It’s PDX, not P90X

The timeline of a journey

Journey
–noun
1.a traveling from one place to another, usually taking a rather long time
2. passage or progress from one stage to another: the journey to success.

A journey can be an interesting retrospective, years and years of a path unchartered. Never knowing exactly where you’re heading or what challenge you’ll face, what victory you’ll experience, what loss will impact your soul. Just remaining constant and present in your own life, to see the next fork in the road. And how many little journeys take place within the main trek? Or are they all a part of the same journey? This past weekend, I joined 19 other guys on an epic journey, a celebration of our great friend Chalmers, and the completion of his journey as a single man, as he prepares to set a new course, this time, hand in hand, with an amazing woman, as her husband.

The Jupiter Hotel in Portland, Oregon was the jump off point for the weekends festivities. I caught a ride with my old roommate and consummate friend Jake late afternoon Friday and we made the drive down to PDX. I’ve never spent any significant time in the sister city to my adopted home base, and I’ve never really given it the shake it deserved. I always pictured Portland as a wanna-be Seattle, full of patchouli drenched hippies and environmental activists. What I found, was a city that has an amazing night life and more culture than I could possible ingest in a weekend. I had my eyes opened, and I’m officially apologizing now for my lack of interest Portland, although, I don’t think I’m quite hip enough to fully be embraced by your scene. The hotel was a big sign of just how hip PDX is. Jake and I pulled up to the Jupiter around 9:00 pm Friday night, to be greeted by an outdoor gathering of people partying it up Vegas style, security everywhere, live music and no where to park. I thought for sure that somewhere along our 3 hour drive down I-5, we hit a portal that worm-holed us right to 1950’s Las Vegas. Coincidentally, if I ever find that vortex, I’ll be the richest man in the world and would be definitely worth knowing. It was immediately apparent to me, that we were in for quite a weekend. After checking in and getting settled in our room, which consists of laying claim to a bed and  throwing our bags down, we were off to find the rest of our crew. That wasn’t hard, as the exterior of every hotel room door is coated in a chalkboard material. Give a bachelor party a medium to be creative with chalk after consuming a 6-pack or three of ice cold PBR, and the artistic talent flows on nearly every surface. Insert your favorite dick and poop joke here, they sure did. The guys continued rolling in, one car load after the other, until 20 of us decided it was time to hit the city bars. I can only imagine what drivers crossing the Burnside bridge must have thought as this eclectic motley crew made it way into the Pearl District, personally I took inventory of everyone in our pack and knew that any bar we all walked into was in for making a lot of money that night. I also learned quite quickly that Portland doesn’t seem to care about capacity issues in their bars. Both Friday and Saturday nights, we walked into bar after bar that was well over comfortable occupancy before we came in. Not that I’m complaining, as there was never a time of waiting more than 3 or 4 minutes for that next tasty beverage. I just remember thinking, if there’s a fire, I won’t be the last one out. First bar of the night was a hole called The Tube, literally a narrow hole in the wall, designed (if you can call it that) to look like a euro-train car, or at least in one quarter of it, full of hipster kids covered in tattoo’s and vintage clothing jamming out to hip hop record after record. It was cool, way laid back and easy. I’ll also mention, that per capita, Portland might have the most consistent groups of pretty girls out at the bars. Kind of like the ‘Déjà Vu’ slogan says, “100 pretty girls, 1 ugly one”, PDX might consider using something similar. No matter where we went, that certainly seemed to be the case. Speaking of journeys, one that started roughly 15 years ago with one of my closest all time friends and constant ear during some formidable college years, got back on track. I hadn’t seen Jenny in almost 14 years, and through one of the only upsides of social networking, we reconnected a little over a year ago, trading a note here and there, trying to make plans to get together and it just never worked out. Well this was the time, and one which validated how I’ve always felt about my friend Jenny. The minute we saw each other we shared a 14 year overdue hug on the street that lasted for minutes of us laughing and squeezing and laughing and looking at each other and squeezing some more. It was simply food for my soul and filling this empty place in my heart that’s been missing my friend for far too long. It didn’t take 2 seconds for us to talk like we always did back in those days, as if years hadn’t gone by without us even knowing where the other one was. She was still the girl from Soda Springs Idaho that was my confidant, my shoulder, my ear at a turning point in my adolescent college life. The same bright eyes, with 14 years of stories on her own journey that we will have to spend countless hours discussing and sharing over a few bottles of wine some other time. Hopefully not 14 years from now.

It was a great night.

