Portland was just a bust. We milled around the homeless circuit, and circus, for seven days eating in soup lines and sleeping in missions among drunken and swollen old men who stank of malt liquor and musk. Among whores who paraded themselves up and down Burnside; among Oedipus and Jocasta arrested for public intox. I couldn’t figure it out: we had just hitched all the way from Cincinnati and had the best possible time, people gave us anything we wanted, food, money, drink, clothes, every time we walked into a new bar we owned it. Chicago and St. Louis and Denver genuflected before us. Hotshot rides came by and by and miles disappeared. Then we hit the City of Roses and that energy died without a single symptom. Seven days it took us to concede. Seven days neither Michael nor I will ever get back.
The decision was made at 6:00 a.m. on the eighth morning to hitch down to Eugene, a purportedly traveler-friendly small city only 100 miles down the I-5. Not that Portland wasn’t a great city, it was/is, it’s a young progressive and kinetic city, but I wouldn’t discover that until years later. Eugene was close, it was an easy hitch for a tag-team.
