YOU CAN’T KNOW WHAT YOU’LL GET when you drop in on old friends. Which is either a reason for caution or part of the fun or both. After too many Oregon trips with no Bro Time, I finally hit Portland to see two of my best amigos exclusively. At my request, it was a weekend of nothing fancy—just doing their thing. Fortunately, their normal lives are full of the kind of WTF I love but miss out on anymore.
Click pics once or twice to expand.
Steve (Theodore Roosevelt High School Class of ‘93) a/k/a Hulk Hands, pensive before sturgeon fishing.
Travis (Perkins Elementary Class of ‘86) tending the burn pile outside his house in Skapoose, an evil-smelling stew of motor oil, construction debris and junk mail.
Cheap thrills: Taking rides on the hydraulic equipment at Atomic Auto after hours.
Spotted crossing the Hawthorne Bridge from downtown. I obeyed.
Protests and conspiracies abound in Portland, some familiar, some not.
A mummified frog found whole inside a tire, its stomach full of bees.
Explore Travis’s hangar-sized shop and you find all kinds of weirdness.
Upstairs is a labyrinth of salvaged Saab parts waiting to be recycled. It’s the automative equivalent of a creepy doll museum.
Shooting pool with the assembled dudes who haunt the joint after hours.
I couldn’t tell you the purpose of a single tool here.
Saab engines look like bionic hearts.
Travis’s house is what’s known in rural Oregon as “‘Dozer Bait.”
T’s chickens in an improvised enclosure, which I recognized was made from a futon I slept on last time I visited.
“I told him to get his RV off my property or I’ll burn it.”
Dinosaurs, guns and a friendly roommate reminder.
Hi! I love this trick.
A respected fisherman when I’m not around, Travis has yet to catch shit in my presence.
The Multnomah Cut leading into the Columbia River has a few noble ruins.
The preferred bait for sturgeon fishing is alien fetus, I learned.
This is a photo of the man at Travis’s birthday party who sat by the campfire until his boots and feet burned. It was a very sad story.
Steve’s band, usually spelled “Cougar,” played my last night in town at the third oldest bar in Portland.
Steve claimed it was a sub-par Cougar show, though I was delighted. They were followed by the “goodbye” performance of Sprinkles, which featured hilarious verbal abuse hurled at the audience.
Travis contemplates 4th Street at 2AM. He declined to go for Mexican with us in Vancouver (the other Vancouver).
I ate so dirty on this trip.
I don’t recall a meal without chili or gravy.
Steve and Shannon brunching after we managed to stay up listening to records and watching Chappelle until 4AM.
Hangovers make you look older (so I’d like to think).
Goodbye to the country’s oldest continually operated airfield. Thanks S, T & S for a memorable trip.
