The stampede is a big rodeo, kind of a cross between Melbourne Show and Oktoberfest with cowboy hats. There are show rides and games, music and bars, an acrobatics circus, evening stage shows and of course there's the rodeo but we didn't actually see much of that.
Everyone dresses the bit too, so we donned our flannel, got ourselves some hats and ended up in Nashville North, a giant tent with bars and a big stage, to drink rum and dance to country music.
Haley came to meet Robina and I after she'd finished work and rocked up with Sarah, an Aussie girl we met randomly met a few weeks before. Sarah was travelling around Canada, had been on the road by herself for months and is still travelling now! We met Sarah on our road trip when we were in a little Mexican restaurant for dinner, she was sitting near us, overhead the familiar accents and the rest is history :)
The next night we went to the last night finale show, we saw chuckwagon racing, tight-rope walkers, guys playing drums while being flown above the crowd on lines, fireworks and lots of singing and dancing by Canadian children dressed in bright colours.
The next day I said goodbye and flew to San Jose (Robina was heading to Hawaii the next day) where I was spending three days attending an IoT conference for work.
IoT means Internet of Things, it's all about integrating and smartening up things like controlling home security from your phone, your fridge telling you when you're out of milk or jackets for cyclists with led lighting on the back that hooks up to your google maps so the jacket can flash arrows on your back telling cars behind you which way you're about to turn. Healthcare is also a really big area for IoT too.
It's an area that I don't know much about but sounds exciting, I thought the conference would be fun so was disappointed when a lot of the conference turned out to be boring as shit.
The worst bit was one of the main speakers. He was talked up as being an amazing public speaker and a real guru around IoT and future application and innovation. He began his talk with a couple of bad jokes about his mother in law, followed it with another shit joke about his wife then showed a youtube video of the starting credits for the 70's show The Six Million Dollar Man. So disappointing.
After San Jose I flew to Portland where I stayed a few days with EJ, another excellent person who I had met travelling (this time Iceland a few years ago) who was willing to put me up for a few days and show me around.
The first night EJ took me to his local - Joe's Cellar, a dingy bar just down the road from his place with no windows, or as EJ likes to call them 'judgement panels' - totally a 'Danger' bar.
So we're having a quiet beer when this guy stops at our table, then asks if he can sit down with us. Being polite we were like yeah sure, so the guy sits himself down and then starts telling us about how much he loves religion, asks if we're religious and then tells us how he saw Jesus. Yep, that's right, he saw Jesus. We asked where and what Jesus was doing. He said he saw him running past out of the corner of his eye. Yep, Jesus is back, running around Portland in people's peripheral vision. We finished our beers and made our excuses.
Funnily enough, last time I met EJ we also had a fellow of dubious mental stability want to make friends, we're obviously just too friendly looking for our own good.
Portland is lovely, it's the first US city I've found that feels liveable. I went shopping along quiet tree-lined streets, wandered through markets and parks on the river and checked out the breweries, bars and bookshops.
EJ gave me a tour of the area around Portland, we visited waterfalls and went to Astoria where we saw the house and the beach from the Goonies and watched EJ's puppy Myles go crazy on the beach.
Next episode we're headed into the wilderness of the famed Yellowstone National Park.
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