Oregon Trip
Danial, Renn, and I were planning to go to BeaverHacks 2026 with Lukas. Unfortunately, a few weeks after we bought plane tickets, the event date was changed. We decided to visit anyway for a break from classes and a chance to travel!
The trip started early Saturday morning, when we headed over to the airport. We got to the gate a little before our flight departed, so we walked around Gate B before boarding. Aside from me being silly and almost getting on the wrong plane, the flight was without incident.
Oregon State University is in Corvallis, and getting there from the Portland airport isn't trivial. Lukas's dad gave us a ride to Portland Union Station. We had a little time there to enjoy some ice cream sandwiches—I ate one and then felt the need to eat another—before boarding the Amtrak to a town called Albany. From Albany, a free public bus routed us to Corvallis.
I haven't taken an Amtrak train since I was a small child, so I was excited to do it again. By great fortune we found a pair of seats in the back of the train that faced each other, so we were able to chat while watching the Oregon countryside roll by. This was really, really fun! The absence of TSA, the larger windows, and the seating arrangement were my favorite improvements over traveling by plane, and they summed to a far more enjoyable experience. Besides, it was only $12. Unfortunately, I'm not sure train is as good a choice for longer trips. For example, at the time of writing, the Amtrak's California Zephyr takes 14.5 hours to go from Denver to Salt Lake City for $118. A Frontier flight on the same day is $28 and takes an hour and 40 minutes—granted, not including security and all that, but still quite convincing nevertheless.
Upon arriving in Corvallis, we greeted Lukas and enjoyed a late lunch at The Brass Monkey, which provided an enjoyable atmosphere and good value. Subsequently, we walked around campus, touring the buildings, throwing a frisbee, and taking a brief hike.
The most impressionable aspect of Oregon was its enormous trees. In the Pacific Northwest, the plentiful rain allows trees to grow much larger than they do in Colorado. This was an excellent time to visit; many of the trees were flowering.
We ate dinner at the KBBQ and headed to Lukas's apartment for the night. Lukas tried out the projector he'd won at BlasterHacks. I was very impressed by how good cheap projectors are nowadays. We got a colorful picture with quite reasonable contrast and near-instant automatic keystoning (auto picture alignment). As long as you don't need to watch content in the daytime, projectors seem like an obvious choice over TVs for budgets less than $1000.
In the morning, Lukas served us tea of exceptionally high quality. Then, we went to The Naked Crepe Cafe and ate crepes, also of exceptional quality. I've never enjoyed crepes so much before. I was entranced.
During the rest of the time, we ate lunch at a nearby bar, threw the frisbee some more, and walked back to Lukas's place.
Then, it was already time to begin the long journey back to the airport. We took an Uber to Albany, an Amtrak bus to the Portland Union Station, and the Portland MAX train to the airport. The latter step was a little bit exciting, as multiple times we boarded the wrong train and had to hold the doors open to dismount before being whisked away in the wrong direction. We took multitudinous forms of transportation throughout the trip: airplane, private car, train, public bus, ride sharing, private bus, and light rail.
I'm graduating next semester, and I don't think I'll have many more chances to go on trips like this, so I'm very glad we took advantage of this opportunity!