Angelus rampant

Woke up, got dressed, drove to Missoula. That was my day, mostly. It takes about seven hours to get to this mid-sized university town in Montana from Seattle. I was eager to get off to a strong start on my way back to the east coast, and seven hours in the driver's seat -- taking me through all of Washington, the Idaho "panhandle," and western Montana -- qualifies. On the drive I listened to "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" (my second to last audiobook -- must practice conservation!) and watched the forests transform into high plains in hilly and occasionally dramatic fashion. One hillside had lots of trees but no brush whatsoever, creating a ghost town effect. While I gained some altitude today, I've hardly begun to re-penetrate the Rockies. Those mountains are not something you drive across in a day, though you can get across the wicked part in a day. Today was canoeing down the Hudson River; the wicked part is canoeing down Niagara Falls.

Since I have so little else to say today, I thought I'd post an imaginary dialogue that I think does a pretty good job illustrating what most days are like for me out here. This is how I got dinner tonight. I hung up with my parents saying I was going to Perkins to get some comfort food after some subpar Ethiopian last night. But the angel of adventure, who was sitting beside me, said, "Nay! We shall at least check Google Maps first to see what unique local eateries might be in the area!" I let him do it, and he discovered that in downtown Missoula there is a place called MacKenzie River Pizza Co that Google Maps rates five stars. "Let us then abscond to the pizza place," he said. "But Perkins is right down the road and I know it'll be good," I protested. He chided me: "Lo, you have been bugging Us for good pizza for weeks now, and now that pizza appears on Our doorstep you wish to eat at Perkins?" "Fine," I said, and we got in the car.

We drove downtown, a short and pleasant drive, and there was a wait. While we waited for a table, we looked at the menu. "I can't wait to have some of this classic mozzarella," I said. "Hold!" replied the angel of adventure. "It says on this menu that this is a gourmet pizzeria, and therefore we shall have gourmet pizza!" "Mozzarella can be gourmet," I pointed out. "Mozzarella is less likely to be gourmet," said the angel of adventure, "than a Thai Pie, which is a pizza in which tomato sauce has been replaced with peanut sauce, and which is topped with basil chicken, mandarin oranges, scallions, red peppers, peanuts, and cilantro!" "Is that even a pizza?" I asked. "I do not know!" answered the angel excitedly. "Therefore, let us order it and find out!" "I was promised pizza," I grumbled. "And verily, you are getting a Thai Pie," said the angel.

The Thai Pie, to my surprise and frankly I think to the angel's too, was indeed a pizza, and it was delicious. It was more delicious than mozzarella would have been.

Now to the pictures!


Speaking of angels, here's the statuary trumpeter atop the central cathedral in Salt Lake City, Utah, at sunset. No post-production effects have been applied to this picture. This is how it really looked.


The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, through the fence on the south end. This is not the classic view of the bridge, which is taken from Marin County on the north end on a clear day, but this picture is closer to the reality of the bridge as I experienced it in the fog.

Jono Xia (nee DiCarlo) denounces the evils of socialism in full wedding regalia.


Sushu and Jono, all dressed up in their self-designed wedding couture. Aren't they radiant?


Brian Auriti, Action Wildlife Photographer! That is a wild deer who lives on a steep and exhausting three-mile trail in Muir Woods in Marin County. The hike was beautiful but did not photograph well.


Run, it's a tsunami! Oh wait, no it's not, that's just the fog rolling in on Pacifica, the Bay Area town where the Raskin clan lives. I stayed one night in their place. Never having seen a tsunami, I actually was momentarily worried when I glanced out of my car window and saw this panorama.


And in less threatening landscape capture, the sun sets here on quite a different bay, eight hours' drive away in Waldport, Oregon.


Run, it's the Fremont Troll! This guy lives under a bridge in Seattle and is a piece of public art. The things I learned in Seattle were generally less photographable than the things I learned elsewhere, so this is the only picture from Seattle in this batch.


One of a thousand views of the Dr. Sun Yat-sen Classical Chinese Garden in Vancouver. Photos are not very good at capturing motion or depth, two elements very important to understanding how beautiful this garden is, but I couldn't very well not include any photos of this tranquil place.


And a few blocks away, here's Vancouver pot culture. It's a little blurry because I was holding an umbrella in the other hand. Does rain bring out the potheads, or is downtown Vancouver always this smoky?


I touched the moon! This was at the otherwise not very interesting astronomy museum in Vancouver by the southern bay. The rock was very smooth, worn down by God knows how many thousand or million fingers.


Vancouver as seen from Queen Elizabeth Park, the highest point in Vancouver. Funny how in many ways this view is better than any view of the city I took from atop the tourist tower (visible at right; it's the one with the needle) or the skyride at Grouse Mountain (the one on the right).


Wildlife Photographer 2: Electric Cockatoo! At Queen Elizabeth Park there is a greenhouse containing a wide variety of tropical plants and birds -- yes, in Canada. I don't know what species this guy is, but he very much enjoyed strutting his stuff for all the photographers.


And here is an axe thrower at the lumberjack show at Grouse Mountain. The axe is actually in the air here, near the target at about two o'clock from the bullseye; you can see it against the light brown pole if you look carefully. He landed the bullseye a fractional second after the moment frozen here.

