Jono's Travel Blog

09/09/2010 Day 9 Vancouver to Mexico

Distance Travelled: St. Helens to Portland, 50km + 15km to Shannons and another 10km whilst intoxicated

Money Spent: $2 for McDonalds and $20 for Our drinks at the bar

Marywether woke me up in the morning offering both Fred and I a cooked breakfast, she had to go to work so we packed our things and we left at 9am. Fred and I just cruised to Portland not even breaking a sweat; it was pleasant as we where chatting all the way.

We arrived at the downtown area of Portland where we entered McDonalds to use the internet for a few hours waiting for the rain to stop outside.

We crawled around the downtown area (Fred likes to take pictures of random buildings…very often) looking for a hostel for which Fred to stay at but unfortunately they had been all booked up for the weekend.

He decided to leave the city and continue cycling meanwhile I stayed at the hostel waiting to contact Shannon.

I sat around for a few hours and finally got in touch with her, I had to meet her at her place in the North part of the city about 15km from the hostel. On the way I got a little lost, Portland is a network of one way streets and without a decent map, very hard to navigate but perhaps that’s just me.

Whilst trying to figure out where I was a guy helped me out by taking me to his place around the corner and gave me his map of the city, not only did he do this but he then gave me a loaf of bread for some reason… random.

I finally managed to get to Shannon’s place where she lived with her dog ‘Leon’ in a 2 bedroom house. We took her dog for a walk towards the river and when we got back we then munched down some dinner: burgers with homemade BBQ sauce (even better than mine) and red cabbage coleslaw. We had a few beers and then was invited by one of Shannon’s friends to go for few drinks down at a bar, we cycled there and they had a lot of beers on offer, there are plenty of micro breweries in the area and I just got the bartenders recommendation beer that smelt like wine and super alcoholic.

We cycled back to Shannon’s just a little bit intoxicated well, actually I was pretty wasted, had a few more beers at hers and went to bed, I went back to my bed the next morning ;)

Lunch Break on the side of the Hwy towards Portland

Sunset of Williamette River, Portland

Leon - Shannon's Dog that half Labrador and half Rottweiler and cute as hell