AND ME GUN GOES 'CLICK CLICK'

Set off early and drove on through Redwood lined rally roads which then turned in to Alpine country roads with weird steaming trees. It was like the trees were making clouds and slowly letting them rise out of the forrests to the sky! Beautiful drive!

Arrived in Portland mid afternoon and found the motel that we'd booked and that when things turned a bit surreal!!

The motel was about 2 miles from downtown Portland and I wouldn't be exagerating if I described it as a gang-land ghetto griefhole!! It was the most scared Ive been in all my life. It was in a neighbourhood, that the 40 stone owner and the LL Cool J cleaner told us not to walk down all but 1 single street that surrounded the motel otherwise we'd be caught up in gang affairs and not to be outside after dark - great!!

We're booked in da hood for two nights as well - gutted as we'd heard loads of great things about Portland.

LL Cool J showed us to our room and rambled on about gang violence and about how he grew up on the street in stereotypical gangster gutter chat. LL gave us some towels with suspicious brown stains on them!! The room is filthy aswell, with a carpet of multicoloured hairs in the bath and on the floor. But the crowning feature of the room is that there is a half inch gap around the door frame that leads straight to outside. Just enough room for a beady eye and the cold steel barrel of some hommies piece!!!!

Now I admit that sometimes Im prone to exaggerating but this time Im not. Ask Heather. It was so ridiculous I kept expecting Hommie Beadle to pop out with a stuck on goatee beard and a microphone disguised as a semi automatic weapon and say it was all a prank!!!

We locked our bags to the only thing that was bolted down which turned out to be the furry toilet and went to ask how to get into town so that our jugulars stayed in tact. The 40 stone woman said she used to walk in to town when she was younger - yeah right!! she hasnt walked anywhere!! Ever!!! She may have laid on her back and had someone roll her into town but never physically walked. LL Cool J told us how to avoid the gangs and which bus to get and what hand signals would get us through certain check points!!! So off we went out into Gang Land!!!

We had to walk about 15 minutes before reaching the tram (or trolley in gangster) after that Portland is really nice but before that it was terrifying - run down, derelict buildings, young lads hanging about starring - not good!

The centre of Portland is cool man, its got a bit of a punky atmosphere. A million miles away from the Gangster Paradise where we'll be sleeping for the next two nights!!

Spent a few hours in town then before the sun went down we headed to the motel. Picked up some booze en route to make sure we slept. Watched a bit of tele, got our selves drunk enough to block out the screams in the street and the shouting coming from next door!!!