Portland, USA

Well, who'd have thought it? It turns out that the parents of a friend of a sister of the wife of a brother of a friend of mine live in Portland, and until yesterday I never knew it!

I'm about half way through my coast-to-coast journey now, which makes it slightly unfortunate that I haven't actually left the West Coast yet (except for a brief foray to the Grand Canyon). Due to varying commitments, free lunches and otherwise wanting to be static on Sundays, I've gone back on myself quite extensively - in fact, the only stretch of the coastal railroad I haven't done twice is that between Sacramento and here in Portland.

My stay in Seattle was shorter than I would have liked (2 nights) but in actual fact I saw pretty much everything in the city itself in a day, or less. The only two things I knew of to see were the Space Needle, the viewing platform tower dating from the 1962 World's Fair, and the original Starbucks Coffee. The first of these was easy enough: you can see the tower from quite a long way away, although it's not actually that high. Unfortunately, I hadn't managed to locate the first Starbucks in any guidebook or tourist map, which led me to the solution of photographing all the Starbucks I came across during my time in Seattle. When my count reached five before I'd even got to the Space Needle in the morning, I was a little worried! Thankfully, the gift shop at the Needle featured the Lonely Planet Guide to Seattle, which solved my conundrum by confirming the location of said coffee shop. Conveniently, I had walked past it earlier so I knew where to go afterwards. But first, I had $12.50 to dispose of, so I headed outside to the ticket booth for the Needle. Apparently, millions of people flocked to this wonder of the space age forty years ago, but on a windy Wednesday morning, I had to attract the attention of the sole sales representative.

"Is there a student discount?" I asked him.

"No, no discounts. Twelve fifty", came the reply from the guy who would obviously rather be somewhere else (like Starbucks). Delving in my pocket, I found that I didn't have that much in change. Under the glare of the guy behind the glass, I had to reach into my other secret pocket (well, secret-er) to find a $20 bill. "There a problem?" my new friend asked.

"Oh, sorry I'm a little slow. You see, I actually just got out of prison."

"Prison? What were you in for?" (I bet he's thankful for that glass partition now!)

"Murder. I killed an observation platform attendant who rushed me." Ripped-off anecdotes apart, I wasn't all that impressed with the tower. The observation level is only 158m high, which compares unfavourably with the Yokohama Landmark Tower (296m) which I'd gone up 2 weeks previously, and the Auckland SkyTower (192m) a week before that. "Hi, I'm Chris, and I'm a sucker for tourist traps like tall buildings." The view out over the city was nice, however, which made me feel slightly better about the $12.50 I no longer had. Avoiding the Starbucks at the café level (what did you expect?) I descended the tower at 10mph, as the elevator attendant proudly told me (I decided not to tell her that the lifts in the Yokohama tower are nearly three times as fast) and headed back into the city for a caffeine shot. It turns out that I could easily have located the original Starbucks by the hordes of pilgrims outside holding cappucinos and small teddy bears, wondering what to do next. I quickly joined them (caramel frapuccino, no teddy bear) and headed into the adjacent Pike Place Market, which is a shopping mall unlike any other in the USA. You can't park your car outside - gasp! - the shops take less than half an hour to walk round - double gasp! - and it's actually an interesting place to visit. There's a fish market at the entrance, which puts a lot of people off, quite understandably. Once I'd passed the chicken gizzard vendors (not, alas, merely a Japanese phenomenon) I entered into the maze of small bric-a-brac stores catering to everyone from left-handers to flag-collectors to Egyptian antique hunters. Escaping unscathed except for $1 for two books, I headed back to the hostel to find out what to do next. Of course, with two books in my hand all further exploratory attempts were swiftly abandoned, and the next morning I left to travel north of the border to Vancouver. Thanks to the hostel in Seattle being booked solid for Friday night (a large party of Germans, it turned out - thank goodness there wasn't a swimming pool) I'd rung up a hostel in Vancouver because it's really close to Seattle. Well, at least it looked close, but it's still 120 miles between the two, with a border crossing to negotiate as well. I mused that three months had passed since my last bus border crossing, between Singapore and Malaysia, and that one took a lot less time and employed more understandable staff than this one.

"Mm-whm-frm-sm?" said the Canadian officer, or that's what I heard anyway. I replied with a cheery "Hi there", only to discover after considerable staring on his part that he'd actually asked me where I live. After that it got a little easier, and I received my newest passport stamp. Jerking myself back into using kilometres (I've been mentally converting miles to kilometres for the last 2 weeks anyway) and remembering the value of the Canadian dollar is the same as the Australian dollar, I began my 20-hour trip to British Columbia. I'd planned to find a cash machine and then get some lunch, followed by a leisurely stroll round the city, stopping at a camera shop to download my photos, but I fell at the first hurdle when, arriving at an HSBC cash machine, I found that the numbers I believed to be my PIN actually aren't. By means of explanation, I have two ATM cards, from HSBC and Nationwide. I managed to lose the Nationwide card in San Francisco which I had been using almost all the trip, so you can imagine my annoyance to find a cash machine where I wouldn't even get charged that wouldn't give me money. Presuming that the US Dollar is not very welcome up in Vancouver, I had to start trawling the streets for a VISA ATM, which are surprisingly few and far between. After over an hour I eventually spotted one and withdrew some money, which to my delight has the Queen's head on! I've been missing Her Majesty for the three weeks since leaving the Southern Hemisphere, so I bought lots of oddly-priced merchandise to obtain as many coins as possible.

By now about half my available time in Canada had gone by, and I had yet to take more than two pictures, download my photos or find out where I was going for the weekend. Exploring Vancouver was shunted down the list to approximately the same level as "find a 2 cent coin", somewhere below "find beer" but far above "that tower looks like it has an interesting viewing platform!". I had been planning to go to Portland for the weekend, as the parents of a friend from England live here, but I hadn't heard from them, so I sent off a couple of e-mails largely in desperation, feeling somewhat up the creek without a paddle. The Canadian customs were expecting me to leave the next day, so I couldn't stay put (and besides, the hostel was a hole). Why would I go to Portland if there was no-one to stay with? Are there any good churches in Seattle? Should I just forget Sunday and sit on a train to Chicago? I wandered and wondered, and eventually decided that it would be best to head for Portland and see what turned up.

The next morning at 8am, I incurred the wrath of my downstairs bunk-mate by trying to climb off. "There's a ladder, you know", he said. "Yes, but your stuff is all over it. Not to mention most of the floor." After checking out, I started walking to the train station, when a police car pulled up alongside me.

"Excuse me sir, do you know that you left the sheets on your bed? You've forfeited the room key deposit." Well... no. What they actually said was:

"Excuse me sir, have you heard any gunfire around here?"

After denying everything (where's my lawyer?) I quickened my step.

Eventually arriving in Portland, I checked my e-mail, and was pleased beyond measure to discover that my mum had asked a friend of ours who married a girl from Portland to find someone, and her sister has some good friends who can put me up! So kudos to Chuck and Sandi Gault for letting me stay the weekend, and also for Chuck's all-American accent. He was born and raised in the state of Organ, and drives a Foreword truck.

Tomorrow I'm off to Chicago, where hopefully another bed awaits me... after 48 hours on the train, I have a feeling I'm going to need it.