Warning! The following is a long rant about my bad day in Portland, it contains nothing of use and you will likely do well to just avoid reading it. If you don’t care, then carry on.

Well, I’ve finally arrived to Portland, Oregon. Unbelievably, I’ve actually had what’s got to be the worst string of bad events I’ve ever had in a single day.

Everything started well enough. My flight went smoothly and my bag was at the front of the pack down at baggage claim (side note: I’m 99% sure I actually passed Amy Hoy in baggage claim! She was wearing the exact same pacman shirt as the one owned by Solomon White!) I should’ve been prepared for something to go horribly wrong…

I walked outside expecting to quickly find a shuttle to my hotel. Boy was I wrong. After waiting for ~20 minutes a shuttle to Shilo Inn (some hotel chain that I’d never heard of, but that travelocity assured me was the last hotel near the conference center that wasn’t completely booked.) First thing I asked the nice man was whether or not this shuttle was infact traveling to the Rose Garden Shilo Inn. After a brief exchange of words he informed me that the shuttle was only going to the super close airport Shilo Inn and that I should go ask the lady at the information kiosk if there was a shuttle that would take me to the Rose Garden Shilo Inn.

To my utter disappointment I was told that my only options were to take the Max (I assume this is the lightrail?), take a paid shuttle, a bus, or get a taxi. The choice for me was clear and I asked her for a map and the directions to the lightrail. For whatever reason she handed me some ancient bus stop map that detailed temporary bus stop locations back in 2005. Screw that, I walked over to the section where you could pick up a shuttle or a taxi and saw a friendly sign that said a shuttle was 14 bucks, and a taxi was 32. Fair enough, I took the shuttle.

The very friendly non english speaking shuttle driver informed me that he wasn’t sure where the Rose Garden Shilo Inn was, or where the Convention Center was, but assured me that he’d find out and that everything would be fine. He made a few calls and then acted very competent with his newly gained knowledge of the city. 10 minutes later he dropped me off at a very very shady looking motelesque Shilo Inn that certainly wasn’t worth the 800 bucks I paid for it. I handed the nice man a 20 thinking I’d get change that I could later use to give him a tip. nope, that’s not how things are done out in Portland! He muttered something about billing me and just up and left with the money. That’s fine, I just want to go inside and get my room. I was greeted at the front desk of the Shilo Inn with a very horribly handwritten sign that said “Back in 5 minutes!”

Another 20 minutes later a man in the most casual of clothing walked in behind me and around the desk. I said to this man: “Hello kind sir, I have a reservation under the name Nicholas Wright!”, to which he replied: “Checkin isn’t for another 3 hours. You can leave your luggage there if you wish.” This was a bit annoying but I started to leave, as there was nothing I could do. Before I made it out of the door the man asked my name again and told me there was no reservation in the system under my name and that I was likely at the wrong hotel.

“Is this the Rose Garden Shilo Inn?” I said. “No… That’s about 5 blocks up until you hit a wallgreens, then 5 blocks over.”

PERFECT. I love walking in 70 degree heat whilst wearing a corderoy jacket dragging 80 pounds of luggage (I packed enough crap to keep a small village living in comfort for about a year..) Anyway, fast forward to my arrival at the correct hotel. From across the street I could already tell that this hotel was leaps and bounds above the last Shilo Inn I’d been to. When I walked in the door there was a friendly gentlemen in business dress behind a fancy faux tile desk that spanned the length of the room. He greeted me with a hello, and asked me what I needed. I gave him the same information I’d given to the other guy, but was stopped mid sentence and informed that checkin was still at 2 pm and that every hotel (read: EVERY hotel in the world) did this and that this standard procedure was not negotiable, and that I was unable to leave my things there as the lobby was small.

At this point I was a bit pissed and wasn’t quite sure what to do with the 2 hours I now had to wait around Portland before I could get into my room. The only thing I could think to do was go to the Wendys that I’d passed during my walk to the hotel.

First, let me say that it’s extremely hard carrying a full tray of food with a large drink, a laptop case and a giant bag around a crowded Wendys. Once I was happily seated I decided to call and text some people my emotions so I could ruin the days of everyone else as well. I sort of hate being alone. :(

Anyway, after I’d finished the first BBQ sauce for my chicken nuggets, I went to carry out my usual habit of stacking the new BBQ sauce container in the old one. For whatever reason this wasn’t happening today, and the BBQ sauce EXPLODED ALL OVER THE DAMN PLACE. Including, but not limited to getting in my hair, all over my jacket, on my shirt, all over my mac, all over the people lateral to me, etc. There was nothing I could do but laugh hysterically as I ran to grab napkins while leaving my belongings in view at my table.

At this point my bad day turned into sort of a funny joke to me, and I just sat at my table sans connectivity or wired power and started writing another js game to kill some time. I was a bit shocked when the manager came up to me and kicked me out for taking up space during a lunch rush!

Fast forward an hour and a half and I was able to make some phone calls to locate a starbucks, which turned out to be a short 20 walk from my hotel which I’d decided to hover around hoping the dude at the desk would feel horrible and allow my pathetic self to enter my room. Starbucks was one of the first things I decided to look for because I’m used to the free wifi of back home. When I got into this starbucks I was treated to a pricing sheet that started at 6 bucks for 60 minutes with 0.10 cents per minute thereafter, 10 a day, and 40 a month unless I signed up for a one year commitment for T-Mobile hotspot to save 10 dollars. As getting online isn’t that important to me I decided to occupy space until 2 pm hit (10 minutes baby!!!) and type up the minutes of my day in TextEdit.

Oh well, I have a nice uphill walk back to my hotel, so I’d better get a goin’.

.........

Alright. So I arrive back at the hotel and there’s now a line of people waiting for the coked up persian dude (previously known as the nice dude in business dress… I’ll get to this in a second) at the counter to give us all rooms!

So while I’m waiting for a room I figured it’s worth mentioning that on my trek back to the hotel I passed a subway that was less than a block from Wendys with FREE WIFI! As I was tired and no longer cared I just continued on to the hotel and was met with what seemed to be an angry crowd of people who were waiting for the guy to check them in. It’s worth noting that by all accounts it was 2:04 at this point, yet the guy said there was another 10 minutes before it hit 2 and he could check us in. The first guy actually asked if there were any other rooms available and the guy at the desk told him that they were all sold out, but the next few people after him were straight off of the street and picked up rooms, and I was able to successfully change my room back to a king suite with a couch instead of the dual queens with no couch (CURSE YOU JEFF!) However, in between guests the guy would disappear behind this open door and start making some horrendous snorting sounds whilst not moving for a good 30 seconds each time. I can only assume he was doing lines as he was also very wiggy and hyper to the point where he kept going to the guy cleaning the rooms and would hold very loud verbal arguments with him while we all sat there in dismay.

A sort of funny incident across the street took place as the much larger holiday inn was on fire or something. I didn’t get to see it but it was humorous at the time.

The kicker is that my room is extremely nice, the water is 1.50 a bottle and I’m 3 hangers short of being able to hang all of my shirts!

Oh well! Here’s hoping the coming days treat me a bit better!

Update: Nope! It wasn’t Amy Hoy at the airport afterall. I saw her today wandering around tutorial day at the convention center and she has blue hair. Apparently she also has a colorless hair doppleganger roaming Portland. Oh well, I guess maybe getting my bags first off of the claim was the only good that came of that day.