Day One - Oregon Trip [12-09-2010]

Time to recount my Oregon adventure. My brother was kind enough to fly us to Portland, Oregon recently. We stayed with a good friend of ours. History dictated this trip would be an "adventure." We were not disappointed.

The trip consisted of many "firsts." This was the first time I flied First Class. It was nice to have the extra leg room and attention from the flight staff.

My journey started in Northeast Ohio. I drove down to Columbus the day of our flight. We were able to navigate the security screening without any problems.

We boarded the plane on-time. Here is a picture of the frozen tarmac at Columbus:


Unfortunately, an hour and a half later our progress was limited. The scenery hadn't changed much:


I wish our conversation was recorded during the delay. Based on our observations, we concluded an engineer was required to pull the Nintendo Flight Control System cartridge out of the bay, spray it with canned air and re-seat the cartridge. We were able to leave after an issue with one of the drains was taken care of.

Our connecting flight went through Denver. I tried to arrange a get-together with a friend of ours. Unfortunately, our friend was not able to meet up with us. It turns out we would have missed meeting up with her anyways. We originally had more than enough time to account for any delays. We barely made our connecting flight though. We were in the Denver's airport for about 4 minutes. That time was spent getting to our gate (5 gates away.)

We arrived in Portland on-time. We decided to put the trip into gear and hit a wing joint our friend recommended - Fire on the Mountain. There was an interesting back-story to this place. Relatives of the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, generally considered the birthplace of buffalo wings, own this establishment. The story is told on a wall in the restaurant (please excuse the glare):


We tried a raspberry habanero sauce that was solid.

Another thing that was interesting was the available desserts. The Pacific Northwest is known for organic foods, etc. Apparently there is a group of people that like to batter and deep fry odd things. The restaurant had some unique offerings We did not get the deep-fried Twinkies but did try a couple things.

What do you think these are?:


Care to venture a guess as to what these are?:


Hint - both of these are dessert items. Give up???

The top one is deep-fried Nutter Butters. The bottom image is deep-fried Oreos. This is the first time I tried anything like this. The Oreos were awesome. The Nutter Butters weren't bad either.

Another thing that entertained us (mind you....it doesn't take much) was the tabletops. Various "odd" headlines from publications, like "The Onion", were underneath a Plexiglas tabletop. Here are a couple examples:


That is enough for the first day. Please stay tuned for the Adventures of the Black Bass and other tales of wonder....