Keep Portland (and Seattle) fucking weird

America is well known as the land of the free but Barack should really contemplate a rebrand before he gets the boot. Either the land of the fuck off Bloody Mary (see above), or just 'awesomeeeeee' - the drink and the word were two tings we constantly encountered on our recent jaunt across the sea to Portland, Oregon. To many of the Americans we met, pretty much everything from buying bog roll to their donkey dying was 'awesssommmmmeeeee'. There's no middle ground. It's a constant high level of positive vibes which is totally bewildering. Are they being sincere? If they drink those, Bloody Marys everyday, then yes mate they are. Life writhes around through a filter of vodka and tomato juice.

We started off our trip in the auspicious surroundings of Costa at Heathrow in the middle of a Tuesday night, utilising sandwiches and hot drinks as match sticks to prop our eye lids open while waiting for our flight - 12 hours, one stop in Frankfurt and many bevs later, we were in Seattle, being driven down to Portland for a stag/boat party/wedding parteh. Oh yes for this was the occasion of a big, splendid explosion of a hitching and mega marriage.

Yankee proceedings all kicked off at lunch time the following day in the wonderful Portland sun with a brace of craft ales and some dirty, artery stopping fries. This set the tone for the next two weeks - strong beers, gibberish chatting, getting lairy and eating extreme meals. The stag began in what felt like an industrial estate with an ever burgeoning number of revellers in our throng - friends, fam, parents, even baby Rocket find himself in the battle cruiser. We zig zagged our way around numerous breweries, boozers, karaoke joints, picking up t-shirts and fellow drunks enroute before ending up at notorious strip club, the Devil's Point. Ooof. As with many of the days to follow, getting back to our borrowed bed definitely happened. But no knows how. It's a modern day miracle.

The stag certainly set the bar high for debauchery but one which we continually attempted to hurl ourselves over. 24 hours later we rebooted the party on an opulent booze cruise with families, banter and cake following a practice church wedding,which as groomsmen, we had to do (albeit drunk). The wedding day itself involved yet another boozy brunch at midday complete with scalding hot eggs and beers before we all got trussed up in our best garms and caught the bus to the church. An hour and a half later and the deed was done, a hitching which went off totally without a hitch. Well done to the happy couple! It was a classic do featuring a photo booth, craft ale, raw dancing and about as much Kendrick Lamar as you could wave a stick at.

Life after the wedding featured many, many big moments. For while we'd gone out for the do, we also had a few weeks just to stretch out and roll around in the American vibe.

So what did we do? Stripparaoke at the Devil's Point was weird and mind opening. We discovered the Monte Cristo (see above), a sandwich so disgustingly greasy even we couldn't finish it. Bread inside batter with cheese, ham and turkey plus extra ham. We journeyed to Bend, three hours south of Portland and spent an afternoon exploring the many, many breweries of the town - we met a weird American, retired businessman turned dealer with six dogs called Randy. We met Jay-Z's light engineer (a dude called Loren) who invited us back to his huge house at four in the morning to drink his beers and watch his train set loop round and around his cavernous gaff. We went to Timberline Lodge, the eerie, snowbound ski lodge atop Mount Hood and walked the corridors where Jack Nicholson went so totally skitz in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. There were many vibes to be had.

Our second road trip started off in Twin Peaks style misty rain and a lack of understanding about starting an automatic BMW. We went over to Cannon Beach (where the Goonies was filmed) and had a paddle before heading down to Cape Lookout and Pacific City, then going inland to McMinnville, a weird town in the middle of nowhere. We stayed at the Hotel Oregon, an inn with the names of famous and infamous Oregonians in every room. We had the pleasure of staying in a room named after James McBride, a dude who helped create Alaska - well done dude! The joint itself is like a shrine to aliens and the weird - the walls were adorned with creepy paintings while the town itself was supposedly the scene of a UFO sighting in the fifties.This sense of weird certainly seemed to have permeated the people we bumped into who were all totally fucking tapped.

The rest of our time in Oregon was spent in Portland, taking in the laid bike, yet technologically tuned in vibe. 'We love the outdoors but we're also fans of Google Glass' seems to be the maxim by which folk live by. We continued to drink, went shopping, ate bbqs and even had a beard trim by a woman called Misty. Oh yes. 

Our last few days in the states saw us get a bus back up to Seattle and spend three days marauding around. Again the vibe was ripe and steamy (in a good way) - we scoffed our faces, went to see a gig (from French electronic poppers Yelle), ate (more) fried food and caught Ru Paul's Drag Race being shown in a boozer. Throw in a bar open 24 hours to show David Lynch's Twin Peaks and seeing David Bowie's Goblin King outfit from Labyrinth and it was big. We were so sad to leave you America, hopefully see you again soon... 

If you're really interested, you can head over to Flickr for (literally) hundreds of photos... 

America part uno

The classic American road trip has inspired much in the way of words and passed into folk lore as a right of passage. All the beat poets who first clambered on the road may have been terrible lyricists but they sure had a thirst for travel. Almost as much they did for ale and reefer. So back in September, we spent two weeks in the US emulating the likes of Kerouac, Ginsbery et al by driving down the country's west coast and taking in the sights, the smells and owt else we could stick in the senses.

