Portland Day 3: Well Done Day.
10:00 AM. I awake to find Tim and Shaun missing, but there is a note waiting for me. They have gone to get brunch supplies. We are to do a series of tasks before they return, including “be awesome.” On it.
We have planned a Well Done Brunch. Invited: Bowerbirds, Megafaun, Hometapes crew.
We took this project pretty seriously. It’s the first-ever Well Done Brunch. We can’t let the people down. We have menus and everything.
Let me just give you the rundown of what we created.
Iced Coffees.
Mimosas.
Bloody Mary Bar.
Egg frittatas with bacon, white cheddar, garlic, herbs and veggies from the garden.
Blueberry corn pancakes, topped with maple butter.
Curry breakfast potatoes.
Roasted potatoes with garlic and rosemary. (compliments of Megafaun Brad)
Fruit salad.
Shaun was busy preparing a brisket to cook for the next seven hours, I played waitress and took everyone’s order, while Tim shelled out frittatas at a blinding rate. I’m not entirely sure how he did it. He has breakfast superpowers.
We ate like champions, then watched the boys play in the water hose. Just a typical day in tour land.
As if this wasn’t enough to call it a day at 4 PM, we all decide to drive to Washington state for the afternoon to play in the river and jump off cliffs. And that we did.
Finally, nighttime arrives, and it’s time to celebrate Adam’s birthday at the Hometapes abode. We run back to Shaun’s house and prepare yet another epic meal: beef brisket with raspberry BBQ sauce, sweet potato salad, brown sugar baked beans, cabbage slaw, gluten-free peanut butter cookies with fresh strawberry compote, and ice cream. This is getting ridiculous.
We head to the celebration. Brad has french braids in his hair. Mark is wearing Beth’s jorts. More eating like champions. Everyone is comatose by the end of it. We decide that the best day ever has to end at some point, and head back to Shaun’s to retire from yet another glorious night in Portland.
So that ends one of the best weekend of my entire life. Can’t we all just stay here forever?
Portland Day 2: Bowerbirds + Megafaun + Tire Swing
Day 2 began with Tim cooking the most epic breakfast from whatever he could find in Shaun’s kitchen and/or potted herb garden. Tim is known for his epic breakfast making, but this one really took the cake. I think we’ve earned our keep at Shaun’s house.
We spent the afternoon exploring the downtown Portland area with Shaun & Margaret, eating ice cream, touring giant bookstores, and enjoying gourmet happy hour treats (fried kalamata olives for one dollar? yes please).
We eventually head over to Porque No taco shack to meet Megafaun and the Hometapes crew. We are in the land of Hometapes, and we finally meet the staff of the label, including Sarah’s husband and label co-owner, Adam. I had a shrimp-chile-pineapple taco. I’m fairly sure it was the best taco I’ve ever had. Quite sure actually.
We swung on a tire for a bit, then headed to the venue.
The show was at Mississippi Studios. This was a big show, as it’s Hometapes territory, and the turnout was huge. Both bands played one of their best sets I had ever heard them play. The crowd was incredible. I tried to hover near the front and shoot as much as I could.
After the show, we did a quick visit to a neighborhood bar, then headed back to Shaun’s to make obscene amounts of iced coffee and make ridiculously detailed brunch plans until 4 in the morning. Totally normal.
Bed. Epic day of cooking begins in five hours.
Karaoke night in Utah.
Night three in Dinosaur, Utah. Back from epic camping adventure. We wanted to see what sort of tasty grub this town had to offer. We had the choice of about two restaurants. We went with logic and naturally chose the Dinosaur Cafe.
I feel it’s necessary to restate how epic the clouds are here. Upon our arrival at the cafe I witnessed glowing rain for the first and likely only time in my life. Glowing!
The cafe was a dive and it appeared to be devoid of any staff when we first arrived. For a minute I was unsure if there was some unsaid method of self-service that none of the regulars were telling us about. Maybe they just wanted to relish in our confusion just a little longer. We finally found the one waitress though. I had an insanely good BBQ sandwich. After our meal, we continued to sit awkwardly for about a half-hour until the waitress finally informed us that we pay at the bar. Now we know for next time.
And then we hit the bar. I say bar singular because there is ONE. I forget the name of it… something saloon. It was karaoke night.
You know how some bars attempt to embody a country-western theme? This bar epitomized everything you could envision a country saloon to be. And it was all real. Totally legit. Old paintings of naked girls in cowboy hats, antiques randomly strewn about the wall, lots of animal heads and horns hanging, and even saloon doors to get to the bathrooms. Country as country can be.