There! Now I can procrastinate on posting a whole new set of pictures, once I have some! :D

Internal Oregons

Up from Waldport to Portland today! After the promised hike to the top of a foxglove-lined Cape Perpetua trail and the gaping at its nonpareil view of a surf-beaten Oregon coast, we piled back in the car and undertook what seemed like a short jaunt compared to yesterday's marathon. Our one stop amidst the pine forests was at the cheese factory in Tillamook, and if that doesn't sound like a good time to you then you have clearly never been to the Tillamook cheese factory. Their signature product is cheddar, and based on their samples it is by my estimation very fine. But what was even better was their ice cream -- I had two scoops of blackberry -- and what was even better than that was the production floor. So many machines and people working in tandem, executing one of the innumerable minute steps between milk and packaged extra sharp cheddar cheese! It was like something out of Adam Smith -- or Rube Goldberg. Totally worth taking the detour rather than the direct route to Portland.

We arrived in Portland before six, leaving plenty of time to explore. Isaac grew up here and Alexis lived here for a few months; between their narratives and our foray downtown, I've already had more education about the culture and characteristics of Portland than about most of the other cities on this trip. Here are some tidbits before I pass out from exhaustion.

1. From the perspective of Isaac, a musician aspiring to become professional, the distinguishing feature of Portland is its very lively indie music scene. Sometime in the last decade, downtown Portland became Mecca for both "hipsters" and "aging hipsters," to Isaac's mixed delight and disgust.

2. Portland has cable cars and light rail in the same places, often with intersecting tracks. Bicycling is also big. As a result, bicyclists commonly get stuck in the grooves of the PT rails, leading to nasty falls. There are yellow signs illustrating this road hazard.

3. One can have any kind of cuisine one can imagine in Portland, served out of a van that camps out in the same place every day like a restaurant on wheels. I had Indian food tonight. It was average in quality but cost $5 for twice as much as I could eat, so you don't hear me complaining.

4. To celebrate saving money on dinner, it is possible to go to Powell's Books to spend money on books instead. Powell's is a new and used bookstore that must be three times the size of the Barnes & Noble in Fort Myers -- three enormous floors of books of all subjects and languages and editions. I bought three, including a book that's been out of print for twenty years and is difficult to find at a good price online.

5. On the first Thursday of every month -- like today -- downtown art galleries have free exhibitions, drawing out the art crowd. Perhaps as a result, today I saw a greater density of people obviously hopped up on one illicit substance or another than I have ever seen before in my life.

6. Especially during the recession, which has hit Oregon hard, Portland's downtown businesses have a very high turnover rate. The places where Isaac hung out when he was little are gone, as is the place where his dad used to buy cookies. One porn shop literally disappeared off the face of the earth overnight, leaving a vacant lot on the corner. You have to be paying close attention to the indie scene to know where the culturally important clubs of the moment are (and generally you have to sell your own tickets to play at one and receive some fraction of the proceeds).

Tomorrow, after a nice sleep on a mattress at Isaac's dad's house, I'll explore Portland some more with him and Alexis and perhaps Aviva, who lives up here and drove separately. Then in the afternoon Alexis and I will make for Seattle, arriving neatly before Independence Day so that we can relax on the Fourth instead of fighting traffic. Till then!

What not to do while on a road trip

When I drove from Eustis to Atlanta in a day, then drove from Paducah to Kansas City in a day, those were some pretty long hauls. They were about as far as I'd want to drive in a day. They were also substantially shorter than today's drive, which took me virtually nonstop from Pacifica, in the south Bay Area, to Waldport, Oregon, about halfway up the Pacific coast of that state, on Route 101, which is two lanes and 55 mph for much of the way. I spent twelve hours in the car, getting on the road at 7:30 and not stopping till Waldport at the other 7:30. I will not be doing that again this trip if I can reasonably help it.

Fortunately, having friends in the car makes time go faster! Alexis and Isaac both joined me for this leg of the trip and kept me awake. I arrived rather happy and wired at the home of an online acquaintance of Isaac's, whom he was meeting for the first time -- a beautiful house overlooking Alsea Bay and the Pacific Ocean -- which is where I'll be sleeping tonight. On the way we somehow managed to squeeze in a few en-route adventures. We stopped for lunch in Arcata, where I had an enormous burrito (the first burrito I've ever liked, though I was intimidated by its size), followed by a regional treat called an It's-It: vanilla ice cream sandwiched between two soft oatmeal cookies and with a chocolate shell. Absolutely delicious, of course, and how could it not be. Apparently northern Cali is the only place you can get them!

In Oregon I made a surprising discovery: it is illegal to pump one's own gas in Oregon. All gas must be pumped by a gas station attendant. Isaac, who lives in Portland, says this idiosyncracy is just make-work, and I expect he's right. Nevertheless, gas in Oregon is a quarter cheaper than gas in northern California.

Driving up the coast, we saw some of the most amazing scenery of the trip in the form of enormous redwoods, white water and beaches on the Pacific, and cliff faces that looked like something out of an adventure or romance film. Tomorrow we'll likely head back south a few miles to properly check out the trails around Cape Perpetua, then make what I'm assured is an easy three-hour drive to Portland. And then, the world!