It was the Best of Times, it was the Worst of Times

 

IT CAME IN LIKE A WRECKING BALL:  Monday was a day we'd been looking forward to for months - every since we bought tickets to see the Foo Fighters play the Moda Center (former Rose Garden) in Portland, Oregon.

We drove down I-5 Monday morning, excited about what the day held in store. 

Along the way, we had to stop at a store, because the kids had left their toothbrushes in Seattle. We chose the Target in Kelso, WA, because it's right off Interstate 5. It would be a quick and easy stop.

We parked in the lot out front and approached the building from the south.  Like many (most? all?) Target stores, this one has big, red concrete balls out front. Ever since the kids have been old enough to walk, they've always belly bumped or patted or leap-frogged these balls on the way into the store. I've seen other kids do it, too. Something about the big red balls just says, 'Touch me!"

Annabelle's big enough now to actually leapfrog the balls. She approached the first one, planted her hands atop it, and then basically stuck, letting out a shriek.

"It's wet paint! Wet paint!" she wailed, holding red palms up as evidence. Her attention immediately turned to her brand new silver sparkly sweater and its now partially red-sleeves, and her new black pants, now sporting red polka dots. 

We dashed into the store and into the bathrooms right inside the entrance. We were able to get the paint off the pants, but the sweater? Not so much.  :/

I was Very Not Pleased because that was the only sweater/jacket she had with her - we were just spending one night in Portland, and I wasn't happy that the wet paint wasn't properly marked. Granted, there *was* caution tape across part of the front entrance of the store, and there was equipment and a person working on a man-lift piece of equipment, but it looked like he was working on something on the upper facade. There certainly was no one obviously painting, and no sign warning us, approaching from the south - or anyone coming from the north, or anyone coming out of the store - that there was wet paint. I thought that was, well negligent, and we shared those thoughts with the store management. To their credit, the manager spent five minutes touring a teary-eyed Annabelle around the children's clothing department, helping her pick out a replacement sweater. 

By the time we exited the store, the big red wet balls were entirely surrounded by caution tape. 

Better late than never. ...

SUGARY STOP: The Target trauma out of the way, we continued our journey toward Portland. Fortunately, we made good time, and had a chance to stop by the Voodoo Doughnut store on Third in downtown Portland. 

There was a line out the door into the light rain, of course, but the kids thought it worth the 10 minute or so wait.

 CJ opted for a bacon maple bar, while Annabelle went for a devil's food with coconut ring.

Christian and I split a ridiculously large apple fritter that was ridiculously good. 

Noontime, I spent an hour at a doctor's office while Christian and the kids checked out a local game store. Afterward, we went to the place we were staying the night, McMenamin's White Eagle Cafe and Rock 'n' Roll Hotel.  

It's a great old place in Portland, just a mile north of the Rose Quarter, where we'd be seeing the Foo Fighters later that night.

The cool old building is famous for its tales of resident ghosts, Shanghai tunnels and a long history of live music since it opened in 1905.

The first floor of the building is a restaurant and pub. Upstairs are 11 small guestrooms (two of which we reserved on Monday), with a couple of communal bathrooms.

Like all McMenamins' places, there was unique artwork everywhere. 

 The rooms upstairs are named after tunes of the Holy Modal Rounders, the house band at White Eagle in years gone by. Our rooms were John the Revelator and Summer of '65.

I loved the custom tile in the shower ... 

and the greenery clinging to the building was beautiful.

We also appreciated someone's towel-folding skills. Annabelle and I thought they looked like little penguins peeking out.

At about 6 p.m., we started our mile-long walk to the Rose Quarter. 

Once there, it was fun to show the kids the outside of the old Memorial Coliseum, where Christian and I each saw many, many concerts in our youth. In addition to dozens of other acts, I told the kids I saw Queen and Van Halen there multiple times. 

 CJ happened to be wearing a Queen t-shirt last night. 

We kept walking and made our way over the Moda Center. We found a "Rip City" sign missing its second 'i". The kids were happy to literally fill in. 

SHOWTIME: We made our way into the concert venue at about 7 p.m. We snagged a table on the third/top level concourse and watched some Monday Night Football while Gary Clark Jr., the opening act, played loudly.

At about 8, we made our way into the bowl.

We were in the "cheap" seats - row J of the top level, in section 323. The photo above shows how far we were from the stage. 

The show started around 8:20, and it was basically melt-your-face-off rock-n-roll from first note to last. https://youtu.be/tVdlWx0WbVk

We were enjoying everything about it until about 9:30, when a 'gentleman' who had apparently enjoyed a little too much ended up projectile vomiting. Unfortunately, he was about two rows behind us, and there was no one in the seats behind Christian, CJ and Annabelle, and they were ground zero for the spew. 

Ugh. 

We hastily vacated the seats, running down to the concourse. I grabbed the first red-vested Moda Center attendant I found and told her my family had been puked on, they were in the bathroom cleaning up, and we needed somewhere else to watch the show from. She assured me she would help and sprang into action. 

Almost instantly, a supervisor showed up, told us he'd get new shirts for everyone and they'd find us seats. Our clean up efforts continued, which included me having to take Annabelle into the restroom and wash her hair in the sink. Shudder. It was nasty, seriously.

Before long, the supervisor showed up with decade-old (but brand new) Portland Trailblazers t-shirts for everyone, and he introduced us to another worker, Jeff, who was in charge of escorting us to our new seats. 

Jeff instructed us to follow him and off we went. First, down a couple of flights of stairs and then to a door that was, uh oh, locked. So we went another way to a door that led us to the sidewalk outside the arena. I refused to go through that door, figuring we'd never get back in!  We wound around some more and I muttered aloud that I felt like I was living the scene in Spinal Tap where the band is lost in the bowels of a concert venue and they can't find the stage.

Eventually, Jeff led us to a door where a couple of people were exiting. That ended up being practically back stage. We got to stand there and check it out for a few minutes, before winding around some more.  Jeff then took us to the floor of the venue, and let us hang out there and take a couple of photos for a couple of minutes.

 It was cool to get to see Dave Grohl and his rock 'n' roll throne up close.  (The throne necessary due to the fact that he horribly terribly fractured his leg falling off a stage a couple of months ago.)

Eventually Jeff had us on the go again, and had us walk all the way across the floor, out to the other side of the venue. We walked, and wound, walked and wound and eventually Jeff handed us off to another usher who showed us our new (and vastly improved!) seats, on the main level, just up off the floor, with fancy tables and everything. (In fact, in the arena photo I led with, you can see where we eventually 'landed' - the long, empty white rows of tables.)

Why we took the down, down, down, across and around, around, around route to them, I'll never know, but it could have been worse.

We thoroughly enjoyed the remainder of the show, which included the Foo Fighters doing a number of Queen and Van Halen cover tunes, a bit ironic, since I was telling the kids just a couple of hours earlier about seeing Queen and Van Halen when I was their age.

There is more I could and should write, but we're all hosed after a wild Monday, and I'm calling it a night.