One of the first signs that confirmed for me that I was in Portland was the special green flush handle on a toilet in the airport (pull up for light duty, push down for heavy duty). The next sign was the bus that read "Powered by clean-burning natural gas" on the bumper, which I spotted on my way into town. Clearly I wasn't in Virginia anymore. Indeed, you can almost feel the logic pulsating through the urban landscape all around you. It's kind of refreshing.

To recap from earlier posts, I was in town for the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies annual convention, where I had booth at the trade show in hopes that I might convince some more papers to carry Slowpoke. This year, my booth happened to be next to that of a tech company giving away free margaritas as a promotional gimmick. Suffice it to say, I had a few margaritas.

The highlight of these conventions is getting to hang with my cartoonist pals, and I did quite a bit of hanging with Matt Bors and Shannon Wheeler. I also enjoyed a trip to Powell's Bookstore with Jonesin' Crossword/Psycho Sudoku guys Matt Gaffney and Matt Jones, who told me all about the secret lives of "puzzlers." And this is going to sound awfully name-droppy, but I got to meet progressive provocateur Jim Hightower and cartoonist John Callahan, both of whom were nice. And Shannon, Matt, and I wound up going out to dinner with Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone/Spanking the Donkey fame, who actually wanted to hang out with us cartoonists. (Usually the only people who want to hang out with us ink-stained wretches are other ink-stained wretches.) Matt apprised us of his latest undercover project, which promises to yield many tales of wackiness.

And to give credit where credit is due, Alaska Airlines provided a far better trip than I've had in a while. They were surprisingly competent, in contrast to my experience with Northwest a few weeks ago.