The World According To Chris Brewer

We spent a good full day in the Portland metro area once again. We spent a good portion of the morning and afternoon at the Oregon Zoo, visiting all the exhibits and sharing our love for each other and the animalian world. Which brings me to Memorable Moment of the Trip #4.

We were very hungry and needed food, so we walked down to the Africa section of the zoo, past the elephants, past the tigers, and into the AfriCafe — sort of like a McDonald’s smack dab in the middle of the zoo. There were a bunch of people in line ahead of us (sign #1 that our AfriCafe experience was going to suck), and when we got to the counter five minutes later, we saw nothing but young high school kids on summer break running the dining establishment (that was sign #2 that we were in hell). Eventually we order a couple burgers, some fries and a drink between us. The girl didn’t know how to run the credit/debit card machine (sign #3) so I stood there while Aftan went and got some Coca-Cola and Idiot Girl called the manager over. After that 10-minute debacle was complete, she tells us that it’s going to be a long wait for our food, maybe about 30 minutes (sign #4, and it’s getting really bad…) or longer. We said okay and went to go wait…and while we did, we overhear conversations between other pissed-off customers and the managerial staff asking why they had waited 45 minutes and received no food (sign #5). The kid behind the counter proceeds to tell them that only one fryer is operational and there is a huge backlog of food orders waiting to be completed (sign #6).

So we wait about another five minutes, and we notice a couple of staff members going on lunch break….with french fries on their tray (sign #7, and the ultimate sign that we HAD to get out of there). Aftan asked a clueless young girl why the people were getting to go on lunch break with their own fried food while customers have been waiting 45 minutes for theirs. To make a long story short, she had an angry exchange with Clueless Girl while I had one with Young Manager, almost demanding that I get a refund AND free food. Then Afty realized it wasn’t worth our wasted time, so we got the refund and left.

We could have used the Israeli military’s help. I’d love to see the AfriCafe burned down soon. In fact, I’d laugh and go back to the zoo just so I could play in the ashes.

Anyway, on to more highlights of the day…we rode MAX into downtown and stopped at Lloyd Center, where we peeked into a few stores to kill some time before Aftan’s math class. I went to the Disney store and bought Afty a stuffed animal version of Thumper from Bambi (which, in fact, she is cuddled next to peacefully sleeping right now). We rode MAX back into the Washington Park station, which just so happens to be the deepest subway station in North America. No kidding. An elevator took us down 265 feet to a nice little tunnel where the trains met us. It was neat.

Later, Aftan and Trina went to math class while I pulled my hair out over my site being down most of the day. Turns out DreamHost, my hosting company, had one of their servers crash and render most of their customers’ sites inoperable. It was so bad that some people lost service for 72 hours…and people were frantically looking for any sort of word as to what was happening, so much so that “DreamHost” was one of the Top 10 search terms on Technorati.com. Just look at this and you’ll see how many people suffered web outages because of DreamHost’s folks living in DreamLand and not paying a good amount of attention to their servers. I would not want to be working for DreamHost right now and I can bet they will lose a significant amount of business over this issue.

Anyway, math class ended and we came home, and watched Back to the Future. And here I am now, typing to you.

More photos are up, which makes 331 photos that Afty and I have uploaded to the Internet for this trip. Check them out, it’s free and for your enjoyment.

See you tomorrow.