The Purple Man

I'm glad my name isn't Chad Thad, or Dab Bad, or whoever it is with headphones on that airport personnel keep paging over the intercom. Yep, I'm here in happy-dappy Portland Int'l Airport, and so far things are going smoothly. Although I packed expecting to have to take my bag as a carry-on, they allowed me to check it all the way through to Dublin, so I turned over my tiny pack and was nearly completely unburdened until I ran into the Powell's store. Whoever decided to put a branch of the greatest bookstore ever at the airport is criminally brilliant. Powell's isn't the kind of place you typically find in airports that sells cheesy mystery and romance novels for $14 and offers a dizzying display of crappy magazines. Somehow I managed to limit myself to one Bill Bryson book that was on sale. Quite proud of my restraint, I walked across the hall to the Rose City Wine Bar, which isn't as fancy as it sounds. The TV at the bar was showing a college football game between two schools I've never heard of called "DeMath" and "St. Xav." The hometeam is obviously based on the East coast as it was not even 10am out here. I guess an EPL match would have been too much to ask for, even in Soccer City, USA at an international airport.

Security was a breeze, and the experience was enhanced by some sort of incident triggered by a man wearing purple. The TSA man on the near end shouted, "Hey! The Purple Man!" and then the man next to him shouted, "The Purple Man!" and on down the line as they jogged towards the gate area and the suspicious man. "The Purple Man! The Purple Man! The Purple Man!" It was very dramatic, and topped off with a loud "ALL CLEAR!!!!" from the other end of the airport.