Day 8 - Aug. 13 - Wednesday

Portland, Portland, it took FOREVER to get to you. We woke up late and therefore left late. And then, as if the drive wasn't long enough or hot enough we hit a ridiculous line of traffic in Oregon. Like people getting out of their cars and walking around traffic. Luckily, we were near an exit as we pulled up to the end of a very, very, very long line and decided to follow a tour bus and an 18 wheeler. We figured the tour bus was probably going to Portland and the 18 wheeler was getting alternate routes from his CB (CV?..C-something) radio. Whether our guesses were right or not, we'll never know but the point is that after heading down some country side roads we made it back onto the highway, past the fires and the traffic. success!

Well, until we got to an intersection with a railroad crossing hosting a train moving in-cred-i-bly slooowly.

But then it passed! yay. We loaded into the Doug Fir Lounge, sound checked and waited around. The few blocks I saw of portland were pretty cool. Lots of cyclists. Lots of independent shops. Lots of things in walking distance. The Doug Fir has got to be one of the nicest/coolest venue's I've ever been in. I think someone described it as a retro-chic log cabin. There were orange tinged lights on the floor of the bar and a pretty cool light set up for the backdrop of the stage. I'm not doing a great job of describing it, so you'll just have to look at my pictures and see for yourself.

The show went pretty well. I can't remember the exact set list but I know these songs were in it: Harm & Boon, Settler, Limmat, the new acoustic song, the new piano song, the new banjo song (we've got a lot of naming to do) and maaybe San Solomon.

I think all in all the shows have been good. It's just been hard for us in the string section to hear ourselves well. Things tend to get muddled or lost in our monitor mix. I think the day when we have our own in-ear head phones as monitors (a.k.a no time soon) will be the day when no one is iffy about anything. Anyway, afteward, we stayed at the house of the violinist from Stars of the Lid. She was sleeping when we got there, so we crept in and quickly proceeded to take a good 20 minutes to decide who was sleeping where. There were two beds, one couch and a lot of floor space. There were seven of us. hrm. I lined up some couch pillows, found a sheet and called it my bed while four others paced around the house. After some kind of magic, people decided where they were sleeping.

Then we decided we weren't tired.

Travis, Rob, Jesy and I went for a walk around the neighborhood. After we got lost, we found an elementary school and swung, ran and climbed in the playground. It's always good to feel like a kid every now and again, if only for a little while. Our quick walk "down the street" took at least 30 minutes, so we went back and tried to be quiet. However, the dog broke into a barking fit as we came up the stairs and once inside someone hit the cymbal on the drums, probably waking up everyone (oops). Except for Michael that is, who slept in his sleeping bag in the backyard. We crawled into our sleeping places, said goodnight and called it one.