What a Trip Part #2

TAKE TWO!

Okay, now that we were properly on our way to Oregon for real (the first part was just a test, you know!!) we weren't going to have any time to do much of anything that day. It turned out to be a good thing because Saturday was gonna be kind of rainy, gross day and Sunday was supposed to turn out nice. We got to the Crown Plaza hotel in Oswego at 4pm and checked in. The lobby and hotel itself was very nice, and I only paid $90 for the night. Not bad at all!

So, to kill some time, we decided to check out the Fry's in Wilsonville. I had heard that all the Fry's locations in California were barebones (I have not driven up to Renton to check out our only store in the state). There are videos from Bitwit and The Apptrepeneur about how empty the stores are. Patrick asked an employee who gave the same spiel to us as to Bitwit about how they are "securing a new vendor" etc. It's been a while... I think those poor employees are being pulled and aren't being told the truth. This is a picture of the most interesting item in the store:

Aren't translations fun? 

After we killed a bunch of time at Fry's, we drove back up to Portland to eat dinner at The Cheesecake Factory. We decided to splurge since we had a $50 gift card left over from Christmas. Neither of us were very hungry at the moment, which was good because even at almost 7pm the wait was going to be almost an hour. The crowds were insane. Nobody here was worried about any virus, that was for sure. We decided to check out the mall it was attached to and didn't get very far at all. The very first store was called Lovesac (horrible name for an awesome product) that sells modular couch pieces. The very next store was an indoor Tesla shop. A couple stores down from that was a See's Candy, where I got a piece of Marzipan because it's amazing, and then close to that was the only Nespresso store around. After I was done buying some Nespresso pods, it was time to head back to the restaurant. Pengi had to help us eat all the food. That night we went to bed completely stuffed. 

We ate breakfast at the hotel and again got way too full and didn't check out until 11am. We drove down to Salem and made our way to Riverfront Park to find out how to buy tickets for the Steamboat since the website wasn't very clear. We could see the boat from the shore. Patrick called the number but they were doing some kind of fundraiser and weren't doing excursions that day. Darn. We decided to go check out another mall while we waited for the weather to get nicer, and then did our wine tasting at Honeywood. They were only $1 a taste, so I had 6 and Patrick had 4. He liked Gooseberry the best and I loved the Elderberry. Luckily for us, both of those were being sold at our local Tacoma Boys so we will never run out ;)

After that, we checked out Riverfront Park properly as it was super nice out that afternoon. I got some great pictures of the place. Finally, we were hungry enough to head out to Kaizer and get my first "experience" with In-N-Out. Yeah... the line isn't any better than when they first opened. We sat in the drive thru line for 45 minutes. It was a little nuts. I got the classic experience: Cheeseburger, fries, and a chocolate shake. It was good, but 45 minutes in line good? Not so much.

It was now time to make our way home. We stopped at a market that sold the Spirited Ice Cream and grabbed a Mocha and a Vanilla for $11 a pop. Then we stood in line at Voodoo for a dozen big ones. By the time we headed out of Portland the sun was beginning to set. I got a decent shot with my phone.

We were both really lucky that we were still able to do our trip and get just about everything we wanted done. By the way, the car has a bad coil, so that's getting repaired and I should be up and running by Wednesday!

What a Trip part #1

It was supposed to have been a fun, short, overnight trip for our 1 year anniversary. And boy, did it turn out interesting. The plan was to drive down to Salem, eat at In-N-Out burger in Keizer (Patrick is a Cali boy), do a wine tasting at one of my favorite Wineries, Honeywood (they make a lot of wine from other fruits. Very sweet stuff), and possibly ride a steamboat on the river. We were going to have dinner at The Cheesecake Factory, then spend the night near Portland, and grab some alcoholic ice cream (Spirited Ice Cream) and donuts from Voodoo on the drive home.

Instead, my car started to jerk and stutter and felt like it was not shifting properly. We were currently in Chehalis, about 60 miles south of Tacoma on our way down to Portland. Patrick was driving because I was using my bionicgym at the time, and I wasn't really feeling how the car was reacting. We ended up in a rural area off of I-5 because Patrick needed to make a deposit at a BECU branch or ATM, and the website pointed google maps to this back-asswards location that ended up being a house. And that's when my car really started acting up. Good timing, G. I had him pull over, and I opened the hood with the full intention of checking the transmission fluid level because of how the car was acting like it was shifting funny (like it was trying to shift and having a hard time doing it).

Turns out, after searching  for the dipstick for several minutes - the 2015 Chevy Sonic doesn't even have a transmission level dipstick. You can't even check the level unless you lift the car. Like, wat. So, that being the only thing I know, I was like well, let me try driving it, since I hadn't really felt what Patrick was dealing with (the bionicgym creates vibrations in my leg muscles so that's pretty much all I was feeling). We're driving back to the freeway, the car is really struggling, and I am freaking out because we're in hodunk nowheresville. I manage to make it within eyesight of the overpass back to I-5 when the check engine light finally comes on and I pull off to the side. I pull out my OBD-II reader, and it gives me a "cylinder 3 misfire" code. Was told it was dangerous to drive it in this condition and further driving could cause damage to the catalytic converter. So, I called a tow truck. Unfortunately, State Farm only covers me for 13 miles, so to tow it back to my Midas on 6th Ave in Tacoma would cost me another $160 bucks. Great.

The tow ride was certainly interesting. He came in a flatbead, and told us that there wasn't enough room for both of us in the cabin and that we could stay in the car on the drive up. We had to look it up, just to make sure it was legal. Legal yes - safe? - not 100%! But, what choice did we have? If it hadn't been raining it would have been more fun, but the windows were fogging up and we didn't really get a decent outside view. About 30 miles in I was feeling a tad carsick because I couldn't see outside. We made the best of it though by waving at all the Semis we drove past because we were at their eye level.

We knew that we could still salvage this trip. We got dropped off at my Midas at 12:30 and still had plenty of time to walk home and drive Patrick's car down to Oregon. We would just have to reschedule all the Saturday plans and do them on Sunday instead!