Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Portland - vegan Mecca and most strip clubs per capita!


We arrived at Agi & Eugene's place and got a warm welcome. Eugene allowed us to stay in the flat of his parents. Wow – this was really really kind of you! Thanks a lot!

It got even better since the flat was rather central and plenty of vegan places, restaurant etc. nearby ... Portland – the vegan Mecca was calling us :D
Agi and Eugene led us to this place on our first night together. Heavenly!
Bingo!
Those were sooo delicious! And we got all the tasting samples for free plus some choco-pretzels.
The weather was most of the time very warm and we could walk around in shorts and T-shirts. A nice change compared to the rather chilly past few days. When we had a few chilly and rainy days in Portland it did not ruin our mood.
View from the apartment.
Evening walk along the river and the moon was shining bright.
Fascinating moon over Portland skyline.
Wolfi made a vegan cake - kind of "Marmorkuchen".
We did not have any hard agenda for Portland. Bike maintenance was all done and no required visits to a doc and/or vet. The only real issue was where we will stay during winter as our permission to stay in the US expired soon. It became quite a story so that I will post the background and the options separately.
In the meantime Agi got me hooked up with See See Motor Coffee and I was able to give a presentation and tell a few stories. I love telling stories so I was happy. We also hoped to raise some money for our journey. Even with this short notice we were able to get a bit over 10 people interested to watch the video I made and listen to me. It was really fun for me ... and I came to realize during the preparation how much we already have been through and also that we are “only” about 1/3 into the journey.

The audience liked our stories and they had a lot of questions. I also told a little bit about veganism and how easy it is to be cruelty-free on the road though I am not sure how much that was received. That was nice ... much better this way then to have no questions at all. I took some learning's for the next time ... I hope it would get even better then ;)
Great coffee (I loved their soya latte) and an interesting helmet collection.
Dillon - the manager of the coffee shop - sponsored me with a bag of their house brand coffee -Stumptown- really tasty stuff! Agi & Eugene invited us after the session to have dinner at the Dove Vivi for some vegan pizza ... oh I loved it ... really good. Thank you guys! You were sooo kind :) (BEAR HUG to you).

Another thing to re-think was what we do about camping and our gear. We have been freezing too much and something must change if we wanted to continue camping in order to keep our budget. Then on that Sunday morning I was able to lure Skippy into REI to check out my future sleeping bag. Once in the shop, we checked other ones for her and we got lucky. They had one where Skippy felt more comfortable and which had a much better temperature rating than her old one. Now the job was once more to find out a way to get them as cheap as possible.
The view from our living room: Mount St. Helens Volcano.
Neighbors got ready to observe the ongoing fashion show (Biggest on west coast).
All the sudden there were those noises at the window, girls went all ape and barked as much as they could ... window cleaning was coming :D
Police on horses - folks how about bicycles? More healthy for you, less stress for the animals and LESS SHIT ON THE STREET!
Skippy was able to arrange a photo shoot and "earn some money" in order to pay for her next tattoo. She could not resist as Portland is home to a vegan tattoo studio, just besides a vegan supermarket, a vegan cloth shop and a vegan bakery ... Portland was (better say is) a heaven for vegans :) So tattoo for Skippy, coffee and cake for me :D
Vegan mini mall at corner Stark and 12th.
The downside of shooting nude pictures in October was that Skippy was freezing her tail off and as a result she got a cold. That tattoo was paid dearly!

Portland is widely considered to have more strip clubs per capita than Las Vegas or San Francisco (source wikipedia) and why not to combine Striptease and veganism? Those were the thoughts of the owner of Casa Diablo (House of the devil) and of course we had to go in there :D

The Diablo burger was excellent, the nachos delicious and the girls were a delight for our eyes. We met one other lady (NO - she was a guest as well and not working there) ;) Cannot remember her name but she was from the UK, rode the TAT across US on a KLR650 and visited the local MC club. Hello to you!
Casa Diablo - VEGAN striptease club in Portland.
Boobs became bigger and more artificial after 8pm, so if you prefer natural ones go there earlier! ;)
We had a great time in Portland, were able to get our blog up-to-date, relaxed a lot and I am pretty sure we will visit there again.
Skippy made some delicious raw vegan food. Follow her on Facebook: Raw on the Road.
We had to vacate our apartment a few days earlier as planned, as the owners came back earlier, and I did not feel sorry at all. My road fever had been rising already!
Last evening with Agi at the Apex biker bar - 50+ beers on draft. I enjoyed a Weizenbock ... cheers!
Agi & Eugene with Agi's 650
But where were we going now? Mexico? Canada? Our first idea was to go to Mexico because it would be warm there and we could see a few things along the road. On the other hand, we might get "stuck" there for a few months if US immigrations did not believe our story and we would need to wait for our new stamp. Canada on the other hand was on our list for next year and Vancouver Island should be pretty much freeze- and snow free area. Skippy found a huge bonus. Victoria (south Vancouver Island) is home to several Wadokai Karate clubs. At least Skippy's winter and time spending was settled. Canada - here we come!

