I'm home now. From the time I wrote at the Outback Steakhouse to the time I got home was about 68 hours. This wouldn't be a very impressive time, were it not that I took a rather indirect route, and spent only the first 250 miles on interstates.
I excel at hard driving. If I could do it over again, I would have gone to truck driving school before I went to college. I would've driven long-haul all summer to pay for the other 9 months in school. There might have been other truckers in the Western Hemisphere with a B-average in Latin, including medieval paleography, but I wouldn't have bet on it.
After my excellent steak dinner at Outback, I saddled up for a hard drive. The goal was to make it from Portland, Oregon to Klamath, California before 2300, when the youth hostel office closed. As it happens, I was 40 minutes too late. I could have made it if I had forgone my steak. I also could have made it if Oregon didn't have speed limits from the 1980's. Remind me to get a copy of I Can't Drive 55 for such occasions.
And let me add one more thing about Oregon (lovely state) if I may. You're not allowed to pump your own gas in Oregon. I kid you not. I don't know why everyone else is entirely capable of operating their own gasoline dispensers, even with California's pushitintipituptipitdownreleaserinserepeatasneeded vapor protection nozzles. But Oregonians, and their visitors, simply cannot be trusted with petrol pumps. If you tell me that it's a plan to create jobs, I will immediately introduce a bill in the House of Representatives to expel Oregon from the Union. If you tell me that Oregonians are incapable of operating fuel pumps... I will immediately introduce a bill in the House of Representatives to expel Oregon from the Union. It stinks of socialism run amok. If a ban on pumping your own gas sounds like a good start, vote Dean. I'm sure it's nice and all to create jobs for the old coots, and it is admittedly very nice to be able to refuel without getting out of the car. If drivers invariably had to get up to pump gas anyway, like in the other 49, perhaps Oregon might find that the vastly increased convenience store business would increase both business revenues and employment. But the big question is, are the pump jockeys unionized?
I tooled down I-5. I did exceed certain local speed ordinances in hope of getting to the hostel before its office closed. The sad thing is, on a similar interstate in Arizona, I would've been going under the limit, and holding up traffic. Jogged down route 199 from Grants Pass. Passed Oregon Caves NM, closed for the night, and into California through the great redwood forests. I saw five deer on the side of the road that night. Hopefully I have a reputation with them now, and they won't go running out in front of me.
I stopped to answer the call of nature. Pulled off into a turnout on a winding portion of the road, utterly alone except for one semi truck I had passed a few minutes before. Night sky. Stars. The redwoods look 5 times as big at night. And there I was watering a bush. It gives one the feeling of urinating in a cathedral. But I've been in lots of cathedrals, and I've urinated in a few of their lavatories, so it's not really a new experience.
Got in to Eureka that night. Drove much longer than I should have. Up next morning. Picked up the new rental at Hertz, a Kia Rio. (ICQ famously suffers from a massive case of feature bloat. This Kia does not.) Swapped the luggage. Drove across the street to Enterprise and returned their Sentra. Walked back across the street. Drove the Kia down to the body shop. Snatched our garlic. Chatted with Skip, the boss man, approved the repairs, and struck out for home.
But still no plan. Stop. Get out the map. Okay... highway to Redding, to Reno. Good. Drove to Redding, got an internet connection, got a reservation at the El Dorado. Drove to Reno. Listened to Artemis Fowl on the way. It was surprisingly dull and unsophisticated. A few cute ideas. Technologically advanced fairies. But really, it just wasn't entertaining. Anyway, it killed the time between Redding and Reno, and a little more next day. Alas, it was dark and I couldn't see what was apparently a very lovely drive.
Reno is Vegas's underachieving kid brother. A smattering of tired casinos in the middle of a very lovely desert valley. Makes me wish I had stayed in Tahoe instead. I ended up spending the balance of the evening reading the vast backlog of blogs and news I had missed from the last three days.
Tomorrow, a brush with Death (Valley), the back side of a mountain (range), two brushes with an empty gas tank, one Japanese cemetery, a 4-fingered waiter with a shaved head, and the difficulty of getting an Internet connection in Sin City. (There's free sex and gambling on the Internet. It blows the Vegas business model (and the Nevada tax system) almost as well as it blew the RIAA's business model.) Till then, goodnight.
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