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Alex

welcome to portland as i walk you through our current state of affairs

we arrived in portland yesterday evening, 6 hours behind schedule into portland. we took the amtrak train, and spent the majority of our time in the lounge car, talking about Fernando: An Immigrant's Tale, the film we're planning to make on Julian's Portugese father, and having contests drawing redwoods and writing 10-word poetry. it's impossible to compare the day-long journey on the train to the 3-day bus trip with greyhound; there's so much room for fun on trains. when we arrived in portland, uncle rob and aunt theresa were there waiting, as was julian's cousin and friends. julian left with his cousin, and alex and i left with the fam. rob is a 50-year-old tree stump grinder and does various other jobs that i am not clear about. theresa is an assistant manager at a disney store in the clackamas mall. theresa complains to rob that they don't do anything fun anymore because he never takes off weekends in the summertime. he loves his job too much, he says. we drove around portland for about as much time as we walked around it, most of the time being told about what buildings are and looking for the Halprin fountain that Alex studied for hours, OR SO HE CLAIMS. our plan for the evening is to spend some time with julian and his cousin, then to go see dan deacon perform and to watch his collaborative psychedelic, arnold schwarzenegger film clip-infused musical extravaganza called 'ultimate reality'. rob and theresa have 3 cats, 2 dogs, and a bird. the cats are a calico mix named frida, a retarded persian named buster, and another cat whose breed i do not know named tova. the stories of their rescues are horrifying. buster is retarded because he was starved and kept in a box large enough for nothing but him for the first few weeks of his life.

Portland!

Aight. We're in Portland.

We didn't see DJ Arp in SF on Wednesday. Instead we went to a private party on the Haight at a restaurant. We were invited by Jake, whose couch we were supposed to surf on Thursday. We had a super lame time with the party but a grand time with Jake, Renee, Doug and Noel. We drank a lot of Champagne and a little Tequilla. We were only a few blocks from their apartment so we stayed there instead of at Amanual's. We spent the next day wandering around the Haight and Chinatown and everywhere. We couldn't stay at Jake's that night so we found Monica, Cate and Tara through couch surfing. We went to their house that evening to drop off our things and say 'hello' but they were so great we didn't leave until the next day. Seriously, I enjoyed their company and Loren and Julian did as well. That day, Thursday, we wandered around the Haight again. We then went to the Castro and looked fabulous.
Then we took the bus to the train, spent 23 hours on the train to Portland and are now at Loren's uncle Rob's house.

This is a quick update. Fun exciting interesting things happened I'll tell you later maybe bye.

This is Emmanual who's couch we are surfing in San Francisco. Tomorrow we will see DJ arp and the city. Emmanual is volunteering at Mac world. I ate a bag of cashews and now I have a headache. Am I allergic to nuts?
Also I need a bike frame when I get back. There are so many fixies on this coast. I need to look cool like them.

Big trees

Redwoods

There are treesitters in the redwoods on the UCSC campus. They're attempting to prevent the construction of nanotechnology and vivisection labs. We threw a couple bananas to them. We also watched someone climb up a redwood to "check if they needed weed". When that guy came down he hit the ground running and was chased by the cops! We met a woman "Nesh" who was going to come hiking with us. Instead we heard that she was pepper sprayed while giving the treesitters food.

Now we're going to a show.

These lazy ass sea lions ate stew and drank beer and now I'll never see the ocean. They are just like lazy sea lions.

Sea Lions are Gay

"once you're not a deer you're a bear, unless you're a raccoon or an opossum in a costume pretending to be a raccoon; and despite your bearly veneer it's a deer under there."

That is a song Loren, Julian and I wrote in Caitlin's apartment in Santa Cruz, California! That's right, Julian's here now. We're making stew and preparing to drink beers down by the Specific Ocean. We ate at two Mexican restaurants today, decided we were spending too much money and then table dived and dumpstered. Julian prefers to steal. I'd rather not get arrested. Dumpstering at the Trader Joe's in Santa Cruz is more exciting than in Hadley. There's a big fence and employees to avoid.

we spent about an hour yesterday staring at the sea lions on the wharf here in santa cruz. they're mostly males who come down to monterey bay national marine sanctuary following their breeding in southern california, migrating north to the sanctuary to rest. there were hundreds of sea lions laying on the wooden wharf supports, either sunbathing or resting. there was something so fascinating about spending time just watching them barking, moving around, looking at different things. several of them hadn't been around earlier that day when the tide had been high enough to make it onto the supports, so we watched a few desperately attempt to jump onto the supports, unsuccessfully.

i watched bufflehead ducks dive under the water looking for food; they would stay under for so long! we also watched a different male duck dive and bring up a fish. immediately the birds surrounding him (mainly seagulls) began lunging at his mouth, trying to take the fish. at first, the duck was winning, dodging the seagulls and managing to keep the fish in his mouth, but after a few dodges, two devil-eyed seagulls managed to grab the fish from him, tearing it in half and emptying fish blood into the water, giving half to each seagull.

we played pool in a bar for a while in louisville and again here

Santa cruz is only sea lions.

Do you like sea lions?

These are sea lions at the Santa Cruz wharf! Caitlin brought us there.

Greyhounds

Those mountains are in Mexico. The photo is from El Paso. We are in Pheonix. We will be in Santa Cruz tomorrow.

Yesterday In Versailles, Kentucky

Yesterday we went to the Woodford Reserve Distillery with Genevieve and Joe from Louisville. We know Joe from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst but we only knew Genevieve from Joe's house and the Magnolia Bar last week. She was sick then but she was even more sick this time.

We learnt all about Kentucky bourbon whiskey. In the movie, the porch, the bus, the fermentor, the mash cooker, the stills, the warehouse, the bottler, the gift shop and then the table. You can learn too on the internet! Driving back to Versailles, Kentucky on the McKracken Pike we saw the sun setting over horses and fields and fences. We stood on the fences and got cold. It has snowed in Kentucky and is no longer springtime. We ate tacos at the Taco Cafe. The waitress of the Taco Cafe is currently sitting across from me at the Woodford Country Library.

Then we watched all 231 minutes of Gods and Generals, all the special features and still wanted more.

Narcissus Number Two

We are gorilla sculptures in Versailles, Kentucky.

Versailles, Kentucky: Horse Capital of the World