Portland trip plus

Portland Trip

So I recently got the chance to go to Portland on a business trip. It was pretty enjoyable, the client I went to was actually just north of Portland in Washington, so I got to go to two new states. It’s funny, I have lived in California most of my life, but I never made it across the border to Oregon. 

I flew in pretty late, my flight was delayed, and it was also raining. I mean, I guess that is to be expected, but it is different to actually experience it. I got some food advice from the concierge at the hotel, and then went off. On my way, I ran into some food trucks that looked pretty good. There was a homeless guy, probably in his 20s, on the corner by the food trucks. He asked me if I could buy him a sandwich. I was a little surprised. I don’t like to give money to beggars as you don’t know what they will do with it, but buying a sandwich seems like a fine thing to do. I didn’t want to over-commit to anything, so I said one second, and looked at the prices of the truck. A Gyro was 5 bucks so I went back (it was just a few feet) and agreed.  So I chatted with the guy, his name was Daniel. He used to live in Seattle, but wanted to move to California. He made it as far as Portland before he ran out of money. I told him about how I am from San Diego, and recommended it to him. With the rain surrounding us, I knew Portland wasn’t the best place for this guy. As we were in line, another homeless guy passed by asking if anyone would feed him dinner. I thought it would be weird to start paying for all the homeless people in Seattle. Daniel told me not to worry and everyone gets their own. We chatted a little more as we waited for our food and then parted ways.

The stay at the hotel was otherwise pretty uneventful, I watched “surviving disaster” on the TV. It's kind of a tradition of mine to watch reality TV in a hotel, stuff I normally don’t watch. And then I had to wake up at 5 in the morning, which is super hard for me as a night person.

I also got to visit the cute town of Camas, Washington, which has a nice small town vibe, lots of really nice people there.

FresnoTrip

I also recently went to Fresno on a business trip. The name didn’t ring a bell, but when I arrived to the city, I realized I had been there quite a few times to go to Yosemite and Kings Canyon. We stayed at a Motel 6 and it was really not a very good motel. I wanted to use the internet, so I had to walk to the front desk and buy a piece of paper with a code on it. The person that cut the codes didn’t line the paper slicer correctly, so the code had a cut in the middle of it, spanning all the numbers. The TV was also super small, which made my reality TV tradition less enjoyable. The bathrooms also didn’t have toiletries, excluding two very small bars of soap.

On the way back, we stopped at a cute little farmers market. They had exceptional prices on produce. They even had something called Melogold, which is a Pomelo grapefruit hybrid, it tastes like a grapefruit but isn’t tart. It was nice.