In my last post, I mentioned that we were staying at Paradise Coach, in Coberg, Oregon. Paradise Coach does bus restoration projects, and I had them in mind for doing the interior of my vintage bus, a 1963 Flxible Starliner. While we were there, they did some work on my current bus, and not only was I happy with that work, but I was extremely impressed by the work they were doing on other coaches in their shop. To make a long story short, I decided that they would be the right people to work on the interior of my bus. If you’re not familiar with this story (“saga” might be more appropriate), check out my detailed post about this on the Creative Cruiser’s site.
After we left Coburg, we headed north to Portland, Oregon. I have a lot of friends in Portland, and Karen has never been there, so we were both psyched to be able to spend some time there. On our way north, we stopped at a few wineries south of the city (wineries are always fun) and then ended up parking the bus just east of downtown. On Saturday, we explored the “Portland Saturday Market” which was absolutely huge. I then took Karen to Powell’s City of Books, which literally takes up an entire city block! It was just a coincidence that my great friend Diane and her husband, Bron, were visiting the city while we were there, so we got to meet up with them one night at a place called McMenamins Kennedy School. If you’ve never been to Portland before, you’ve got to check this place out. It’s an old elementary school that has been converted into an awesome establishment featuring a restaurant, a bar, a hotel, a soaking pool, and a movie theater, amongst other things. The overall style of the place is a lot of fun. We went to see the movie Men in Black III (which is great – better that the first two, in my opinion) and then had some dinner.
We eventually moved the bus to Hayden Island, which is north of Portland, just south of the Washington border. I’ll be parked here for the remainder of the week. Karen’s birthday is Tuesday, so we’ll celebrate here in Portland, and then she’s making a last-minute trip to her family’s home in south Jersey. (Things are not good on the home front and she needs to be there.) After leaving Portland, I’m going to head north to Seattle (Karen will fly back and meet me there).
Just as a reminder, I’m going to be teaching two classes at CreativeLIVE this month, and while they’re live, they’re absolutely free! After we’ve finished recording the events, they’ll be available for purchase on the CreativeLIVE site. I hope you’ll be able to join me for one of the classes! The first is Photoshop for Photographers, and it will be live from Aug. 22-24 and the second is a one-day course on Lightpainting and it will be on Sat. Aug. 25. It should be a great program and I hope to see you there!