Day Eight (Or: My Very Own Oregon Trail)

Let's start with a diversion tonight:
The music video for Loretta Lynn's duet with the White Stripes' Jack White, called "Portland, Oregon" starts out with Jack and his backing band (two of three who would form The Raconteurs with him a year and a half later) dressed-down and playing in a dimly-lit bar. Jack plays the trill beginning of the song and the intro--all the while, you don't see much of Loretta Lynn. When the time comes for her to sing, the camera pans over and she is standing nearby in a weirdly virginal, very Grand Ole Opry dress, complete with Nashville-style sequins up and down the bodice.

The contrast looks something like this:

She doesn't help his case, for sure. As Nora likes to say whenever I try (and fail) to describe what makes Jack White such an engaging figure, that "he always looks like he needs a bath." I protest: the same could be said for much of the supergroups throughout time, save the Beatles. Tell me that Clapton didn't need a shave and a heaping dose of methadone at the Concert for Bangladesh and I'll show you a liar!

Anyway, the song "Portland, Oregon," won Lynn and White a grammy three years ago. As I (clearly) like both the White Stripes and Loretta Lynn, this isn't a surprise. Driving into Portland tonight, what do you think may have been playing? Anyway, first things first:

Good evening, from Portland, Oregon, home of the International Rose Test Garden, "Beertown," seat of Multnomah County, Oregon and my very favorite city on the West Coast.

Today was another rather arduous driving day, kind of unexpectedly, too. I started out with only one goal in mind: eat at In 'N Out Burger before I left California. Perfect--the last one between me and Oregon was in Redding, a few hours to the north. I'd get there right before lunch. But first, I had to bug the supervisor at the Lion's Gate to set my bill correctly. Then I had to write last night's post (durn buggy internet!). One interruption after another. I checked out right at 11. As Bob Dylan would say: "Maybe we just better call off the picnic."

Alas, no! I would not be deterred from the finest burger joint in all the land! I finally got to experience some of those infamous six-lane highways everyone's always (pardon my French) bitching about (just kidding--that's Middle English). I'm sure it's worse in Los Angeles, but in Sacramento it wasn't so bad--it's just confusing because the lane you're in keeps changing, merging, becoming an "Exit Only."

As I drove from I-80 (which, incidentally, runs from San Francisco and ends at the George Washington Bridge into New York City) to I-15, I began to feel like every place in California is just a way to get to another place in California. Immediately outside of Sacramento, after the airport (and intense wind shear from the wide open land) is about 150 miles of farmland with rolling hills to the west and the northernmost peaks of the Sierra Nevadas to the east as the backdrop. Then, after Redding, where I had my delicious In 'N Out lunch, the Cascades began.

I had been thinking, "Gee, it's nice to be back at sea level," where all the cities I passed had populations of less than 1,000 and elevations of 27 ft. After about two hours of driving through the mountains, it occurred to me that if I had done any kind of planning for this trip, I would totally know that I'd be passing through the Sierra Nevadas yesterday, and the Cascades today. It's OK--the surprises have been both beautiful and welcome.

Ever seen the commercial where the cows are playing kick ball, or Marco Polo, or Soccer in a field and trash talking each other? The commercial that says, "Good cheese comes from happy cows. Happy cows come from California." Yeah, they do. It was about 60 degrees, bright and sunny, and groups of brown guernseys were just hanging around everywhere. I passed, in Colusa County, a strange sight: black and white dappled horses who looked just like lean cows, sharing a field with brown guernseys who rather resembled a horse's coloring. Weird.

Also, I passed a lot of wildfires. Set or not, I couldn't tell you. They started around Arbuckle, CA and every twenty minutes or so, I'd pass another one. "The Last Time I Saw Richard," was playing and I wrote down as I passed, "Is this the kind of place where smoke in a field isn't a big deal?" Arbuckle is mostly farms, vineyards, dairies and mountains, population: 864. I can't believe towns that small are on the map.

Can anyone define for me the following two terms?

1. Fry Breads (seen throughout the southwest; it's something you can get if you stop on the Rez)
2. Duck Blinds (seen in Colusa County, CA on a hand-painted billboard.

Of note: Corning, CA is "The Olive City," in case you didn't know. Write it down. It was there that I first saw Mt. Shasta in the distance, and even though I'd never seen it before, and I hadn't looked at the map since last night when I was trying like the dickens to find where Arnold and Westover Streets met in Sacramento, I just knew that's what it was. I'll let the photos tell the story, but it was, more or less, the most spectacular part of today's trip. I became totally obsessed and kept pulling over to take pictures of it from different angles. Around the same time, I stopped into a roadside post office in Castella, CA. It was more or less the size of a phone booth. The lady who staffed it had only a handful of teeth, but she was super-helpful and sold me five bucks worth of postcard stamps and personally gave my mail to the traveling postman, who brought the Castella mail to some other central sorting facility.

At that point, I still had about 300 miles until Portland and, for the first time, I just wanted to get there. I was eager to see this hotel, order the Mediterranean Salad in their restaurant, write on the chalkboard in my room, futz around with the fancy lamps and desks and chairs and wander into the Detention Bar (there's also an Honors Bar).

