Chilling out at ICPL

that's the Iowa City Public Library. Free wi-fi + air conditioning = win in my book. I think I've nearly finished up all the last-minute administrative stuff that I was waiting until after Portland to do, so pretty soon I'll be able to head out east towards Chicago.

Speaking of Portland, it was a pretty amazing experience overall. I'm so happy that I got the chance to see old friends from last year, and meet new ones as well.

Highlights:
Flight from Omaha to Portland via Denver: Plane has to go back to Omaha when we're almost to Denver because of a storm cell and lack of enough fuel to go around it. By the time we actually do get to Denver, our flight out to Portland has been canceled, and since it was due to the weather, they refused to give us any sort of food or hotel vouchers. So we ended up crashing in the terminal on the floor until 6am the next day. At first they switched us to a 6am flight to San Fransisco, where we could catch a flight to Portland at TEN PM, which would have sucked. But around 2am Lauren and Rachel were wandering around and randomly asked a desk agent if there were any other options and she found us a flight that went through Sacramento and got us in to PDX around 1pm. Much better than not getting in until 11pm. Regardless, we lost about 24 hours of Portland fun time, and it would have actually been faster for us if we'd just driven there from Omaha.


Karaoke at Alibi:
The small group I was with got there early, so we played some Apples to Apples while sipping tiki drinks. Then the karaoke started and we met up with about 20 other PPKers (members of the Post Punk Kitchen forum. Camping with these people is why I was in Portland in the first place). We had some amazing songs come from our group, including "Dare to be Stupid" from Tommy, Lauren and Maeve did "If You're Happy and you Know It", and Justin did the Doobie Brothers' "What a Fool Believes".

Camping at Willamette Mission State Park:
We were in the group camp area called "Beaver Island", and of course much hilarity ensued. Lots of delicious food, fun games, lounging in the shade, and campfire singalongs. Good stuff.

The Bye and Bye:
A NE Portland bar, with a delicious signature girly drink, and tasty vegan food (all of it! an all vegan bar. be still my heart.)


So much more! I have to head out, but once I have more time I'm going to trawl through everyone's Flickr streams and post the best pics (IMO) here, hopefully with an anecdote or two.