Portland: donuts and bikes.

To get from San Francisco to Portland, I found a ride on craigslist. A lot of my US friends found the idea sketchy, but the rideshare concept - Mitfahrgelegenheit - is popular in Germany. Indeed, it all went smoothly. The driver was a Japanese woman visiting friends, and the other passenger was a Berkeley undergrad who just wanted a little mini-vacation. I drove for another couple hours, to give the driver a break. One of our bathroom/snack stops was in Weed, California, which takes full advantage of its name - the gas station was full of bumper stickers saying things like "ENJOY WEED!"

The landscape on the way up started looking - while still not quite like in the Midwest [majestic, snow-capped mountains aren't really Wisconsin's style] - at least a bit more familiar [green trees? I know what to do with those!].

After the long, elevenish-hour drive, the three of us agreed to stop at Voodoo Doughnut, a store that's famous for some crazy kinds of donuts - I had the maple bacon bar - and apparently even offers wedding packages.

The girls dropped me off at my brother's place, and the Portland adventure continued!

An ice rink inside a nearby mall.

I had to bike a few miles out to the soulless part of Portland to get something from Best Buy but was rewarded on the way back with this sunset.

Chiemi [my new sister-in-law!] and I went to the Portland Saturday Market...on a Sunday! [Yeah, that's right.]

There, we had Philly cheesesteaks [psh, "wrong side of the country," whatever]...

...and watched a bit of Chiemi's favorite local band All the Apparatus.

There were some nice skies in that city.

One of the reasons I was really excited was all the good things I had heard about how bike-friendly the city is. It's true - there were bike lanes and parking areas everywhere, and there were even hooks to hang bikes on in the streetcars [in contrast, Freiburg, my adopted city in Germany, which also has a lot of great biking infrastructure, doesn't even allow bikes in the streetcars, much less have designated hooks for them].

I went running a couple times, and once I purposely went where Ben told me someone had painted symbols from Mario Kart in the bike lanes - I only saw the speed boost chevrons, but it was still very exciting.

And! We went to the zoo! But that's a separate post.