some television until bed time.  bed time was pretty terrible, as the couch that I was on was just about the least comfortable thing I can imagine.  it left me longing for the child’s bed I slept in when we were in New Jersey.  No matter, in the morning, we were getting breakfast.  Humungous breakfast.

Amanda had been looking forward to breakfast in Portland the entire time.  It may have been her inspiration for the road trip itself.  She had her sights set on the Stepping Stone Cafe.

We got there, headed in and ordered.  After the usual wait, our food came:

We both ordered the same thing, with the exception of breakfast meats.  I got super thick bacon and Amanda got the sausage patties.  The breakfast was OK.  The bacon was very good, but the rest of it was just meh.

Oh.

And of course we each got the  Stepping Stone Cafe’s specialty: Man-Cakes:

Despite what it looks like (dainty and hairless), that is not a little girl’s hand.  It is my hand.  I am an adult male who has grown to be six feet and six inches tall.  That pancake is huge.  larger than the plate in fact.  A regular plate, not a tiny one.

I got the buttermilk and Amanda got the special: pumpkin.

The quality of it surprised me, as I figured a pancake that thick (about an inch-and-a-half in the center) would most certainly dry out when cooked, but it was pretty moist, even without syrup.

Also, I am not a pancake fellow, but it was pretty delicious as pancakes go.  Well done Stepping Stone Cafe.

I ended up finishing about three quarters of the Man-Cake and three quarters of the regular side-breakfast.  I was stuffed and ended up feeling a litte (lot) sick to my stomach. 

Amanda, however, decimated breakfast:

At this point, she started to slow down a bit and called it quits.

Minutes later, she started picking at her plates.  A few minutes thereafter, she was still picking at it, one little bite at a time, until finally:

The last bite or the Man-Cake.  She crushed it.  Killed it.  Etc.  She ate the whole damned thing.

She now weighs one hundred and seventy three pounds.

No she doesn’t.

After that personal record setting performance, we walked (Amanda probably could have sprinted) around the neighborhood a bit and ended up in the local skate shop (our skateboards were stolen a few months ago):

We had two complete boards set up, got some free stickers and headed back to Jocelyn’s for some homemade pizza and TV.  We had a super long drive waiting for us in the morning, so we slept as much as we could on that couch (none sleep) and dreamt of Nevada, our next stop: