One more day passes and my bottom fuses ever more readily to the seat of this godforsaken car. Besides my poor bottom, there is another issue I have run into that is particular to the car and the unthinkably long hours I spend here. But, as always, little-ol’ me will solve it for you here, so you never have to worry about facing this issue, yourself.

This afternoon, as I got out of the car for the day’s first “adventure,” I happened to steal a glance of myself in the reflection of the car window. To my supreme horror, my hair looked as though it had been the victim of nothing short of aerial attack. In situations of crisis, it’s important not to panic. Take a few deep breaths and then collect your thoughts before deciding what to do. If you’ve got hair as unbelievably divine as I just so happen to be blessed with, salvaging it is not always an easy task. I’m lucky because I have a sister who I have (forcibly) trained in the ancient art of the Los Angelean up-do. Now, whenever a catastrophe occurs, all I have to do is snap my fingers, rouse her form her slumber, or unlock her cage (or generally remove her from wherever I may have leashed/encaged her) and she’ll set straight to work. Don’t worry, I feed her well—I throw her some scraps when she does a good job. And she does a good job most of the time.

For those of you who don’t have slav—erm, I mean siblings, do not be discouraged. There is a simple solution that will prevent you from ever getting car hair again. Simply cut a whole in the headrest of the seat in which you occupy, or remove the headrest all together. I just figure that a car seat with a little bit of headrest looks better than a seat without one altogether, but you decide what you prefer. If you do cut away at the headrest, make sure the diameter of the hole is large enough to comfortably fit your entirety of your swollen melon of a head, so that if you lean back neither side of your head will come in contact with the seat.

When my parents told me we were going to take a tour of the Tillamook Factory in Tillamook, Oregon, I just about suffered a rectal prolapse. There is no way that I was spending several excruciating hours walking around a putrid smelling factory that packages rectangular cubes of curdled, bacteria-formed bodily cow fluid. Yes, I am talking about cheese here. And besides, worse still, I was recovering from the emotional strain of coping with my severe car hair.

To my surprise, when we finally reached the factory, the factory floor was conveniently closed. Who knew low-income workers got days off like everyone else? Why should they, though? What do they have to do on Sundays that’s more important than providing me with cheap consumer products? Oh well, Thank God!, I thought. At least this saved me from one traumatic, cheese-filled fate.

My mom still made us enter the damn place.

And, to my even greater surprise, the place was crowded! Crowded! And crowded with not just any old people, there were stampedes of OBESE people! I had never seen anything like it! It was just like that scene in “WALL-E,” in which hundreds of portly persons are rolling down the ship’s floor…Except they weren’t rolling on the ground, they were walking; and they weren’t on a spaceship; and they weren’t animated in CG. But besides those little details, it was exactly like the movie.

Tomorrow is the birthday of one of my parents. We didn’t have a card. So, being the angelic and infinitely generous son I am, I decided it would be a good idea to go out and get one before tomorrow morning. Okay, well, my mom actually convinced me to go with her to get it, but really, I would have thought of it a little later if she hadn’t told me to.

This is my family’s first time together in Portland, so we’re just beginning to get our bearings. If you’ve never been, I’ll give you a little picture of what it’s like: take a butt-load of streets, eat them, then vomit them onto the disturbingly green and cluttered landscape before you, and throw in a few trams that run wild along the streets in the middle of traffic. Oh, yeah, and make sure none of the streets allow two-way traffic, because that would remove the simplicity of it all.

So anyway, after almost an hour of driving around trying to find a freakin’ bookstore that happened to be open at 9:30 pm (apparently no one in Portland reads or can read when the moon is out—I guess they’re all too busy turning into werewolves or something), we gave up and turned around to return to our hotel. Because all roads here in Portland seem to subtly descend into hell if you’re not paying attention, we invariably ended up zooming down a massive freeway, heading far, far way from our hotel.

Don't worry, just before my parents called in an Amber Alert, we finally made it home, just in time for me to hit the hotel gym (a very important issue I will address in another day’s hub).

Now, as usual, I’ll let Chris2 fill you in on all the boring stuff I left out from today.

Toodles!

I never realized until this trip what a beautiful and diverse coast we have! I feel privileged get the opportunity to see it in several of its forms, from its familiar white-sand and surfer filled rolling waves in Malibu, to the less familiar wild grey waterscape of the North, whose beaches are home to dramatic rock towers and darker sands.

It was in a few of these very rocky forms that my sister and I got the opportunity to explore, this fine overcast day. By this time, we had filled our stomachs with the freshest of local seafood (courtesy of a delicious little fish and chips place whose name sadly escapes me), and we were ready for adventure. When we reached the beach, which was down a set of steep wooden stairs, we were met with these gigantic dark forms rising out of the sand. With closer inspection, we saw them to be made of black, weathered stone. They were so colossal and intricate, they almost resembled gargantuan splinters broken from nearby mountains and inserted into the beach gods. They were beautiful to behold: clusters of brightly colored sea stars clung to portions of their rocky bases, while sea anemones mingled with crustaceans and barnacles the remaining spaces.

Many of these rocks housed tiny caves, perfect for exploration, and satisfying our hunger for adventure.

If you are looking to eat somewhere in Portland with a little ethnic flair that will give you big portions without taking big chunks out of your wallet, here’s one place that I highly recommend: Nicholas’ Restaurant is a small, family run Lebanese restaurant. The food is delicious and the portions are huge. When we arrived there, the place was fairly crowded and so we had to put our names down on a list. But in only about five minutes, we were seated. The service is very speedy and the waiters are great.

You can find out about Nicholas’s and many other great restaurants on TripAdvisor. I use them now whenever I travel. They provide lists with hundreds of restaurants, hotels, tourist attractions, etc. for places all over the world. And the best part about it is that the majority of the things listed have been reviewed by travelers just like you, so you can trust the overall ranking listed.

One of my favorite aspects of the site is the ability to narrow down your search results based on pricing. They have these little boxes you can check that go from “$” to “$$$$,” with the more dollar symbols symbolizing a restaurant whose overall menu is more expensive. Check it out for yourself!

Stay tuned for Day 4 to read more about Portland, and my mother’s eventful birthday!