Song material of choice? Backstreet Boys. Spice Girls. It was incredible.
We spent the night drinking more beer that doesn’t work, teaching the bartender fun shot recipes, and watching Utah folk dance to Nelly and Kid Rock between karaoke rounds. This actually sparked my intense desire to have a Bowebirds/Megafaun/WellDoneMedia dance party as soon as possible. Basically the same thing that regularly happens in Raleigh, just in a different setting than the Jackpot. I’ll be sure let you know how that goes once it happens.
I will miss this crazy crazy state of Utah.
dinosaurland, utah.
well thats nearly the actual name of the place. and if you look around you can see quite a few different giant sized dinosaurs. like pink dinosaurs with big eyelashes. i think i saw that one on jurassic park III last night.
liz had a good plan for the night. considering we had a 3 hour drive from salt lake city back to dinosaurland and the plan called for more driving on top of that, yeah it was going to have to be night plans. but good plans they were indeed: camping in echo park. 
“yeah it takes about 2 hours to get there because the last 13 miles are on a winding dirt road that you can’t drive through if its been raining.”
yikes. no wait, fun!
and liz was right. we drive 10 miles into the park on a real road with pavement and two lanes and stop signs and other normal things you see on roads. then we see a sign for echo park and something that reminds me of a hiking trail. the sign told us this trail will end with echo park after 13 miles. a beautiful drive followed. it felt like we were driving into the crand canyon. we could see for miles and everything was beautiful. i had never seen what a rainstorm looked like 20 miles away, we did from up here.
we finally made it down into the canyon and could see echo park and steamboat rock and a huge deer 15 feet from our campsite. we were definitely in nature. you could taste it with every breath. we settled in for a long night of guitar playing, smores and star gazing. wow i miss this place.
how big do you think that cliff is?
i dunno maybe 200 feet. 30o MAYBE.
[liz runs down to the base of the cliff, see photo]
hmm… thats at least more bigger.
gourmet smores! yum.
Dinosaur Camp.
With Salt Lake checked off on our to-do list, we decide to switch directions and head back eastward for a short hiatus in Dinosaur National Monument. I mean, how often do you get the chance to hang out in Dinosaur? Who could say no to that?
Liz had lots of fun planned for us. Our first objective was camping in Echo Park, which was about an hour and a half of driving through the monument, the last half-hour covering only about a mile’s distance through ridiculous terrain. I’m glad the car survived.
We drank wine and legitimate Ukrainian absinthe, read horoscopes, applied fake tattoos, ate lots of bread and hummus and avocados, cooked gourmet s’mores and listened to Liz serenade us on her guitar til the wee hours of the morning.
We all awoke early the next morning to the sun glaring down on the canyon, forming a nice atmospheric hot-pocket enclosing our campsite. We did some morning exploring until it was too hot to continue, then hopped back in the Dinosaur-mobile and trekked back to home base on the other side of the monument.
COW!
Colorado/Utah driving.
These states are particularly fun to look at. Nine hour drives aren’t so bad when the topography changes drastically every 30 minutes.
Utah’s topography was particularly epic. We soon found ourselves in the region of Dinosaur. Dinosaur functions as both a city in Colorado and a giant national monument that extends between Colorado and Utah. It is also a glorious haven for dinosaur statues. We picked up our friend Liz and continued on to Salt Lake to catch the end of the Bowebirds‘ set at Kilby Court, the best backyard venue ever.
Other notable fact about Utah: The beer doesn’t work. You can also get in big legal trouble if you are caught with liquor that was not purchased in the state of Utah. You also have to purchase wine at the one state liquor store allotted per city.
But yeah, other than those few alcohol-related differences, Utah is fabulous.
the denver
wow. another 9 hour drive. this makes a full day of driving over just three trips: raleigh –> indianapolis (10 hours+). chicago –> omaha(8 hours+). lawrence –> denver(9 hours). yikes. but if you think about it we did less sleeping than driving during those days. i guess thats a plus…
first thing we met up with nick, a recently relocated raleigh-er, who seems to be enjoying denver and all 100, or so, skate parks within an hour of the city. so much so that he messed up his shoulder about a month ago doing some jumps. he was doing some awesome trick and busted, but don’t judge him by that one fall. he’s pretty awesome and has enough guts to take chances on the bike and in life, a good man to be around.
