On October 10th, my month-long stay in Seattle was over. I said my goodbyes to the kind people at Office Nomads and packed up my truck.

Seattle seemed to exude the “I want to be different, just like everyone else” adage that is so commonly used in reference to teenagers. There’s only so many combinations of square black-rimmed glasses, carefully scuffed tight jeans, ironic berets, and thin brown leather jackets that a person can wear. It wasn’t a bad vibe but it felt a little forced, like everyone trying a bit too hard to be cool at a dinner party with people they don’t know very well. Wicked coffee, though.

Coworking in Seattle did have one disadvantage, and that was fighting I-5 rush hour traffic every day. Even my Seattle escape attempt on Friday night felt like swimming through molasses. I left at 4:00 pm and crept south on the interstate through Seattle, Tacoma, and Olympia - it was a full 70 miles before I could lean back and flick on the cruise control. I rolled into Portland a few hours later.

That Saturday I drove around the town and later spent a few hours at a local bar watching college football. Sunday I went to the movies and saw “How to Lose Friends and Alienate People” and “Body of Lies”. My high school buddy Shelby had kindly offered me a futon in his house a few miles from downtown Portland and I spent Sunday through Friday there.

Portland’s unofficial motto is “Keep Portland Weird” and the city definitely included an eclectic group of people. It also bills itself as the microbrew capital of the world and I went to the Widmer Brewery restaurant for lunch on Wednesday to try their Widmer Hefeweizen, winner of its category the 2008 World Beer Cup. I paired it with bratwurst, sauerkraut, and sourdough bread, and returned for the same meal on Friday.

Portland felt much smaller than Seattle, and had an excellent bus system while still being both walkable and drivable. The city is bisected north-south by the Columbia River and again by Burnside Steet running east-west; the resulting parts form the four quadrants used to give directions within the city. One highlight of downtown was Powell’s City of Books, one of the largest bookstores in the world with three stories and more than 68,000 square feet of retail space. The store really is a small city - it hosts 40,000 visitors per day.

On Saturday morning I shook off the repercussions of the previous night’s activities and cranked up my truck. Then I shut it back off, retrieved my phone charger from Shelby’s house, and drove south for California.