Portland

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12/8/2006 2:55 PM

Pulling into Portland, trying to find our way to the club, the bus started to sputter on the ramp from one Interstate to the bridge across the river. We pushed hard all day to make it to sound check on time and now we were less than 7 miles from the club stalled on the road in rush hour traffic. We sat for a few minutes and eventually, after purging the engine of vegetable oil and switching to diesel, the engine fired up again. It has been working fine since.

We made it to the club a little late but no one seemed to notice or care, or a least they didn’t say anything. The room had a sort of Route 66 vibe with Texan flags hanging from the wall behind the bar amongst hundreds of posters from past concerts. I liked the feel of the place though it was one of the dirtier clubs I’ve been to. Apparently the heating system had a melt down the previous season and was never fixed. I think the room must have been about 55 or 60 degrees. They did bring in, however, a sort of jet heater thingy. It was a propane tank hooked up to a huge torch with a fan on the back. It looked like something you would find on a hot air balloon. It put out heat but not nearly enough to heat a room the size of this one. This was the first city since Cedar Rapids nearly a month ago that we all put on coats.

A basically flawless show for us. We had two totally dissimilar opening acts. Both of which were pretty cool. One was a male/female Goth duo and the other was more of a Vaudevillian cult ceremony thing.

We stayed at a friend of the bands house and watched independent short films until we all fell asleep on the floor. In the morning we started our search for Vegoil. We found a place to get oil but the new filter design didn’t seal well so we couldn’t take any of it, which is probably a good thing because on further inspection there was a good amount of water in the oil container.

We followed our friend, Paul, to an area where we could get some breakfast before we had to leave for Seattle. We poked our heads in a store selling goth clothing and things. And finally found a place that serves breakfast at 3:30 in the afternoon. The place was nice but the Martin’s vegan pasta dish came with cheese on it and there were numerous other random things that weren’t right. Everyone was pretty annoyed, especially Martin. We were running late as it was and this didn’t help.

We ended up leaving Portland late enough that we hit rush hour traffic and, of course, another accident on the freeway.

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