36 hours without sleep.

About thirty six hours after getting on the plane in Oahu, I finally caught eight hours of sleep. That's the first REM I've had. For about twelve hours, everything was totally surreal...

I have a good friend named Ben Kirchner who drove up from Sacramento to hang out for a bit. I haven't seen him in a little over four years now. He knows people here, and gave me a map with some information about different hotspots of Portland. Kirch is also recently separated from the Air Force, just like myself. He's been out for about eight months. He's driven from Virginia to Maine, then over to California and up to Oregon. He left this morning and is headed back East to Vermont. Some road trip, huh?

Anyway, after saying goodbye to Kirch last night, I hopped a metro train downtown which I thought was heading back to my hotel. It was about nine pm, I hadn't slept in ages and I was becoming unreasonably paranoid about everything around me. At a certain point, I realized that I was on the wrong train. I got off to switch trains, and was greeted by about a half dozen "transit cops", checking people's tickets. I had mine, but several other people got traffic tickets for riding without paying. I saw several people who were about to get off the train slink back toward the back of the train to avoid getting caught.

So, I switched trains and got onto the right one. This was when things started to get really weird. I was already feeling creeped out by this point. Then the train I was on shuddered to an unnatural stop. The lights went out and someone cursed. Traffic had stopped too, and someone said that the train had hit something. All of the passengers waited for about fifteen minutes, trapped on board, then we were finally let off. The train had T-boned a minivan at an intersection. The van was wrapped around the front of the train like something out of a cartoon. And now it was time to walk.

I headed down the street alongside the tracks and into downtown. A multi-colored car was driving in circles around the block playing music. The driver was a clown. I wondered if I was seeing things. As I continued to walk, I passed the main square downtown. A large crowd was gathered. In the square was an enormous crowd, like a huge mosh pit, dancing to music. Then I got closer. They weren't dancing, really. They were fighting. With pillows. Probably a hundred and fifty people were hitting each other with pillows. Interesting.

Eventually, I got a cup of coffee and then found my way home. I couldn't sleep for a few hours after that, so I listened to the Ramones first album a couple of times, and then finally dozed off at about midnight. An interesting first day in Portland.