The Adventures of El Gringo & El Vandita

Day 85 (Thursday Dec 16th)
"I'm at an almost Mexican grill with an almost Mexican girl!"

I woke up feeling the worst I've ever felt on my trip, I blame the cinnamon whisky that was too easy to drink. Somehow I managed not to puke but I think I would have if I'd gone out to have breakfast with the other guys. I chose to stay behind and get a bit more sleep, Coop kept me company. When they returned, Vanessa and I went back to her place, she very wisely said we should both sleep for a bit. I got up at around 7.30pm and we were looking for somewhere to eat. I thought it would be very fitting for us to go to a Chipotle because Vanessa is a bit Mexican and it's one of my favourite food places. We ended up going to one in Vancouver, Washington because the website said it was the nearest one. It wasn't too far and it meant I got to visit another state. When we got back to Portland we watched Operation Endgame and I had some vanilla ice cream that it had taken me at least five minutes to decide upon when we were at the store. Before going to bed I realised that my laptop had actually died and wouldn't even boot up. Not good news but rather good timing.

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Day 86 (Friday Dec 17th)
"That's not harmonising!"

I had a cold and uncomfortable night's sleep but managed to get up by midday, today was supposed to be our day of doing stuff in or around Portland. We went to a house on a hill called Pittock Mansion, with a lovely view of Portland and Mt Hood. By English standards it was more just a big house but it was interesting walking around inside and seeing how it might have looked 100 years ago. My favourite part was the kitchen area where they had lots of pretend food laid out. I wanted to do a little bit of nature so we walked five minutes down a trail before we realised it was getting too dark and we needed to go see Jeff anyway. Jeff was having some problems with his electricity and was waiting for the electric man to call but we had time to pop out and have some Italian food at The Spaghetti Factory, I had veggie lasagne with some amazingly chewy bread which Jeff failed to cut. As usual in America we had a cool waitress, I think I have a thing for waitresses, they bring me food and they have to be nice to me. When we'd finished eating Jeff realised he had a couple of missed calls so we went back to the house just in time for the electric man. He said the whole electric box thing needed replacing and it would take him at least eight hours. While he was sorting out what parts he needed we went to Fred Meyer to play with scary singing children's toys. By this point I was absolutely knackered so when we got back to Jeff's we said our goodbyes and headed back to Vanessa's. We were tempted to watch 'Beavis & Butthead Do America' because we'd been talking about it earlier... but I sensibly decided that getting some sleep would probably be a better idea. Vanessa insisted that I sleep in her bed and she'd take the sofa so I could get some better rest than the previous night, I refused for at least two minutes... then set my alarm for 5.15am and lay my head down on her pillow.