The Oregon Trip: The Great Ruse of 2011

It all started last Monday. I was sitting at work bullshitting with Kyle, the fellow Michigan Grad who I had help recruit. We had just gone to the Washington-Cal game the weekend before and had been talking about other games we wanted to go to. We both agreed that an Oregon Ducks game was near the top of our list and decided to take a look at their schedule. With other commitments looming in the weeks ahead we realized the our only opportunity would be the game that was coming up on Thursday. We looked at each other and asked "Can we really do this?" and then scrambled to open our Outlook calendars. With a little rescheduling we had cleared off Thursday afternoon and Friday and then told our boss what we were planning.

When we left work on Thursday morning we really had no concrete plans. We had lined up tickets but that was about it. We had a tent and a few sleeping bags, but much less in the way of arraignments. We drove all afternoon, stopping near Portland for Wendy's and filling our cooler with ice and beer. We rolled into Eugene and parked our car near the campus. We got out, shotgunned a beer, put 12 more in a plastic bag and walked towards campus. At Oregon, all of the campus is on the South Side of the Willamette river and the stadium is on the other side surrounded by large fields of tailgaters. Students walk along a short trail before taking a bend in the trail and seeing this:

We sat with a bunch of alumni and told them how we always wanted to go to a game here, and how we remember Oregon coming into Ann Arbor in 2007 and giving us a whipping behind the legs of Dennis Dixon. They were pretty good guys and we had some fun with the people around us. It may have helped that we had a couple of beers in the ol' belly by this point. They say it never rains at Autzen but it sure seemed to be that night. There are two interesting notes that are stuck in my mind from Autzen. 1) There is a ridiculous amount of corporate advertising in the stadium. Even the DuckVision has ads on it all the time. 2) They pumped up the crowd before the game with a montage set to the song Lightning Crashes by Live. It's a song about dead babies.

The view from our seats

The game was pretty good in the first half with Cal actually winning at halftime. But in the second half the Ducks came out ready to play. A few times the crowd got really loud and I could understand why Lloyd Carr called Autzen the loudest stadium he's ever coached in. For only 60,000 people they sure can make some noise. Overall the game experience at Autzen was generally positive and exciting.

After the game Kyle and I were hungry and decided to get some burritos. Without any alternatives we decided to drive out of town and sleep at a campground for the night. On the way there I ran over a possum in the Camaro.

The next morning we woke up and packed our things while discussing our plan for the day. We did consider the fact that we were halfway to San Francisco, and that we had Monday off work for Columbus Day so it was in the realm of possibility. But eventually we set out for Corvallis to eat breakfast and see what there would be to do in Oregon. We walked around the campus of Oregon State in Corvallis and even made a friend who informed us that Delta Upsilon was basically the "Frattiest Frat on campus". He also asked if we "wanted to party". It was only 11:30 in the morning, and at that moment be both dearly missed college.

Before leaving town we decided to stop by Reser Stadium. We walked right in and had ourselves a look around. We brought some adult beverages with us and decided why not shutgun a beer on the field.

Note all the advertising

After Oregon State we continued our tour of Oregon by heading towards the coast. We made it just in time to go on the tour of the Rogue Brewery in Newport. I've always liked breweries and enjoyed tours, but I found Rogue to be a little unique. Their only brewery and entire world headquarters is located inside of an old boat dry-storage shed, which is sitting in the parking lot of a marina. There is no lobby and you walk right into the fermentation tanks. It looked like a mexican meth lab built overnight in some shabby building. But boy is their beer tasty. After the tour we decided to head up the coast and towards Portland.

Me outside the Rogue Brewery on the Oregon Coast

This is where the story gets good.

Kyle had never been to Portland, and I absolutely love Portland so I wanted to give him a good taste of the city and to go out and get hammered. Our only problem was that we had no accommodations and wouldn't be able to drive to a campsite. That's when we came up with our greatest plan to date. The Occupy Wall Street protests had spread nationwide and in every major city there were groups camped out downtown. All we needed to do was to infiltrate the Occupy Portland movement and fake our way to free camping right by some of the best bars.

We found the park that they were occupying and we set up our tent in one of the last free patches of grass. On the drive into Portland we spent most of our time discussing how utterly stupid the protests were and created back stories for ourselves. When we introduced ourselves to our tent neighbors we said we worked for a small metals company in Seattle that supplied Boeing. We figured that telling the Anti-Goverment protesters that we worked for the Government may be a bad idea. The first protester we met welcomed us to the start of the "next great american revolution". I agreed, trying to keep the sarcasm from dripping into my words.

Portland is a city that in known for it's free speech laws, interesting characters (hippies and weirdo), and transients. It's the characters that give the city it's style and one of the things I like best about it. Well, many of the people that joined the occupy Portland movement look, dress and talk a whole lot different than the clean-cut, north-face wearing, iPhone 4 owning duo that are Kyle and Brian. But support is support, so we were welcomed freely.

After we setup our tent, word spread around that there would be a general assembly in 10 minutes. Of course we went, there could be useful information regarding the availability of "shit-buckets" for bodily needs. The first 20 minutes was spent going over the hand signals that we would be using to communicate and gain consensus. For an unorganized, leaderless protest there sure were a lot of sub-committees, action items and agenda topics. Great for a group who wants to end bureaucratic practices. The biggest issue facing the Occupy Portland movement seemed to be who got to be in charge of the Occupy Portland movement. After a while of waiting to get to the "shit-bucket" agenda item, I decided to break away and become the leader of the Occupy Chipotle's Bathroom Movement. It was an overwhelming success.

After that Kyle and I decided to hit some of the best bars in Portland. We started at the Barcade, where I proceeded to spank him up and down the field in Madden 99. Then over to the Thirsty Lion where the U-M Alumni Association meets to watch the games. We talked about sticking around Portland to watch the Michigan game the next day but then realized it was a 4pm game. We ended the night checking out some of Portland's finer entertainment and grabbing some Street Cart food which Portland is famous for.

We wandered back to camp pretty drunk and ready to prod the revolution. I decided to jump in with both feet and gauge the sentiments of the crowd. It was 2AM and the camp was arush with activity. The camp library was still open, and the chefs has a pretty tasty hobo stew cooked up. Kyle wandered off to bed while I argued for the need to end corn-subsidies. The entire thing cracked me up, but I managed to keep a pretty straight face. After talking to some people about my idea to fix the trade deficit a few of the protesters said that I should start a camp newspaper. I started to consider the thought on my way back to the tent before I realized how ridiculous it was.

When we woke up the next morning we were hungover and realized that our ruse had worked. We had actually faked joined a nationwide protest so we could go out and get completely blitzed and then camp in a city park for free. We got out of our tent and realized that the park had been fenced in. The Portland Marathon was that morning fences had been erected around the park. We quickly and quietly packed up our tent and went to leave. On the way out I managed to get a picture of the camp.

The camp. You can see the fences around the park.

We drove back to Seattle and completed our 3-day, 700 mile tour of Oregon. When we got back we went to the bar despite terrible hangovers and watch Michigan come back to beat Northwestern. The best part of the trip was that we never had a real plan worked out, yet everything seemed to work out. We flew by the seat of our pants, never knowing what lay ahead. Now when our clearances are up for renewal we'll have a pretty funny story to tell the investigating agent when they ask if we've ever protested against the government.