Misfit Toys Road Trip 2017: Something D-O-O Doughnuts

I'm out of practice.

I used to travel all the time. At some point in the last 12 years, I was traveling at least once a week to exciting destination like Fishers, IN or Ontario, CA. The last time I traveled for work was sometime in 2016 and the last time I flew was back in March for a funeral. I'm out of practice when it comes to travel. I forgot how exhausting flying is; the recycled air, the crowds at airports, the chaos of loading a plane (I will never understand the "system"), and dealing with people who never travel. I had all these plans for my first day in Portland, but they were dashed all to hell the second travel fatigue hit me. Like the old woman I'm becoming, I stayed close to the hotel, at an early dinner, and was in bed by 8:45 pm. I'm sorry, Cannon Beach, I really wanted to visit but I also didn't want to fall asleep while driving.

I regrouped and got myself together to explore the wonders and wilds of Portland. Sleep is a wonderful thing.

My frame of reference for Portland is the IFC show Portlandia, the song "Portland, OR" by Loretta Lynn and Jack White, and the movie The Goonies, which technically takes place in Astoria, OR but I sort of grouped it all together. This is an incredibly limited view of Portland, particularly if I only focus on Portlandia and putting a bird on everything or pickling it if a bird won't suffice. Yes, Portlandia is satire, but the beauty of satire is the truth that lies beneath. I was hoping to run into Nance or Candace and Toni or Spyke and Iris (my personal favorites) somewhere around town but I mostly saw super hipster dudes, adorable families, and older people enjoying the sunshine.

I started the day with a visit to Voodoo Doughnuts. I was prepared to wait in line a very long time, like that time I visited Franklin Barbecue in Austin for three hours (minus breakfast tacos and my delightful friend, Jessica). I was pleasantly surprised when it only took about 15 minutes to get through the line. Unheard of quickness according to the man in front of me. He then proceeded to share his views on the homelessness problem in Portland. (PS - he is not from Portland and has rather conservative views on how to "handle" homelessness in the city). Anyway, I still held his place in line so he could get cash from an ATM since Voodoo is cash only (make a note for when you visit). I'm a nice traveler that way.

Voodoo Doughnuts is pretty bananas. I've been hearing about the doughnuts here for years and was somewhat overwhelmed by the options. Flavors vary from traditional items like cake donuts with sprinkles and coconut to more adventurous options like the Memphis Mafia (including bananas and peanut butter), Voodoo Bubble (which involves bubblegum dust - I don't even know how one goes about making bubble gum dust), and a bunch of cereal themed options in case icing wasn't enough. For the vegans out there, there's an entire menu just for your. I had a Voodoo Doughnut, a yeast doughnut filled with raspberry jelly and topped with chocolate frosting. It's delicious. I also got a doughnut with Butterfinger candy crushed on top because life is better with a Butterfinger doughnut. Probably.

It was raining the entire time I was at Voodoo Doughnut so rather than sit outside to enjoy my breakfast, I headed over to my next stop, eating my doughnut in my car like God and the inventor of the doughnut intended. (Hanson Gregory is credited with the ring shaped doughnut - you're welcome.)

Powell's City of Books is one of the Powell's bookstores, located in the Pearl District of Portland. This particular location is an entire city block, containing nine different sections (color coded) and something like 3000 sections. It's amazing. It's one of the coolest book stores I've ever been to. Every corner seems to contain a little surprise or a recommendation from the staff. The sections range from the expected (fiction, horror, sci-fi) to the more specific (metaphysics, nautical fiction, woodworking) and everything in between. The staff is friendly and knowledgeable in a way that made me want to hang out all day. Strike that, I'd like to live in Powell's. I don't know how to make this happen, but there's plenty of room. I could sleep on any number of the nooks around the store, using the comfy sweaters (made in Oregon of course) as pillows. I'd be like those cats that live in bookstores; beloved and eccentric. This is my new life goal.

My trip to Powell's reminded of a very important fact: Beverly Cleary was from Portland. She grew up in the Grant Park neighborhood and many of her books are set here. She's one of the most successful living writers in the US (she's 101) and is known for her books chronicling the adventures of Ramona Quimby, Henry Huggins, and Ralph S. Mouse. I am a huge Ramona Quimby fan. I read every single one of the Ramona books when I was a child; Ramona Forever was my favorite followed by Ramona the Pest. As the younger child in my family, I identified with Ramona in many ways although I don't think I was nearly as adventurous as she was. I admired her fearlessness and the way she loved her family. Lucky for me, Portland loves Ramona too. There's a statue of Ramona (and Henry and Ribsy) in Grant Park. Ramona is triumphant in her rain boots, splashing away like nobody's business. Of course, I walked into the middle of Nerf gun fight near the statues (someone was having a birthday party).

