Thursday, April 20th - 12:09 p.m.

Greetings from the Rose City. This update is brought to you from the discomfort of the Greyhound station in downtown Portland. My bus departs for Eugene at 1, so I’ve got a little time to kill before boarding. I’ll take this opportunity to provide a lil synopsis of my trip thus far.

Yesterday’s travel went off without a hitch. We arrived in Portland at 8 p.m. local time, where Oscar, Carrie and I were greeted by Carrie’s mom. Mrs. Zografos shuttled us back to their humble home to drop off our bags before heading out for some fine Mexican cuisine of tortas and cinnamon rice milk. Good stuff. By 10 p.m. we were all pretty wiped, so after catching the late edition of SportsCenter, the three of us retreated to our respective rooms and slept like wintering bears.

Rolled out of bed around 8 this morning, and soon afterwards went out with Oscar for an easy 45-minute jaunt around suburban Portland. T’was a rather pleasant experience I must say, full of fresh air and breathtaking scenery. As Oscar remarked about 127 times during the course of our lil stroll, “It’s green out here rookie. Real green.”

This brings me to where I am now, in this unsanitary shithole. After scouring the terminal for an outlet to plug my laptop into, I managed to find one in this little café set off to the side of the station. Good thing, too, because I was growing a little uneasy amongst the gathering of scraggly folks making their temporary (or permanent, I’m still not sure) homes on the benches of the main terminal. I went to the bathroom to relieve myself – both literally and figuratively – and happened across a large, shirtless man shaving in the adjacent sink. Suffice to say, I was more than mildly disturbed. After having my fill of fuckedupedness for the day, I’m glad to have found some temporary refuge in my haven here off to the side. From my few experiences in these types of transportation venues, it seems to me that they’re all more or less the same – unsanitary bungalows teeming with smelly, toothless folk who are as adept at asking for a buck as they are anything else.

Anywho, they just made the first call for boarding so I’m gonna get my ass in gear. With any luck I’ll get my own seat and avoid any more potentially scary situations with the local folks. Adios for now.