we plotted about riding around the city the next day, yay, which we did. denver is a pretty awesome city and by bike its really awesome. felt like a normal big city downtown but less cars. very few cars actually and lots of bikes. lots and lots of bikes. nick told me the last city bike ride brought in over 700 people. sounds like a dream come true for him. and me too. one of the great things about raleigh is that i dont have to drive anywhere mainly because all i need in raleigh is pretty close together. but denver is huge and i feel like i can get around to most places on a bike. we stopped by the art museum and the convention center to see some of the public art. there was a huge blue bear at the convention center looking in the windows and some giant bulls outside the art museum. we climbed the bulls.
matt slaby, a fellow member of luceo images (and now we have a twitter account: luceo ), was kind enough to put us up for a couple nights. the day we rolled in to town he was out at some LARPing or live action role playing. check out his blog for some of the photos. it looked pretty awesome. when we got to his house we were a tired from the drive and drank some of slaby’s homemade wine, which was very good, and hung out playing him in some chess. i beat him pretty good a few times and then challenged him to a game where i dont get to see the board ust hear the moves. i would have beaten him…
the megafaun/bowerbirds show was great. one of the highlights of the night was after the music with phil from megafaun. we were doing some fun stuff for a video i’m making. he showed me a levitating hat trick then did some slow motion dancing. more on this later though.
then more wine at slaby’s. bed.
DENVER!
After waking up from an incredible night in Lawrence, Kansas, we said our goodbyes to our gracious hosts of Ample Branches and set off on our 9-hour trek to Denver.
Our directions were simple enough: take two turns, drive 500 miles, take another turn, and you’re in Denver.
Somehow I managed to take ZERO photos from the drive… but I think that was largely due to the fact that we were driving through the desolate expanse of Kansas and eastern Colorado.
It was dark and rainy by the time we arrived, but the city still looked glorious. Our first stop was a coffee shop to do some work and meet up with our beloved friend Nick, who recently moved to Denver from our Raleigh homeland. He was happy and looked great, other than the shoulder he managed to recently dislocate from his body which sort of leaves his right arm dangling. He enjoyed showing it to us repetitively as we drank our coffee.
We then headed to our temporary Colorado shelter, the home of the honorable Matt Slaby. Slaby is a Nordic viking who owns a beautiful house in the hills of Denver. He makes good photos and good wine. He has two cats, both affectionately named “Cat.” He currently has a fish bone stuck in his tonsil. He is also part-owner of Luceo Images, Tim’s photo collective.
We spent night one exploring Slaby’s basement, drinking Slaby’s homemade wine, playing Slaby’s guitars and piano, and harassing Slaby’s cats. A good night at Slaby’s indeed.
Day 2. Tim and Nick went to ride bikes around town, while I caught up on some work I needed to complete for grad school. I ate my first enjoyable salmon dinner of all time at a little Japanese dive, then headed to the venue in which we were supposed to meet up with Bowerbirds & Megafaun.
Well. Tonight’s show presented some complications.
1) Apparently this is some sort of music festival, which apparently justifies a $25.00 ticket price.
2) None of the bands were allowed a guest list.
3) Tim managed to sneak in while helping the Bowerbirds load, and found an extra arm band allowing him unlimited access. I did not.
So I decided that this show I would do without. $25.00 for a show that we have already seen in four states is a little out of my budget, as much as I would have loved to see then again. In addition, Tim was already in, so at least one of us could be collecting material for the blog.
So I went to drink apricot beer with Slaby on a patio elsewhere, where we discussed and exchanged our views on networking and marketing and overzealous wine descriptions.
I headed back to the venue once the show was over to hang out with the folks I had missed. We considered going out and finding some adventure with everyone, but we were a bit tired and wanted to save some money. So we all headed back to Slaby’s where we ended up drinking homemade strawberry wine and playing cards until 2 AM anyway.
Day 3. We woke up late, had one last epic battle with Slaby and his oversized weaponry, and headed on our way. Next stop: Utah.
Omaha + Megafaun + Bowerbirds + Awesome
omaha is pretty awesome. got to see the bowerbirds and megafaun for the first time on this trip. i got some more to say about omaha but we just got to lawrence, kansas and megafaun is playing soon. so ill have to get back to you on some thoughts. above are my favorites from the other night.
Hp explores Omaha.
Greetings from Omaha!
This was the first time we actually had a deadline to be in a specific city. We knew that no matter where we ended up in the country prior to this, we needed to be in Omaha by the 22nd, as our friends Bowerbirds and Megafaun, two incredible bands based out of our hometown of Raleigh, were playing a show that night. No traffic jams this time… and we actually made it into town a day early!
This left me the entire following day to explore downtown before the show. The area where I spent most of my time could be compared to Raleigh’s warehouse district or downtown Durham… lots of old warehouses and otherwise giant brick buildings that had been renovated but still retained their integrity. The streets were made of brick and most of the streets had giant wooden awnings installed over the sidewalks with flowers planted on top. Way fun. The weather was a little crumby, but still good enough to snap a few shots.