My afternoon plan was to visit the International Rose Garden and then head back into downtown to go to the Deschutes Brewery for a late lunch. Apparently, everyone else had the same idea to visit the gardens so parking was nonexistent. I ended up driving back to where I started in the morning and visiting the Lan Su Chinese Garden instead. The rain had stopped and I found parking (before I had to pay for it too). The gardens are beautiful, tranquil and calming. I missed the noon tour, opting to wander through the small gardens myself. The Lan Su garden is considered the most authentic Chinese garden outside of China. It was created through a partnership between Portland and its sister city, Suzhou. It's an amazing oasis in the middle of the city. The name translates into "Garden of Awakening Orchids" and it uses sounds from both city names. In addition to the traditional art and architecture, current artists works are displayed (and for sale) throughout the gardens. There was a poetry reading going on as well. There's also a teahouse (which I didn't visit) but would go back to if I visit again.

By the time I finished in the gardens, it was time to return my rental car. Did you know that you can't pump your own gas in Oregon? You can't. It's both odd and satisfying to not have to do this. This doesn't mean that finding a gas station near the rental car place is easy but at least I could sit in my car and be annoyed by that fact while a very polite attendant pumped the gas. I made my way back downtown (thanks Uber) and finally made it to Deschutes Brewery.

Normally when I travel and go out for a meal, I have no problem sitting at the bar. It's easier to deal with and every now and then, I end up chatting with fun people also sitting at the bar. Apparently, Sunday nights are very popular at Deschutes so it was faster to wait for a table than to sit at the bar. And by sit at a table, I mean awkwardly sit a table for four by myself. I have zero issue with dining by myself but seriously? It was weird and I'm sure the waitress was thrilled to get me on this table. The food is great and you can't beat a great beer. I had the Inversion IPA and it was the best.

Any day that includes a doughnut, a bookstore, Ramona Quimby, and a good beer is a great day. The weather cooperated (for the most part) and I felt like I saw a little bit of everything Portland has to offer.

The unexpected creepiness of Cousin Balki

Summer is winding down and with it summer reading lists. I'm sure in the next few weeks, students across the country will scramble to finish their reading lists or at least read the Sparknotes version (or whatever lame way kids are not reading these days). This was never me when I was in school. I usually had my reading list done by the end of the first month of vacation and the librarian would give me more books to read. I'm a school nerd and proud of it.

This is how I came to read my first Stephen King novel. I was done with my summer reading and was looking for something else since I'm an inside kid. My brother had been reading Stephen King for awhile and I'm pretty sure that I took the book from his room (probably without his permission). My first Stephen King novel was Christine. I read it in a few days and was totally hooked. I moved from Christine to Carrie to IT and never looked back. That summer, I also "discovered" the collection Different Seasons that featured the story "The Body". I had seen Stand By Me several times already (I was going through a Corey and Kiefer phase at the time too) and didn't realize it was a short story first. My favorite King novel is The Stand. I read it for the first time my freshmen year in high school. I've probably read it at least a dozen times since. This is no small feat given that it's an enormous story and one of his longest novels. The miniseries is my favorite miniseries and I'll watch it anytime it's on. I  read his newest novel, Joyland, back in June and enjoyed it. Definitely a good summer read.

I was thinking about Stephen King this week while traveling for work. Specifically, I was thinking about a short story called "The Langoliers". This story appears in the collection Four Past Midnight and was made into an incredibly cheesy tv movie starring a who's who of 90's tv stars: Dean Stockwell from Quantum Leap, Patricia Wettig from Thirtysomething, and my favorite, Bronson Pinchot from Perfect Strangers. Yes, Cousin Balki was in a Stephen King movie. Cousin Balki goes a little crazy and is not very Balki-like. I remember finding him super creepy when I first saw it and wondered if he was trying to shed the Cousin Balki image by playing a super creepo.