Skippy made a travelogue ... enjoy :)



~ Wolfi

Travelogue #40 - "I am a little gay boy"

Skippy caught up with the travelogues. Here comes #40 from Bozeman, Montana to Portland, Oregon. Enjoy!


Saturday, October 25, 2014

Travelogue #39 - our visit to Yellowstone NP

Skippy finalized the travelogue #39 of our visit to Yellowstone NP 27.+28. Sep2014. Enjoy!


P.S. West Yellowstone is in Montana and not in WY

Thursday, October 16, 2014

Travelogue #37 and #38 now available

Yeah!
Skippy found energy and time to make the next travelogues :) Enjoy.


Vegans biking through Colorado National Monument towards Dinosaur:


and Banana family meets Dinosaurs :)


Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Bozeman - Portland 28.9.-7.10.


From Bozeman we rode to Helena to meet Kyle and do some maintenance work on the Suzi. The oil change did not take very long and the rest was all fine so we had plenty of time to talk about riding long-distance trips. Thanks a lot Kyle for helping us! He has some side business and does tank bags. They looked pretty good and functional to us. You find more here: www.motomontana.com.
Somewhere between Bozeman and Helena.
Prairie.
Time for maintenance at the Suzi: oil change and other small things.


Kyle and his bike. We had a good chat and thanks a lot for your help!
Kyle manufactures these great tank bags.

We continued through the mountains to Missoula. It was mostly sunny but still chilly. Skippy was freezing and put almost all clothes on what she could find. I noted on one of our breaks that my sidecar tire was already pretty much worn out. That went fast ... too fast for my wallet!
Seaman's creek - named after the dog of Lewis (Lewis and Clark Expedition).


Hertta liked the place :D
Back to the mountains.


We found one of the most enjoyable roads in the US: Highway 12 from Lolo, Montana to Kooskia, Idaho. 200km of curvy roads, low traffic and all the way through forest and along the river. Beautiful! And Skippy told me later that this was: “Better than sex! If I die now, I die happy!”. We also had good weather, dry and mostly sunny with a temperature of about +15C, which certainly contributed to it. Since there was not much to navigate Skippy went first and she enjoyed the curves with good 100km/h speed on her new tires.
Now THAT looked promising :)
On the first break she claimed that she waited 15min for me (.... mmmh ... maybe somewhat    
exaggerated) while I had to wait quite a bit at the road work. We were clearly off-season since all campgrounds were closed as well as visitor info centers. Once more we learned some of the US history as this road went along Lewis & Clark trail.

... and she waited and waited ... :D
Beautiful old dead tree besides a hot spring.



This little hoverfly came to sniff Skippy's bee :D
Old opera house at Kooskia.
Red carpet for the mice :)

The first kilometers from Kooskia to Nezperce were nice and there was even a good piece of curvy gravel road (was marked as asphalt in the map). Skippy took it very easy on this stretch. Later on this beautiful side road “she paid it all back” and waited nicely for me before we returned to Hwy 95 and continued to Dayton.

Dayton was a cute small town and even though it was small there was a cinema, a brewery and several restaurants. Skippy was in the mood for some pampering so we went out to a Mexican restaurant – big portions, so I took the left-overs with me for the next day :)

The cinema was run by a non-profit organization and we were able to watch the movie “A Most Wanted Man”. The cinema was nicely done from the inside and excellent sound, too bad the movie itself was a little lame. At least the live piano music before the movie was excellent! 

Skippy was not doing so great and we decided to stay three nights there. We found ripe bananas and organic lettuce in the shop opposite to the hotel – that was enough for decent meals :). Interesting to see that the liquor, wine and beer shelves were longer then the produce shelf :D
We saw this deer on our city walk through Dayton.
Liberty cinema in Dayton.

Excellent movie! Please watch it! (check from youtube! Official trailer) Great that they show it even in small towns!
Amazing mantis.
Water heater :-o
The next leg to Packwood would be a bit dull, mostly bigger highways. My big-scale map did not show that there would be a rather curvy piece between Naches and Packwood. That road was one of the highlights of that day! The other one was to see Mount Rainier and Mount St. Helens from distance.
Mount St. Helens some 100km away.
Strict parking rules at the motel!
And the village was full of deer and elk...
everywhere ...
Geese on their way south




Mt Rainier almost there.
Also many other animals to be seen.
I mean really everywhere ... and this dog does not bother at all :D
Nice and curvy street towards Portland



St. Helens - National Volcanic Monument
Lake below St. Helens.
All old trees around St. Helens were dead (we think because of the 1980 eruption).
Cool looking trees in the valley ...
Our track ca. 1500km

~ Wolfi