Portland/Eugene trip

We took advantage of my 3-day weekend (President's Day holiday) and Valentine's Day, to take a trip up to Oregon. We've never spent time in Portland (which we've heard so many positive things about), and we wanted to visit old friends in Eugene. It was a pretty 'whiz-bang' trip (as my mother would say), but exciting and worthwhile. Our weekend (after my going to a party Friday night at the Bus Stop Co-Op, and me delivering Bonnie's Val-Day card on the plane ) :

SATURDAY, Feb 14 : Arrived in Portland around 9 AM (saw light snow as we walked to get the rental car!). We drove through downtown area (the "Pearl" district). Then checked out the historic Powell's Books , which was amazing (I actually found a book on Spontaneous Human Combustion. We checked out a couple other neighboorhoods (Belmont, and Hawthorne)- shopped at the awesome indie music store Anthem Records, had lunch at the "Bread and Ink" Cafe. Then, we made our way down to Eugene (about 3 hours travel) , to visit Shane & Missy. We got in late afternoon, went for a walk along the Wilamette River walk. On the way home, stopped at The Wandering Goat for coffee. OBSERVATION : TONS of coffee shops in Portland area. Then made it back, had dinner - with a couple of their other friends. Later, dessert & coffee & stirring conversation into the night.
SUNDAY, Feb 15 : Started with breakfast at the house. Then went out to visit an organic farm (run by the couple we'd had dinner with). It was really astounding - to see the details of how farms work, and much appreciated. From there, a short skip & hop to the King Estate Winery. Very nice surroundings, and a great meal. Drove them back to their house in Eugene, dropped them off and hit the road heading north.
Got back into Portland, and checked in to the White Eagle 'rock-n-roll' hotel. Part of the McMenamin company's historic buildings renovated into hotels. A very neat little place, very cheap & no-frills (11 rooms, common bathrooms). The quirk to it is that it's above a bar/stage. Our evening kind of fell apart here - mostly my fault, we had a plan for a few things we wanted to do, and we could've done it all but I screwed up the schedule. We should've stayed at the White Eagle for a bit, then gone off to the bookstore (Bonnie needed to return the book she'd bought), then made our way to Dante's, the goth club, for their cabaret; then hit the 24-hour Voodoo Donuts on the way out. Instead, I pushed to go out to the store & the club, so we missed singer-songwriter night at the White Eagle, (which was the main thing Bonnie wanted to do), and got stuck watching a crappy non-local opening band & Bonnie unprepared for such a night out. So, our short time there was marred by our disagreement, which left us both a bit disappointed (Bonnie more so than me). And I missed connecting with pal & former co-worker Ben in the area. But, in general, we were left with a very positive impression of Portland, and a thirst to visit again sometime (considering it's almost the same distance as a flight to the O.C.).
MONDAY, Feb 16. Since I had the day off, and Bonnie doesn't work until the afternoon, we had the morning to leisure our way to the airport. We drove around a bit, and settled on Smokey's for brunch. Very tasty, and great staff. Ran into a snag at the airport - firstly, we overestimated our path, and time was a bit tight when we arrived & dropped off our rental. Next, we had printed our boarding passes the day before, as convenience dictates these days. But they were printed on re-used paper, and the security officer denied mine, saying he couldn't read it. Yikes. I was ready to give up the ghost at this point, but Bonnie rushed us over to the kiosk, I printed up my pass again, and we got through security in about five minutes. The plane was almost finished boarding when we got to the gate, but we made it... :>.
As I said, I had the rest of the day off - my old college roommate/bandmate Andy, & his wife were in town for the long weekend as well. Monday didn't sync to meet up with them - so, I worked around the house. Tuesday, I drove up to Sonoma to meet them for dinner, we went to Maya. Had a great time catching up, and regaling in tales of MSU & the band of old.
Back to the routine for the most part after that... That was a couple weeks ago, more's happened since (including participation in the Tree Spirit, in San Geronimo), our quasi-annual Oscars Party, and a day at Wondercon 09!