Spent Wednesday driving around in the Columbia River Gorge area with Chris, Kristie, and Michael. Michael is staying up that way visiting his family. He and Chris are best friends and I’ve known Micheal since the 1999 WTO Seattle experience. He gave us the full tour, showing us things that only a local could show. We watched kite surfers catch waves on the Columbia, walked around in the Elementary School that was named after Michael’s father. Michael took us to his teenage hang out, a bridge down a trail off a dirt road. After trudging through briars and mud, we came up to a burned out bridge. We drove through BZ Corners, and I had to take a photo to prove the village existed. We visited White Salmon. We ended the day in Pucker Huddle, the street where Michael’s mother still lives. She had a nice house with a beautiful view of Mt. Hood.
 
from left to right: Great shot of Mt. Hood out of the car; Don’t blink or you’ll miss BZ Corners, WA; Yep, Pucker Huddle does exist; Mt. Hood from Michael’s Mom’s backyard; Chris sips lemonade and chills on Michael’s mom’s porch
Michael told the story that Pucker Huddle got its name from the settlers who wintered huddled under tents with nothing but pickles to eat. His mom told him his story was a lie and told a different one where a settler decided to have a party in his small house one night. The party got big and a man was overheard by a local newspaperman saying “there isn’t any room to pucker or huddle in there!” When the settlers were trying to find a name of the small village, Pucker Huddle stuck.
 
Back in Portland for the evening where I crossed bridge number three on a bike (the Hawthorne) and met up with the Pedalpalooza Sprockettes bike ride. About 100 of us met up and then rode back down to the Steel Bridge and crossed it to end up near the buffed stencil area (the locals call it Thunderdome). Got to see the B C Clettes do a dance bit, and then the Sprockettes showed a new number.
Met up with Tiago and his wife Adrianne after that and about 8 of us rode back into SW Portland to grab some sushi at the famous Takahachi. Portland loves to mix things up so Takahachi was a grungy, cheap sushi joint with a train instead of boats of sushi. Black Sabbath played over the PA as we ordered $1.25 plates of sushi. Wednesday night was cheap sushi night so I ended up eating way too much (and the chefs thought my ones were twos so made even more for me.) We wandered over to Voodoo Donuts and I got to try a blunt and a voodoo doll pastry. Tiago ate the blunt: a cone-shaped donut with red sprinkles on a bulbus end. Adrianne ate a voodoo doll: a person donut with a pretzel stuck in its heart. Eat the heart area and red-berry filling goos out. After that, we set off in search of a pitcher of beer. We ended up SE and dranks to watery well liquor along with a tasty pitcher of beer.
Adrianne continued to give me the schooling on the zoobombing culture. COCOC is something you yell before you bomb. It means Cockout Cockout Crew. If you hear it yelled, you pull it out and let it hang. PDC is the Pants Down Crew. When you hear that yelled, you drop em! Tiago had just done a Zoobomb Century. That’s when you go as long as it takes to do 100 miles of zoobombing in a Sunday session. Took Tiago 10 hours to do it and he was the third person to finish 100 miles that night. Going up the hill on Max trains doesn’t count towards the distance but riding between stops does. “You can get a mile added on while waiting on the Max.” You must do the century on a kid’s bike. A Dick Taster is a person who thinks they’re in charge of zoobombing. It is a pun on dictator if you can’t tell.