Anecdote:
Gas has been an issue. I'm driving a Ford Escape and it needs to be filled up about two and a half times for every 600 miles, or something like that, and this is starting to get expensive. My father gave me the ExxonMobil card to use, but there are very few Exxons or Mobils here; west of the Mississippi is the land of ConocoPhillips, Flying Js, Pilots and Chevrons. But the card has a Cirrus designation, so I pulled into a Shell to see if they would accept it. As I was peering closely at the gas pump trying to divine its will, the attendant came out and said, "What can I do for you tonight?"
Puzzled and mildly embarrassed (because I had been debating going over to the gas station across the street, a 76), I replied, "Oh, is this full serve?"
"It's Oregon," he replied.
"Uh-huh," I said, not following his logic.
"You can't pump your own gas in Oregon," he said slowly, like I had a disability of some kind, and after about 500 miles of driving, I kind of felt like I did.
"Ohhhh..." Now I was completely embarrassed. "Like in New Jersey."
This kid clearly didn't know that about Jersey just like I didn't know it about Oregon.
"Yeah. So you get to stay in your nice, warm car."
But it was 55 degrees, even though the sun was down, so it felt great to me. It was Canyonville, OR and it didn't even smell like a gas station--it smelled like pine trees and uninterrupted outdoors--so I kept the window down.
He asked if I was on vacation and I explained where I was headed. He cleaned off my windshield, "I think you're the first New York car that's stopped here."
"Ever?"
"Since I've been here."
Everybody's been so pleasant and hasn't held my license plate and state of birth against me. I practiced lying into the rearview mirror. "I was born in Sacramento. I was born in Santa Fe. I was born in Little Rock. I was born in Nashville."
But "I was born on Long Island," comes out too easily.

Dinner was butternut squash soup and a chef's salad at Shari's in Salem. There was a man who looked like Gerald Ford sitting near the door picking at a gigantic salad and smiling at people who walked in the door.

On northbound I-5, when you're leaving Salem, there's a sign that says:

45TH PARALLEL
HALFWAY BETWEEN
THE EQUATOR AND
NORTH POLE

How great is that? In Northern São Paulo state, in Brazil, there was a painted line and a sign that announced that we were crossing over the Tropic of Capricorn. (When I was a kid, you know, like six months ago, I secretly wished the equator was a visible line in the ocean)

Coming into Portland was terrific; I love this city. I missed so much the last time I was here, even though I spent an entire day kind of wandering around (I did manage to find last time, a giant Whole Foods and Powell's City of Books, so it wasn't a total loss). But this time, I came in at dusk--I crossed a bridge over the Willamette River and all of a sudden I was over the entire city. It was completely awe-inspiring. There are so many more bridges than I thought; I-5 itself has several exits and entries right before the river, so you get a dizzy array of flyovers, something we don't really have a lot of in the East.

The hotel is perfect. Everything I wanted. Cozy bed, humongously high ceilings, no TV to distract me. I'm in the "Music Room," the room in the school were lessons were held. So, so perfect. I ate my Mediterranean salad, caught the last half of "Superbad" in the auditorium and browsed the school-themed gift shop. Tomorrow morning I'm going in the outdoor superheated soaking pool when it opens at 8, then a quick shower and a little tour of Portland before heading up to Seattle, the last leg of the first half of my trip, to see my dear, dear Amelia.

Misc.:

• I could never take enough pictures to do this hotel justice--it's absolutely beautiful and exactly what I wanted it to be when I first started dreaming about it in August, and how often does that happen? If you ever have to stay in Oregon or Washington, check out the McMenamins hotels; they also own breweries and pubs, but their hotels are lavish but very affordable and totally unlike anything else in the area.
• At the Lion's Gate in Sacramento, when I signed in, I had to initial a part that stated I wasn't having a party. I asked the attendant, "Do a lot of people come here and try to have parties?" He replied, completely deadpan, "Never." I shrugged and initialed at the same time.
• I haven't gone one single day on this trip without seeing at least 100 cows.
  
• Truckers have some kind of code that I'm starting to figure out. They always flash lights to let another trucker know that's it's OK to go ahead of them from the left into the right lane. And tonight, one flashed its lights to alert me, while I was in the left lane, that he saw a highway patrol cop up ahead. I slowed down and flashed my lights back. Thanks, FedEx dude, wherever you are.
  

No particular order:

The Music Room


"Everyone is either making love, or else expecting rain," from "Desolation Row." It was written in bold Sharpie marker in the coffeehouse bathroom at Sarah Lawrence.

The Shasta River
Mt. Shasta
The size of the postage stamps it sells.
Another shot of Mt. Shasta from I-5.
Sunset over the Cascades.
Sacramento, this morning. Count the lanes.
In 'N Out! So cheap! So tasty! Organic! Healthy! No preservatives!
My kinda avenue.
This soda is brought to you by God.

*

I like to think that as I'm driving through all of these states, I'm filling in the "New York" square in some kid's license plate bingo game.

Day Eight:

Sacramento, CA - Portland, OR

Mileage: 604

Total Mileage: 4,331  (Wahooooo!)

Good night!