Holiday Inn Portland (Wilsonville), Or

A slight modification on the first noble truth.

As I prepare for my journey, an important shout out to this virtual world that the perfectionist in me will be letting go. On the path to my true Self I will be letting go of (hopefully) the noise pollution ...

... between her and I would be much more limited then it had been.

I walked swiftly to the restroom, I cried my eyes out, my heart desired something more in life; she helped me to experience the part of me I knew existed, and I was falling for the person I wanted her to be in my life.  She is, by the way, a psychology major, wow, she blew my mind and certain offered me the perspective I crave from other people.  But, seriously... she's a kid at ...

... up on waffles and bagels and nervously headed towards the mountains.

Well.. the mountains can get faaaacked. We (Rob, Flick and I) blew through the mountains while Doug slowly followed behind. Siskiyou Pass got a bit sketchy but the rest was fine. Weiner Californians.. they don't know winter driving. (Not that I do either since I haven't really had to deal with winter driving in 3 years.) As we carried on north we stopped ...

... in SE Asia, just not dating. He is an amazing person and will be a great travel partner.) I am really getting how being alive is for me. There are so many ups and downs and really they occur for me like hot chocolate on a cold day. The sweetness of life is out of the sour taste. One cannot occur without the other. I am being productive, vulnerable, courageous, and inspired. I was ...

... thumb/8/83/I-84_and_I-5_intercha nge.jpg/300px-I-84_and_I-5_interchange. jpg I spent the night in Portland and went to visit the Saturday Market this morning. I've never seen so many things made from hemp. Since I'm in the land of the microbrewery, I also had to try some local brews. They were all very good! I stumbled upon a bar called the ...

... We spent a fun evening at the YMCA. Playing basketball and swimming. In fact we found ourselves there until closing at 10pm. Unable to resist when we headed back to the city, we headed back to Powells. But this time we took the aerial tram from the hospital (basically a gondola) and then the city streetcar. This was a great transport system, mainly free and took us through the beautiful university ...

We made great time. On our arrival, the gate agent driving the jetway must have been new, becasue it took her so long to get us off the plane that our bags were already on the carousel when we got downstairs. I grabbed my bag and got to the parking shuttle which took off right away with only me on board, and the bus driver took me directly to my car. Sweet.

... spark to Morgan and I's journey to suddenly have two new souls in the routine we had on lockdown. They were great people, very chill, never complained and mostly just laid in the back and read the plethora of books that we have stacked in the Van. I wouldn't be surprised if they read more of our books than we did our whole journey, We would drive all day, and sleep at rest stops and Wal-Mart, and amazingly Brett and Gretcha would set up their crazy ...

... always rains & we saw blue sky briefly only a couple of times!!!



We drove to Mt Hood, a couple of hours away to do some snowboarding & skiing & had a great day. The sun was even out that day!! One of the prettiest day trip we did was to drive along the Columbia River Gorge Rd, which forms a natural border with Washington ...

... Plovdiv, Sofia and did some hitchhiking to Rila Monastery. .... Cut-over through Macedonia to the Adriatic and north passing through Albania, Montenegro and Croatia. I ventured on the road less travelled through Bosnia and Serbia. Sarajevo was one of my favorite ...