Wednesday, August 24, 2016

Work Travel: Portland

You may recall in my May blog entry that I accepted an additional job responsibility at IBM that now requires me to travel quarterly for work.  Last month, they sent me to Portland, OR, a city I've been wanting to see for a while now.
I arrived on a Saturday evening to get some extra time to see the city and hang out with my friend Chapin who lives in Hillsboro.  On Sunday we played some disc golf and got drinks at a nearby Pokemon stop - err at local bar for Sasquatch Brewing Co.
On Monday I had to be up for an all-day conference at the Marriott in downtown Portland.  Those are always long days but they definitely fed us well...a little too well.  There was a buffet breakfast at 8am, buffet lunch at 12pm, and buffet snacks and desserts at 3pm, lol.  Later that night, I met up with Chapin again for some drinks at Fat Head Brewery.

I was pretty much done with the conference after Monday, but I decided to stay for the social dinner event Tuesday night.  I've been getting into golf lately (that'll be a blog topic for another day), so I decided to play a course while out in Oregon.  I woke up early on Tuesday and drove out to Lake Oswego to play a short par-3 walking course.  The weather was perfect: 65 degrees, overcast.  Such a nice day to play and it was a great opportunity to work on just my irons game.
On Tuesday night, the first part of the social event was a beer and cheese pairing at The Upper Lip for an hour.  They had 5 cheeses that they paired with 5 beers.  Man, I loooove cheese and I loooove beer, so this was a perfect start for me.  Then we walked over to an Asian-fusion restaurant called Saucebox.  The dinner was set up family-style, where they brought out dishes that everyone shared.  There were 4 appetizers, 5 entrees, and a couple desserts that everyone got to try from.
Needless to say, I definitely eat (and drink) very well when traveling for work.  My next trip for work will be back to Colorado Springs in October on which I will visit Denver in the meantime!