The Portland Experience episode 2

In a recent bout of purging of unnecessary items cluttering up my life, I posted some things on Craigslist. One of these things was my old longboard.

I got an email from a guy who wanted to drive up from Eugene to buy it. Cool. "Meet me at the Starbucks on Beaverton-Hillsdale- right off of 217." On my way there last night, I was on the phone with a friend when I noticed that there was a second Starbucks there that I had forgotten about. Together we decided that the one I was talking about was the more logical of the two to meet at, so I wasn't that concerned.

I had been there about 12 minutes, waiting in the chilly wind (which given the gorgeous weather we've been having for the last two weeks I was ill-prepared for) when I sent him another email.  After another 6 minutes I checked my email again. Three emails from him - getting progressively angrier in tone. I sent him another email, this time with my phone number. He called me and we figured out that we were each at the different Starbucks.



Considering this is my neck of the woods I probably should have known that there were two within a block. I'm going to take a my bad on this one.

While I was waiting for him though, I saw a suburban hipster on a bike leaving the Fred Meyer that was there with a huge backpack and probably about six grocery bags in tow. He was balanced and about to really get going, when a gust of wind met him and blew off his trucker hat. (Seriously, a trucker hat? What is this 2006?) He stopped his bike in the middle of the heavily populated parking lot intersection and flew backwards trying to capture his hat. The next like 45 seconds were sheer slapstick bliss. Once the hat was captured, a grocery bag would fall, then once that was taken care of, his backpack would slide around. It was a very precarious situation for this young man. And he was getting increasingly frustrated by the whole thing, fumbling, dropping, swearing, in a continuous cycle until finally homeboy was off. Maybe Fred Meyer should only be one-stop shopping when you have a trunk with you at the store.

Lessons learned: 1. Find out just how many Starbucks are within the block radius of where I'm planning on meeting someone before I suggest it as a meeting place. And 2. If you're going to ride your bike to the grocery store, maybe buy less than six grocery bags worth of stuff at a time, or bring reusable bags that can hold more and you can secure to your bike.