Well, we're under the awning which is close to where we started here in Portland.
Cracker and I first found the awning while exploring shortly after touching down here in Portland. We had no where to go until we found R2D2, tent city, and they were full. We had seen some people sleeping here at the awning earlier, and the guy on security at tent city advised us to go there. So off we went, and broke out our expensive feather down comforter right on the streets of downtown Portland. Now we're sitting here again, winding down, pullin' some nice resin outta the pipe and smokin'. We'reprayin' hard that everything goes alright tomorrow, since it's our last day in Portland. We're ready to get warm, get dry and come up with a game plan for the next trip. Sponsorship is flitting through our minds as we realize just how desperately we want to do this.
We love the suspense of living on the edge with the despondent and crazy. It's not so much that we enjoy being homeless, it's just a life-changing experience to go through as an adult. It's even more of an experience doing it from our angle. We have experiences with homelessness, but we have a home and for once can live pretty comfortably. Why not do something productive with that life? We're still young, and we have the means to travel the U.S. and let's face it, the tourist traps really aren't as fascinating.
It's not all Smiley faces in this life either. Danger is very real, and in the city it's very scary. We come from an area where you square up face-to-face out in the yard. In the city, they fight with guns and knives. Pickpockets roam on bikes (we saw one last night), drunks are stupid and loud, and the things that go bump in the night are everywhere. You really can't judge a book by it's cover, especially in big cities like Portland, Dallas, Washington D.C. and others.
We see drug addicts every day, had a conversation down by the waterfront with a guy tweaking on Meth. We saw a heroin addict in O'Bryant Square who absolutely out of his mind. He was also pulling a needle out of his arm and skin popping in the park. Cracker's talkin' to a kid now who's been on Meth. We see addicts, completely whacked and slap-assed drunk, on a daily basis. We see scary cases of running across people who are crazy AND high, and with those types I'm tellin' you that they'll stab you and walk away. Laughing. You also see very sad types. Addicts who are so far gone, you can only feel pity for them. We have a very good friend like that, and so we always feel strongly for people like that. Shit, we feel for all of the mentally ill, chronically homeless, hopelessly addicted and just about anyone feeling shunned by society.
Heroin is a really big thing here. Everyone either talks about using it, or talks about someone using it. There are several needle exchanges available to addicts in the city. The area in front of Greyhound (behind the day center) is called "Crack Alley". They say all of Chinatown is crack (big surprise, eh?) And weed isn't too hard to find. There's really no reason for Marijuana to hide due to the lax attitude about it. Everyone who smokes is smoking it openly, and everyone who doesn't smoke doesn't care. Back in Lex, the big things are Meth and pills. Drug addiction is a problem everywhere, but on these streets it's a lot of hard drugs by hard abusers.
Okay guys, we're out. Gonna go check into tent city for the night. <3
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