The guide was holding my rapt attention describing the horrific deportment of Japanese-Americans to internment camps during WWII. It was a clear, beautiful, warm day in Portland. We were standing in the Japanese-American Historical Plaza, gazing at a memorial sculpture. Happy crowds of people were walking, touring, running up and down the riverwalk, soaking up sunshine that is purportedly so rare in these parts (I'm starting to believe it's an Oregonian conspiracy to avoid an influx of thermophilic Californians.) Suddenly, Blue Sugar Poet turns to me with a wickedly lopsided grin. She points to a nearby spot. "Doesn't that look like someone puked over there?" Just inches from the base of the sculpture was a grotesquely dried-out spewage spot; all our idyllic surroundings, and this is what my friend picks up on. "A woman after my own morbid heart," I think to myself. An hour later, these sentiments are further substantiated as she gleefully tears into the voodoo donut, jelly guts dripping off her chin. We were fortunate enough to have a tour guide that could sneak in the back door to snag one of these donuts. At the Voodoo donut shop, regardless of time or weather, patrons line up around the block for donuts topped with fruit-loops, maple bars topped with bacon, donuts on 'roids (the Tex-Ass donut), and the ODB (if you have to ask, just go check it out). Once inside the surprisingly small store, you can pass part of the wait time reading newspaper articles posted on the wall above small glass counters of toy skulls and skeletons. These are articles on unusual deaths and the mysterious circumstances surrounding them. By the time you reach the counter, you don't find the pastry selection quite so bizarre.

Other highlights of this one-day trip: visiting the chinese gardens, touring the Shanghai tunnels (not as scandalous as I'd expected, but other interesting factoids: the Willamette River is so polluted that over 50% of juvenile fish along some stretches are deformed, bars used to have urinal troughs along the base of the barstools - no pesky trips to the head between emptying and replenishing the male bladder - and the Made in Portland sign may be revamped (thanks, U of O). After the tour, BSP and I went to the Japanese gardens - I've been to two other J. Gardens in the last month, and saying that Portland leaves them in the dust is as worthy an understatement as saying Tim Twietmeyer would leave me in the dust if I ever ran Western States. All in all, a day well spent.