8067 miles traveled – Portland, OR
Our very last gig was in Portland. While sitting in a traffic jam to the school, we seriously considered turning off of 205 to drive to the top of Mount Hood so we could push the car down the side. Alas, we took the more boring track.
We stopped by Reed College, Portland, OR.
We had stopped earlier is Evergreen, up in Olympia. Which was uber cool with it’s beautiful tree choked campus. Both Reed and Evergreen have organic, vegetarian, and vegan food, not to mention serve their food on real plates instead of Styrofoam.
But Reed College has the coolest school motto ever (I’m not making this up)
“Communism – Atheism – Free Love”
I thought it might be nice to distill some of our road/hotel experiences into a helpful guide to all of you in your future travels.
1.) “Continental breakfast” is an intentionally vague term that stretches the gambit between;
a.) Prepackaged muffins and coffee
b.) Fresh (oooh, so fancy!) muffins, with orange juice, cold cereal, and coffee.
2.) In some of the fancier hotels, they provided us with waffle irons and waffle mix. The first time we saw this, we were all like, “Oh, yeah! Fresh waffles!” And we did a little happy dance, sorta running in place like a white person moonwalk. (People stared.)
The hundreth time we stayed in a hotel and saw the (expletive starting with “Mother” and ending in “ing”) waffle irons there was no happy dance. We would shuffle in, turn off the (expletive starting with “God” and ending in “damn”) TV, and try to figure out what had the least sugar in it, “Haven’t these people ever heard of fruit?”
3.) “Deluxe Continental Breakfast” means they have a waffle iron.
4.) “Hot Breakfast” means they have a waffle iron.
5.) “Fresh Made Breakfast” means they have a waffle iron and some grumpy person with a smoker's cough will grudgingly make you an egg. (They’ll also smirk at you when you tell them that you don’t want the included piece of bacon or sausage.)
6.) Any hotel that costs less than $120 a night will only serve their food on Styrofoam, but will probably not complain when you fill your Nalgene with orange juice.
7.) It's easier to turn of the inevitable TV in the breakfast area than to ask for permission.
8.) A room with two queen beds often costs less than one with one king bed.
9.) A non-smoking room is never guarantied, yes, even if you have asthma.
Our best value for less than $70 a night: Super 8
Our best value for more than $100 a night: Ameritel (bonus points for fresh cookies at the counter)
So anyway. That's about it for this road trip. J and i will be settling back into our non “pleasure cruise through hell” lives. I'll have to hit the ground running though. I already have 20 commitments lined up, not to mention the novel i'm going to start writing in about 15 days. I might send out a “novel-writing journal” during the four weeks i'm writing it. With any luck you can hear me make fun of myself as i pull my hair out and generally avoid writing anything resembling fiction.
