Dirty dancefloors and dreams of Pumpkin Patches.

This is Nilina. She takes photos and blogs, too. www.notontheguestlist.com

Although it's been less than 10 days since I've been back in Vancouver, B.C., I miss Portland more than ever.
I took the Greyhound up to visit Nilina on October 4th, which happened to be "First Thursday".
She took me to Backspace where we admired some art and watched Improv Logic, a local Portland rapper. From Backspace we went on to Fred Meyer to purchase some Ice-cream and some Mentos. Then to Whole Foods to get Coconut Rice and Orangeina.
With food in hand, we bussed to Halocene where we spent the night dancing in awe at Madonna tribute night.
2 amazing Madonna's covers, 1 old stripping man and an invite to watch strippers later, we finally decided to call it a night.





October 5th was Nilina's 22nd birthday and my second day in Portland. We woke up early (11am) and made our way to Fat Tire Farm to rent bikes. From there we went to Sauvie Island, biked for 2 miles to the pumpkin patch and had ourselves the time our of lives!





After the pumpkin patch we road our bikes back to downtown and then headed to Winco because according to Nilina it was "the best place on Earth".
It was! And it's really lame that we don't have it Canada!
Anyway, we ran around Winco stocking up on food and candy for the night. Me on foot and Nilina via electric-wheelchair because her legs hurt from the bike ride.
I had $35 for food, we filled her wheelchair basket full of exactly $35 worth of food. Once arriving at the check-out I realized that $20 of my money was Canadian, leaving us with only $15 to spend on food. Thankfully, the checkout clerk was amazing and helped us pick only what we really needed. Which was as follows: 2 raindeer christmas headbands, 4 bags of bulk candy (candy corns, jelly beans, good and plenty, candy vampire teeth), goldfish crackers, toilet paper, sparkling fake champagne, "mr. salty" pretzels, and cinnamon applesuace.






By far the best purchase at Winco were the raindeer headbands.



The night was still young, and Nilina's legs were feeling better so we decided to go play a session of Night-Owl Bingo!
We didn't win...we feel asleep. But it was still the most fun in the world!
If only the camera battery didn't die. That's what we get for spending 2 hours in Winco and feeling the need to take photos of everything we did there. Ha ha ha.

Anyway...October 6th!
My final full day in Portland, we wake up early again and head downtown to do some shopping. I buy nothing, but enjoy going into to a store that sells berets in every colour.
We leave downtown and begin our journay to Hawthorne, the trendy part of Portland. We get off the bus early to stop at Safeway so I can get some Crackerjacks. Our clerk is a transexual named Erika who compliments me on my purse. I miss Erika.
We then decide to walk the rest of the way so we can stop at Nilina's old Elementary School. We agree that we can only stay for 10 minutes as the shops in Hawthorne close soon and we still have to go to a house show tonight.
We end up spending an hour and a half at the park.
We quickly shop around Hawthorne, I buy a high-wasted tweed skirt and a record. In the middle of paying for my record Nilina informs me that our bus is here. We run, and surprisingly catch it. I had no time to get change back from my purchase, I end up paying $16 for a $15.25 record.
No worries though, we make it back to Nilina's place in no time at all. A quick change of clothes and we're back on the bus.
At this point our day becomes depressing; right in the middle of our bus ride we notice that Nilina's water has spilled in her bag. We scramble to sort everything out because her camera is in her bag. We make sure her camera is ok, it is, and then we get off the bus to transfer onto our next bus. While crossing the street; Nilina's balloons from the other day slip out of her hand. This is extremely sad because she was planning on giving those out at the house show, and she paid $5 for them.
But it's ok, nothing too tragic.
We board our next bus and in a little less than an hour, we're there! My first house show ever!
We find a really cool striped room and a wall with a bullseye painted on it. We take a few photos and begin handing out the candy vampire teeth that we bought at Winco.
We then watch Eskimo & Sons play - I fall inlove with them.
Then it's off the see Starfucker play in the other room, the smallest room in the house. This scares me when Nilina informs me that Starfucker always gathers the biggest crowd. We make it to the front and have fun dancing to 4 songs before we realize that we have to catch the last bus home.





That night we stayed up til 6:30am discussing tea and music.
I had to wake up at 7:15am in order to pack and get to the bus depot at 9:30am to catch my bus back to Vancouver.
Have you ever tried waking up after only sleeping 45 minutes? It's very difficult. But I did it.
We had everything timed perfectly, we made it to the bus stop at the right time - leaving ourselves 10 minutes extra incase traffic was bad downtown.
But the bus never came. So I start freaking out because it's my Mom's birthday and if I miss my bus back home the next bus doesn't get me to Vancouver until Midnight. Yadda yadda yadda.
20 minutes later our bus to downtown comes. Now we're behind 10 minutes and we find out that the Portland Marathon is being held downtown today, therefore we are almost guarenteed bad traffic.
My dad calls the Greyhound depot and finds out that my bus is running late. Talk about a sigh of reliefe.
We make it to the bus depot with time to spare, enough time to think back on our adventures while I eat a bagel.

I hate goodbyes.

I get on the bus and sleep pretty much the whole 10 hours home.

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