With our bus ride to Portland booked for the afternoon we had only enough time to fit in a quick tour of the Seattle Underground. This is not a train that runs under the streets but a network of now abandoned streets that run under the pavement as it is today. After a bloody great fire at the begining of the last century the town planners raised the street level by 12 feet to improve sanitation and hence all that was there before has been buried for nearly a hundred years. Spooky but very, very cool.
We caught our train in the afternoon and the journey flew by thanks to a pirated copy of Heroes Season 2. We met with Ciara's brother Paul and his wife Ber in Portland, but without having a moment to say 'What time do you call this, you're 30 minutes late' they had whisked us off to The Rose Garden sports arena to see the Portland Trailblazers take on the Detroit Dirty Dogs (I made that name up) in a game of Basketball. As with the hockey game a few days before the arena was fantastic plus our entry fee included a free programme and a 12 inch wobbly-headed plastic player! Beat that.
The game was something of a milestone for the Trailblazers as they were attempting to make it 10 wins in a row – a feat their team of serial slackers had not managed since indians were regularly seen running around the town shooting arrrows into white folks arses. As sure as Pakistani prime ministers explode we were sure to jinx them.
The game was tighter than a cheerleaders knickers with neither team taking more than an eight point lead throughout. Into the last quarter the crowd woke up and the atmosphere which had been reasonably tame went mental – we wondered if all the sugar in the popcorn had kicked in. The last 4 minutes lasted about 10 (those time-outs are incredibly frustrating) but eventually the Trailblazers won by a single basket. For me the real winners were the cheerleaders.
Our post game celebration was spent in a fine drinking establishment (of which Portland has many) sampling the local brewed ales, beers and stouts into the early hours.
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