The trip started at the IBIS in Heathrow. We’d decided to sleep at the airport, believing that it would make more sense than getting a taxi at stupid o’clock to catch our early flight. What could go wrong? Well it's proximity to the terminal gave us even more of an excuse to get properly pished in the hotel bar. We got whammied enough to sleep through the alarm, then had to hotfoot it, quick sharp to the airport. The triple headache of hangover, lengthy in-flight movies and extreme fatigue meant that landing in Chicago felt like being slapped in the face. It was all a bit too much to begin with. The woman covered in sick talking to herself on the inter-airport terminal train was scary. The guy with the deep baritone passing us on the escalator saying ‘Hellloooo, welcommeee to Chicago’ made us feel anything but. Only the pub next to the gate made sense. We sat there for a couple of hours and made the decision to acquire fridge magnets from everywhere we stopped.

Chicago airport travelator

Landing in Portland was a vibe. It's like Dalston, except cleaner and less frayed around the edges. The crazies are crazier but they don't want owt from you. Beers tasted beerier. Burgers were bigger. Beards are just as beardy. The best bits of Portland were many but included visiting the seedy environs of the Devil’s Point on the Sunday night. Being my birthday (32 innit – fuck getting old), we turned up pissed to be confronted by a thick fug of weed and the sounds of the karaoke wafting through the chilly September air. It's only on getting inside that you realise it’s also a strip joint. Bonkers. Until then, I’d never seen a fat,elderly woman sing a ropey version of White Town’s Your Woman while an athletic stripper did her thing on a nearby pole. Never lived mate.

Outside Devil's Point

The day after was spent attempting to drive a car on the wrong hand side of the road. Doing this for the first time with the added frisson of a soul crushing hangover was a real challenge. Bereft of all emotion and chat, we got lost somewhere in Portland and ended up attempting our jaunt to the nearby Mount Hood in the opposite way to the directions we'd received. Cue tears at wheel of car due to total frustration at inability to act like a proper man. Cue despair. Cue more tears. Cue having to go to Starbucks for a piss. Cue hysterics. This was character building business out in the wilderness. For the first time, I felt what it was like to be grizzly man.

Paranoid and panicked outside Calamity Jane's diner

Tears almost came again when attempting to hire a car for the vaguely pre-planned road trip. In between sight seeing, we'd had another heavy one as our adieu to Portland and arrived at the airport attempting to find our hire car collection. We found the Enterprise desk, queued up and spoke to the over friendly dude on the counter, only to be denied due to a lack of credit card and licence in the same name. Spirits fell like a guillotine coming down on a neck in an European revolution. It was a real low. The pits. The worst. It was only due to the dude at National car hire ripping us off to the tune of 'shitloads' that enabled our trip to get off the ground at all. I've never thanked anyone so much for charging us soooo much.

Once we'd worked out how to drive an automatic, the open road took us out of Portland and north west to Astoria where such pinnacles of cinema as the Goonies and Kindergarten Cop were both filmed. We checked into our weird little hotel the Commodore and took in the sights. Big butties, ales in jam jars, sea lions squawking  and our necessary photo outside the Goonies' gaff.

After dining on oysters and getting a very early night we took off south, hugging the coast via route 101. We checked in at Cannon Beach (where the end of the Goonies is filmed), ate crab and watched surfers at Pacific City before arriving in the sleepy town of Yachats. We got pissed up with the locals in a dive bar, including one local red neck who claimed to run a pizza joint and had a hugmongous beard. He was called Dave and had bare vibes.

Goons at the goonies

Day three behind the wheel involved sliding down the west coast on a southern trajectory through the seaside town of Bandon and picking up some jalapeño and bacon toffee. Disgusting. We dined at a scruffy eaterie before entering redwood zone and purchasing plaid shirts and IPAs from a nearby supermarket. We spent that night in a wooden cabin in the redwoods which was as organic as you can imagine. We didn't hug any trees but came pretty close. Being proper down with nature and that we turned up with no camping gear at all and no real clue as to how to get a raging fire sparking. It took much wood, paper, lighters and the inevitable ripping down of nearby foliage to get a mild inferno popping. We didn't cook anything on it due to fear of disease and local big foot swooping down on us and stealing our sausages. But it did feel very real being out in the middle of totally nowhere, drunk and seeing things in the darkness.

Oh the views of Route 101

Route 101 took us to the Avenue of the Giants, a 30 mile stretch of road hemmed in by these supernaturally sized redwoods. They tower above you like, like, like, really tall giants. We even paid six 'bucks' to a dude in a hut to let us drive our hire motor through a tree. The gap wasn't all that big so we edged through the tree before reversing back into it to get the obligatory tourist photo. Yes mate.

We'd aimed to get to a winery but managed to mis time our arrival in wine country above San Fransisco, so ended up hitting up Guerneville, a small town 60 miles north of the big SF. We found the one spare room to hire at the New Dynamic Inn. Fears were raised by the shitty room and the local crackheads living below. On the way out we met one dude who was rifling through the bins. As nice as he was, he managed to instill 'the fear' in us. To counteract this, we went out and got shitfaced in the big gay bar. I stopped worrying about our belongings, the car and anything else at all. On returning we couldn't work the lock so instead of finding someone who could sort it out, we barricaded the door with the microwave and table. Safe as houses mate.

Redwoods

Our trip continued the following day with a jaunt round Bodega and Bodega Bay, the small fishing town where master of suspense, Alfred Hitchcock, filmed ornothology fright fest, The Birds. If you've seen the film, don't let it put you off going and getting as much Hitchcock-related tat as a brother can lay his hands on. We saw shitloads of birds and they treated us with the decency and respect we've come to expect from our feathered friends in the UK. From there we zorbed in to San Fran via the Golden Gate Bridge with our mouths hanging open.

Leaving the New Dynamic Inn

We done gone taken a whole load of photos of the trip - check them out on Flickr here...