Passport Masters

We continued our last day of Portland hijinx at Burgerville, a chain that sounds like it sticks the Portland area.

They had fun seasonal items. I think this sundae had Oregon strawberries in it, for example.

Fun fact from their Wikipedia page: "On major highways leaving Burgerville's reach, there is usually a billboard resembling an overhead highway warning sign alerting drivers that there will not be another Burgerville location for approximately another 24,700 miles, which is the distance to the next Burgerville should one continue around the globe in that direction. The distance reported on each sign varies depending on the actual location of the billboard."

I friggin love neon.

I am genuinely jealous of the Lego options that kids today have. Back in my time if we wanted to have fun we had to use our "imagination" like losers.

Yesterday I mentioned we hit an event at theater that helped us not have to actually see a show there. Well today we struck again. There was some sort of a historical presentation happening at the McMenamins Mission Theater. There were lots of other passport stamp addicts lined up before the event, to the extent that I was worried if we were going to be able to enter.

I felt a little bit guilty that we pretty much snatched our stamps and bolted, but we have a baby so pretty much every rude thing we do is excused.

We stopped at 10 Barrel Brewing Portland. 10 Barrel is one of those really fun brands that Anheuser-Busch ate that I was always excited to see in the office beer case.

Ern had a lot of fun stomping around and flirting with the other patrons.

I am proud to announce that after doing our stamp scavenger hunt mission thing at McMenamins Kennedy School we officially completed our passport! It's been like 75% fun and 25% terrible curse that only completing the passport could release my soul from.

There was a "yay we did it gong" that Ernie got to dong.

We have officially been conferred the rank of Cosmic Tripster and one of our privileges is that some of the locations have secret menus that only we get to order from.

Surely the stamp I've worked the hardest for in my entire life.

We got all kinds of prizes like free hotel stays and show tickets. As of April 2026 when I belatedly write this we have not used a single one of them. With a bit of time passed I wonder if that is a testament to how much our imaginations were captured by this mission and how it drew us to go on numerous road trips. We explored a ton of Oregon as a result and I think that was a win that I will treasure more than a bunch of tshirts and free orders of tater tots. I do wear the hell out of those tshirts though. They have fun designs and I think it gives them more value since I "earned" them.

It wasn't really meal time but I was thinking something along the lines of "I about killed myself finishing this passport so we're not leaving here until we order something off of the secret menu!" Luckily it doesn't usually take too much arm twisting to get Lydia to eat some ice cream. We got the:

HALA KAHIKI SUNDAE

vanilla bean ice cream, rum-glazed grilled pineapple,

North Shore peanuts, toasted coconut

& Amarena cherries

We made it back to Kirkland and were celebrated by all as the heroes who conquered Portland.

Today Ernie said what I think counts as his first full sentence. I was playing with him in the bathtub and Lydia was in another room. Lydia said something and he replied “no mama”.

Kitchen Renovation

When we awoke in our Portland Airbnb Ern got back to the important work of rearranging all of the contents of the kitchen cabinets he could reach.

This being Oregon and me being an achievement addict, we continued our quest to complete the McMenamins Passport. Some of the locations that you need to get your passport stamped at are concert venues or movie theaters. Those present a bit more of a challenge especially to us out-of-towners because we need to be free at certain dates and times to even enter the building. WELL the beneficent geniuses at McMenamins understand that sucks because they host tours of some of the buildings where you get to check stuff out without necessarily having a ticket to a show. And thus it was at the McMenamins Bagdad Theater & Pub. 

Ern did some exploring while we listened to the history of the joint. I extremely like the way these guys seem to really care about the history of the buildings they buy and preserve it in fun ways.

Ernie got complimented on his Jordans today. They knew the model number and everything.

The Bagdad originally opened in 1927 and cost Universal Studios $100,000 to build. It was the site of the gala premiere of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in 1975, with Jack Nicholson, Louise Fletcher, and Michael Douglas in attendance.

They played a reel of movie previews. I think this was Ern's first cinema experience,

Afterward we hit the McMenamins Backstage Bar at the Bagdad Theater.

Everybody knows the best place to go after a McMenamins is another McMenamins. We popped into McMenamins Hillsdale Brewery & Public House for refreshments.

I had a blue beer.

We popped into McMenamins Fulton Pub & Brewery but I don't think we sat down.

To the victor go the spoils.

Ern insisted we return to the Airbnb so that he could work on his projects.

He worked up an appetite though, and then requested we visit McMenamins Sunnyside.

It's funny like 95% of their locations are in amazing and historically significant buildings that you feel lucky are being preserved. The other 5% are for some reason in ugly strip malls.

Ern likes to unwind at night by putting on his jamjams and then violently reimagining a stranger's kitchen.