I stumbled upon a random thrifty antique shop in the midst of my exploring… and was greeted twice by a young hipster lady who seemed too inebriated to realize she had started a conversation with me five minutes prior. I carried on the second conversation as if the first never happened. I’m not sure if she ever realized it. Perhaps that’s for the best.
I met back up with Tim and Alyssa, our lovely Omaha host, and we spent some time drinking coffee and browsing record shops (Saddle Creek Records, founded by Conor Oberst, is based out of Omaha… so you can get a lot of their tunes for cheap here).
Next stop: Meeting up with Bowerbirds & Megafaun. They were playing at the Slowdown, the venue owned by Saddle Creek. The venue was nice… very aethetically pleasing and quiet and completely devoid of smoke or grime. Nice change.
The show was great, which shouldn’t surprise anyone, and the show was well-received. We stayed for a bit to catch up with all of them post-showtime, but we were all so exhausted from our own individual tours that we said our goodbyes early and promised to catch up in Denver, when we all reunite.
Omaha day 2 consisted mostly of pizza, beer, and mustaches. Just you wait and see.
WEEK ONE RECAP!
Yesterday officially started week 2 of our cross-country phototour. We thought now would be a good time to recap all of the fun things that happened this week.
Here’s a short photo recap:
Also:
On Friday, we held a contest via Twitter, where anyone who suggested us for #FollowFriday was entered to win a special prize. We created a fun stop-motion to determine the winners.
Welldonetour.com Friday Postcard Giveaway from welldonemedia on Vimeo.
The lucky winners were….. Mary Ellis and Donald Jones! Hooray!
Also:
Our friends at OkayGreat.com created an epic contest of sorts involving us as well. We are basically at the mercy of their voicemail system. Our project for this week: 6 Generations of Mustaches. Head to OkayGreat for more info.
Also:
Here’s the press we received this week… it’s so great to have this kind of support in the Triangle. Thanks to everyone who mentioned us!
GoGoRaleigh: Well Done Media hits the road
30Threads: Raleigh couple to blog about travels across the country
NorthHillsBuzz Copies & Pastes my email (whatever works)
30Threads: Trip delay causes local photographers to take break for Locopops
OkayGreat: First project! First prize!
New Raleigh’s Well Done Media Photocolumn!
Lastly, we want to give a giant THANK YOU to all of our contributors who helped make tour week 1 possible:
Michael Casey
Peter Jurich
Cuthrell Consulting
Thomas Rowe
Annette Stone
Anne Jessup
Barry Barrington
Nellie Lytvinenko
Alicia Conway
Tara Jafari
Charles Gillikin
Ali Pearson
Sal Consigliaro
Chad Evans
Brian Griffin
Emily Hester
Kelly Hubbard
Baxter Miller
Christian Staples
Kate Sykes
Meghan Lassiter
Cheryl & Louis Hahn
Angus Gorberg
Adam Schoeller
DJ Larry
If you dig what we’re doing, click the button below to donate or click here for more info on how to contribute to/advertise with/hire us.
tim’s day 2 in chicago…
Hi! Up until now I’ve been shooting most of the photos and Helena has been doing most of the writing. But now we both will be writing and photoing. Watch for the author of each post to see who did what.
day 2 in chicago…
I woke up with a big day ahead of me. We made it to our first really big city, Chi-city, and there was so much on my list: hang with Common, go see Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, Oprah. Well, I did listen to Common and sing his music all day while wondering.
Ok the actual list: Good Breakfast. A quick walk to the cornerstone cafe and a smiley waitress. “Ivana. Its sounds like I wanna. Everyone starts to say ‘I-want-a…’ and I say ‘Yes?’” The turkey avocado was yums. Helena got a salmon omelet so big I called it a football. She ate the entire thing.
Next stop Ukrainian Village to see my old friend Elif. Considering I’m Ukrainian, I’d have to say she lives in the best area of Chicago. So I bought me a one day “Fun Pass” from a check-it-to-cash corner store which upped the days cool points by 6. No maybe 10. I made my way down Western to Elif’s apartment for a quick hello before she went off to work. Made some photos with her wonderful window light before she started to break dance on top of her couch. Crazy. We then talked about her brand new [to her] giant van that she bought the day before. Then she posed with the vehicle’s title.
Wandering came next. I’m a big fan of street photography and all the random findings around a big city. I took the blue line down to the loop and started walking. Final destination at the Bean. I really do miss street photography.
