Once again our plucky heroin, slightly insane protagonist,
misguided if charming main character, strange young woman (well, not quite so
young anymore, now is she?), is setting out on another
adventure… These are the sorts of trite lines that go through my head as I get in my car and finally out on the road
at the beginning of another trip into the at least partially unknown.
This time the ingredients for my adventure included: a car
with no air conditioning and sporadically faulty turn signals, a solo journey, borrowed gas
money, Swedish language lessons, AAA card, lots of good will, a camera, and a
car packed to the brim with medieval reenactment gear plus a few modern
sundries, and some food. Weee! On the road to Great Western War!!! Total expected distance: Portland-ish to Bakersfield-ish.
I’m actually now just a couple hours North of the event,
stopped for the night at a Travel Lodge. The trip has been only mildly eventful
(yay!). There have been a few minor snarls... I requested some prescription refills from my doctors office last week and they
filled most of them. I thought I wasn’t going to get two filled at all, but they
filled two early this morning… while I was in Medford… so I had them
transferred down to the Medford Fred Meyers at the last minute so I could still
have them for my trip (/whew) which meant I didn’t get out of southern Oregon
until around noon… but hey, that’s just the way the rocks tumble some times. I
spent the time buying organic kale salad and ginger trail mix at the last
bastion of hippy-ville.
One note... It's probably best not to time it so that you get to the test part of your swedish language program while you are driving your vastly over-loaded car over steep mountain passes and trying to concentrate on what you are doing, make sure the car doesn't over heat, pay attention to the other slower and faster vehicles, and try to stay within the lines while giving proper responses in swedish... lol
The rest of today has been driving, driving, driving… I’d
forgotten what road tripping in a car without air conditioning in the summer
was like. It takes me back to being a kid and riding with all the windows
down in the days before we didn't have air conditioning in our family car. All of the noise, and wind, and sweat. Pulling over to sit in the shade when it got really hot, or stopping for an ice cream, needing sunscreen for your driving arm… Yup, it’s an
adventure! At least there aren’t too many bugs, I’m also remembering having rouge bees fly into the car at high velocity and not really wanting to repeat that
while I’m in the driver’s seat.
The other hugely striking thing about this trip has been the
haze. It started with the haze around Albany (I think they may even have been
doing field burning there) and has continued because of the fires around Shasta
all the way south. In some areas it’s been so bad that my eyes have been burning. I’ve been ever so grateful for real Sudafed. My throat feels
raw, and my eyes feel tired. Here is an image from near Mt. Shasta, and you can
barely see the peak through the haze:
Of course I took some other pictures during the drive too. I
took the obligatory tourist photo for my room mate in the Northern California town of Weed:
And I ended up parked near this bus in the middle of nowhere
in California:
They actually wanted me to make a donation when I took a
picture. I guess it would go to their gas fund. I told them that I’d actually
borrowed gas money from my parents to get to the event I’m headed to, and they
were polite about it. I felt weird about them asking for donations in quite
that manner… I mean… it’s a bus… they are bringing it to people on public
property… and writing stuff from the bible on it… One would think they would be
trying to use it to reach people first and then ask for money. It definitely
raised my hackles a little. But then, I’m all about sharing art with people. It just seems like that sort of thing should be freely given, especially if it is someone reaching out doing missionary work... but hey, I guess everyone works in different ways.
It’s nice that there has been some visual interest in the
trip… I’d like it if it were a little less interesting weather/smoke wise, but we can’t always get what we want, and I’m mostly taking it easy and trying
not to stress out too much over the little things. I’m getting up bright and
early, so I can be on site in the early AM for merchant booth set-up, woot!
Lets hope that things go somewhat within the scope of plans.