Anyway, the story is about a red-eye flight from LA to Boston that goes awry. One of the passengers, a young blind girl (who is also psychic) wakes up to find all but herself and nine other passengers on the plane. Everyone, including the pilots, are gone. The plane is on autopilot. There just happens to be a pilot on the plane (played in the movie by David Morse, a favorite actor of mine) and e lands them in Bangor, Maine and things get creepier and creepier from there. If you're a fan of Stephen King novels you know that nothing good ever happens in Maine. The airport is deserted, people start hearing strange noises, and one of the group, Mr. Toomey, goes bananas. The group figures out that they journeyed through some type of "time rip" and that caused everyone to disappear and eventually will mean they will disappear too. Schemes are hatched, Langoliers approach (because of crazy Mr. Toomey), and heroes are sacrificed. You should really just read the story or watch the movie to get the full plot. There's a lot going on here and summarizing it is tough.

I've been traveling for work since 2004 (on and off) so I've spent a lot of time in airports. If I were to calculate the total time I've spent in airports since 2004, I would be a sad person. I'm sure it would equate to thousands of hours spent doing very little. Airports are the perfect place to waste time because you can't really go anywhere once you're beyond security. Setting any kind of fantasy or horror story at an airport makes absolute sense to me. On my trip this week, I had to go to Lake Elsinore, CA. Lake Elsinore is between LA and San Diego and both of those airports are farther away than I wanted to drive. So I booked my flight into Ontario International Airport (in California not Canada). It's a pretty small airport and was totally as it should be when I got in on Sunday. There were people around and the TGIFriday's was open. It's like Oakland Airport's less gritty twin.

On Tuesday, my training ended at 3:30 so I was in good shape to get to the airport on time to return the car and have a quick dinner (since I was getting into Phoenix after 9 pm). It takes about 40 minutes to get to Ontario. There was no traffic so I made good time and made it to the airport a little before 5. This is when things started to get weird. There was no one, not even airline staff, anywhere in the ticketing area. There were no other passengers that I could see. The only noise was the whir of the machines at the security line. When I made it upstairs to security there were two other passengers and six TSA agents. I don't even think it took 5 minutes to go through security (unheard of I know). Once I got through security, the gates were empty too. My first thought was that maybe things opened up after 5 for evening flights or that I had hit a lull in arrivals. I just couldn't figure out why there was no noise. It was eerie and unsettling. The Coffee Bean was closed - devastating. Even when I've been the first person in for an early flight or on the last flight of the night to arrive, there's always noise at the airport. There was nothing.

So naturally, being me, I immediately thought of "The Langoliers" (both the story and the movie). The airport reminded me of the scenes after the group lands in Maine and there was no one and no noise or anything. It was just eerie. I didn't even see where the other two passengers went after we got through security. And it seemed like the TSA agents had been trained to be super quiet because they weren't even making noise. I also happened to be taking a red-eye from Phoenix to Charlotte that evening so clearly I was living the plot of this story. Ontario was already in the time rip and I would follow suit once I got to Phoenix. In the next two hours, I would also have to find a blind psychic, Cousin Balki (because someone needs to go crazy and it's not me), the brainy guy from Quantum Leap, and David Morse. David Morse would also be able to fly a plane and that's how we'd get to Phoenix for the rest of the plot to play out correctly.

Because this is how life works.

What really went down is this: everything in this airport closes at 4 pm except Round Table Pizza, the bar, and the gift shop (it closes at 6 pm). An entire airport closes down its services at 4 pm. I totally support airports not opening everything at 5:30 am or super late into the night because there aren't that many people but 4 pm? That just seems weird especially given that by 5:45ish people finally started to arrive and the airport went back to feeling like an actual airport. So instead of finding my group of survivors or dealing with creepo Cousin Balki, I read my book (The Hangman's Daughter), had some expensive pizza, and continued on my way to Phoenix and Charlotte and then home to DC.

And this is why Stephen King is a genius. I haven't read this story or seen the movie in years but I immediately conjured up images and plot points from this story. In many of his stories, it's the mundane or the ordinary person or object that causes the most terror for the characters and the readers. Most of his villains are not the monsters of fantasy (although he's got some good ones - Pennywise is terrifying) but ourselves. Or at least the way our mind processes what's happening around us or gives into the events of the story. Many of my favorites, The Stand, Carrie, Christine, Misery, play into that psychological scare which to me is better than a gory, monster filled horror story. The reality of these stories is what is truly terrifying.

And this is my brain on jet lag. Welcome to my world.

Because I can't help myself - more Stephen King fun!

Bronson Pinchot photo
Other photos by me.