After hanging out around the Bean for a while my tired legs needed a rest. I met up with Helena and we sat in Millennium Park for one of their Monday concerts. Wonderful music. Strings and beat-boxing. Meanwhile I find a photo of the rosebuds show at jackpot. Then immediately said crap and thought “would have been worth it to drive 15 hours to see them.”
rest time. power nap.
Elif finished work around 11 p.m. and we go to a bar in Ukrainian Village, The Bottleneck. Helena, Elif and I buy the Monday special, PB & J (PBR and a shot of Jim Beam. not in the same drink), look at the crazy baby doll heads on the wall and realize we missed the music completely. ha. We walk to another bar to meet up with Angus and Adam. Our progress gets halted by a very rude parking job. The SUV was blatantly in the crosswalk. So Elif keeps walking and proceeds over the SUV. “i mean it was the second of two illegally parked cars and it was entirely in the crosswalk,” she said explaining the simple cause and effect.
This new bar had more of a Ukrainian feel. The bartender spoke broken english and felt like an aunt of mine.
Taxi.
Bed…
Chi-City v.2
Angus insisted that we start off our second day in Chicago with a proper meal. So we took a quick walk to the Cornerstone Cafe, a cute little spot nestled in the middle of a gargantuan 5-way intersection. I somehow championed a smoked salmon omelette the size of a football. I was comatose by the time I got back to the abode.
Tim and I split ways for the afternoon, and I wandered around with Angus and Adam until evening, when we all met back up at the bean. Oh, that bean. It really is more marvelous than I could have ever imagined.
We said our goodbyes to Adam and Angus for the evening so we could get some shooting done. We quickly found ourselves distracted by really nice grass in the park, sandwiches, and a free concert at the pavilion at Millennium Park. Cellos, violins, MacBooks, and beatboxing. The music was absolutely wonderful and I found myself unable to really function other than laying on the grass and letting all of this soak in. People actually live in this place. This type of afternoon is normal and accessible for them. They can do this whenever they want (minus the winter months). I’m still processing it.
So yeah, I’m completely enamored with Chicago. Glad that’s settled. Now moving on in hopes of falling in love with the next city.
Indianapolis, Target, Chicago.
Our second day in Indianapolis was rather uneventful. This is not necessarily a bad thing.
We spent our afternoon in a downtown coffee shop putting together giant to-do lists, attempting to carry out snippets of said to-do lists, and putting together a stop-motion video to announce the winners of our Postcard Friday contest. It turned out pretty neat. You should watch it.
Next stop was Carmel, IN. It’s a little burb about 30 minutes north of downtown. We took a slight detour to drive by Helena’s childhood home on the way.
Our night in Carmel consisted mainly of spending time with the Hahns, eating crepes, petting dogs, researching, clipping, compiling data, writing, editing, emailing, calling, pitching, and watching X-Men 2. A low-key, generally productive night to prepare us for our trek to Chicago.
The drive to Chicago was… scenic. We were kindly warned by the state of Illinois that upcoming road work would have us in traffic that would make our remaining 80 mile drive take approximately three hours. So we took a little detour through… well we’re not really sure. But it got us to Chicago. We stopped at Target on the way, because Helena had a $25 gift card. We felt it was appropriate to spend it on things that would be necessary for tour, such as:
- Animal crackers
- Jolly Rancher gummies
- Four packs of grow capsules (in assorted shapes including aquatic animals, farm animals, and dinosaurs)
- Phase 10 deck
- Lisa Frank sticker set.
All of these will be put to use very soon.
After some more driving and about 90 wrong turns (Helena was driving), we made it to Chicago.
First stop: Sultan’s Market. Tim had been ranting about this place the entire way into the city. Apparently they have the best falafel sandwiches on the planet.
And that they did. Two spicy falafel sandwiches stuffed with cucumber + yogurt + hummus + spicy spice with curry rice to top it off. Good way to start the night.
We spent the next few hours wandering the streets of Wicker Park, and eventually found ourselves in a bar called the Crocodile, that happened to be serving $4 Blue Moon, $4 Dewars, and $4 Jim Beam, all of which comes with FREE PIZZA. We were sold. We ate more food and drank more drinks and wrote more obscenely long to-do lists. Nothing can take us completely away from all of our tour work… not even bourbon and beer and free pizza.
Around midnight, we headed to friend and gracious host Angus’ house, aka “The Whiskey Chest,” for some hangtime. We had full intentions of going out and exploring the city, but next thing I know, we look at the clock and it’s 3:15. I think it’s time to rest.
Next up: Chicago day 2.
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