Portland Retro Game Expo

This weekend the hubby and I traveled up to Portland, OR for the Portland Retro Gaming Expo. As an avid collector and recognized Instagram personality, PRGE was a bucket list item.

We flew to Portland on Friday night, after work. Our Airbnb was located in a really nice area, near city center, but had a rural feel. The guest house we were staying had a chicken coop on the property! 

We spent Saturday at the expo. Brandon was so excited, and he picked up some great stuff. He saw a lot of his retro friends, met some IG friends in person who he’s only talked to online, and made some new friends too!

Playing some pinball at the free play arcade

Brandon's retro friends, from Panama and Washington state

We wrapped up Saturday with dinner with friends at a completely gluten-free restaurant, Ground Breakers Brewing. The food was delicious! 

Sunday was our adventure/exploring day. We started out with breakfast at Batter. Amazing, gluten-free pancakes! We then headed out to Multnomah Falls. Oregon is beautiful in the fall. 

Multnomah Falls at the bottom

Multnomah Falls from the bridge

We then made our way back into town to the convention so Brandon could pick up a few more video game things. 

Then we headed to Pittock Mansion to get a view of the city. 

View from Pittock Mansion

Now, it’s Monday and we’re heading back from our mini vacation. Our flight has been delayed several hours, so we are very patiently waiting to go home. We want to see our kitties!

Revised Cat Shelf

Our cat shelf is a hot hangout since Brandon installed it a couple of weeks ago. The kitties love their new high spot and view of the bird feeder.

The only issue we were having with our initial installation was the ramp was too steep for the kitties to go down. They were jumping down onto the couch, which was a bit alarming when you weren’t expecting it. 

Brandon, being the very intelligent man he is, came up with a new design that would make the ramp less steep and make it look more store bought. 

The first thing he did was put ladder steps on the ramp, for better footing. 

We found that the opposite side of the shelf has more real estate, so we switched sides, which helped with the ramp's steepness, but not a lot. We really want to encourage the kitties to use the ramp, so getting it just right was important to us.

Brandon’s last change, and this one was a bit tricky, was making a post (with an angled edge) to brace under the ramp. This made the ramp at the correct angle for the cats to comfortably go down it.  He then screwed the ramp into the post, giving it more support.




We had to coax the cats into using the ramp the first few times down, but now they run up and down it like it's no big deal!