Thursday Lunch

US26 Eastbound inside Vista Ridge Tunnel
Notice the center lane is relatively clear

I drove into Portland today for lunch. It takes about half an hour to get there, 20 minutes of highway cruising and ten minutes of crawling across the parking lot that is downtown Portland. The freeway is smooth sailing from Hillsboro until we get to the top of the West Hills at Sylvan and then everything comes to a stop for a moment before we begin crawling down the hill into downtown. Highway 26 at this point is three lanes. The leftmost lane is destined for I-405 Northbound and the right lane is headed for I-405 South. These two lanes are packed and they will crawl all the way down the hill. The center lane goes into downtown proper and it would flow smoothly except, one, it's scary flying by all these cars that are just sitting there knowing that any one of them could, at any time, get fed up with crawling and pull into the center lane, and two, there are always a couple of yahoos who think they can cheat and wait until the last minute to cut into line. Of course, they may not always be yahoos, this might be their first time on this road and aren't aware of the protocol. Usually there is a point to these stories, but if there is one I've forgotten it, or maybe I just wanted to share a bit my life.

Leaky Roof Gastro Pub

We had lunch at the Leaky Roof Gastro Pub, nice quiet corner bar with free on-street parking. Nothing fancy, cheeseburgers and fries, though the standard cheeseburger comes with two beefy patties.

Porsche Rally Car - Note the winch on the front

Across the street we saw this bright yellow race car so after lunch we wandered over to take a look. Looks very serious with big mud / snow tires. 

Grand Prix Motors

It was parked in front of Grand Prix Motors. We went in and looked around, there were acres of painted and polished sheet metal on maybe two dozen of the shiniest cars in the world. It was just mind boggling. 

Ford Pickup with Tremor Package

Looking on their website they seem to specialize in used Porsches, but what's this? They have a Ford? What kind of Ford? A pickup? Oh, it's got the Tremor Package, whatever that it is. I'm afraid to ask.