Saturday morning began much like every Saturday morning as the parent of a toddler, this time without the need to be up at a certain time or a toddler standing next to my bed waking me up. My bodies internal alarm clock just doesn’t know the difference between being out of town and being at home, even after a night of heavy drinking that found me with one foot on the floor as I did my best to pass out as quickly as possible around 3:30 am. It was 8:05 am and no amount of fighting with the pillow was going to let me fall back asleep. I rolled out of bed, grabbed last nights clothes off of the floor and made my way out of the hotel room and across the street for a cup of wake up java for me and an organic energy something for my hung-over roommate. Portland can’t quite wipe off the hippie image I’ve envisioned so easily when it’s coffee shops sell “organic all natural” forms of red bull. Hair a mess, clothes smelling like last nights cigarette and gin, I sauntered back towards the hotel. Hangover in full effect, it was just my luck that as my right foot stepped off the curb, a motorcycle led procession of a Chinese funeral began down the street in front of me. Car after car after car, they just kept coming, forcing me to simply sit down on the curb and wait 15 minutes before returning to the hotel that 10 hours earlier looked like the poshest party in the northwest. Now, it looked like the place you wake up wondering how the hell you got there and where’s my car? One by one, the guys started making their way out into the morning air, looking much like I did. Unshowered, hung over and needing to hit the hair of the dog in short order. Brent and Trevor and I started with the worst Bloody Mary’s ever produced, which turned into 9 am Red bull and Vodka as the sun began warming up the courtyard we were content to take over. As a group, we were supposed to be on our way to play some Paintball at 10 and as the 9 o’clock hour came and went, it was obvious to those actually awake, that there was no paintball to be played this day. Eric made the phone call which left all of us to our own devices. Amazing Banana-Hazelnut Pancakes at the Dougfir. a sweet little restaurant/bar at the hotel.  From there, it was time to venture into the city for some early 80’s video games at the “B-arcade” called Ground Control, where Jake and Jen and friends ended up the night before. There’s something about playing games like Double Dragon and Paperboy on old stand up arcade boxes and drinking PBR. It worked for us Friday night, so we figured we might as well doo it again. Jake had also left his credit card there the night before so there was even more reason to go. Who am I kidding though, why give any reason to sit down and play video games from our younger days, none needed. Alec, Jake, Forbes, Tre and I played game after game for an hour or so before stumbling back into what turned out to be an amazingly beautiful day in March. A few of us headed back to the hotel, and after a mile of walking in the warmth of the sun, I needed to finally take a shower and get a nap in before the day became evening and dinner and debauchery would ensue.

Dinner reservations for 20 at Henry's 12th Street Tavern at 8:00, became 8:45 before we were seated in the furthest room from the rest of the patron’s. And for good reason, we were in full celebration mode, celebrating what we all believe is the perfect union of two amazing human beings. Round after round, toast after toast, the night was in full swing and only getting warmer as the nights air temperature dropped. Although we cabbed it to the restaurant, we hoofed it a half mile or so the grand opening of the Beauty Bar, in the now famous Pearl District. Again, another bar with elbow to elbow hipsters, a DJ playing upstairs old school funk and R&B which felt much more like the soundtrack to a Quentin Tarantino movie. Literally, at one point in the evening while looking down from the balcony at the people below, I thought at any moment, Uma Thurman was going to walk in with a samurai sword and start chopping people down. It was yet another hipster scene that I didn’t feel hip enough to participate in, despite the brand new all black suit. We eventually made our way back to the street after a few more cocktails, and headed back to hotel. What we found there, was another evening of “party down” at the Jupiter, all the guys fully enjoying the views and the beverages and the comradery of simply hanging out. Another fantastic evening.

11:00 am Sunday morning, I was finally able to sleep beyond my internal alarm clock! Must have been that last couple pints of Guinness and the 4 am crash out. I didn’t care, the hangover was in full effect and the shower helped me wash off most of the previous evenings bar stamps. The guys were all gathered up near the lobby checking out and cashing out, thus signaling the end of our weekend journey. Of course, there was still the 3 hour drive home, this time with less enthusiasm than the drive 36 hours earlier. As far as I know, everyone made it home safe and sound. I got back early enough to start working on my motorcycle and getting it ready to roll through the summer.

I spent a lot of time thinking about my journey, how I’ve come to where I am. The people along the way, the challenges, the set backs, the victories, the wins and the losses, the mistakes, the lessons learned, the horses I got back up on and the ones I never thought twice about. Along each of our journeys, there’s a mile marker at which we have to take stock of the past, embrace the present and make plans for the future. I have missed a few of the mile markers along the way, forgotten about people that picked me up on their backs and have carried me in their hearts. I forgot to embrace them while they were there and missed them when they were gone. This weekend was a tremendous reminder of that. It took me too many years to get back to a mile marker that I got to embrace for only an evening and I can’t wait to return to it soon; to remember, to share and make plans. Lifelong friends are good for the soul, the heart and the smiles. I know there’s so much more I could talk about right now and expand on, but it’s a good time for all of us to pause and introspectively look at our own journeys and make some turns to a missed marker out there. If nothing more than to share a smile.

Stay Blessed-

 

An Irish Blessing:

May you have the hindsight to know where you've been
the foresight to know where you're going
and the insight to know when you're going too far