Category Archives: Road trip

The case of the quarantined campground

I swear everytime I try to go camping it fails miserably.

The last time I went—or, rather, attempted to go—it was the weekend of the Fourth of July and every campsite and their mothers were booked solid and we couldn’t find a place to sleep. We ended up driving home and camping out in the yard.

Then, yesterday, Asa, our friend Justin and I piled our gear and the dogs in the car and headed down the freeway for yet another impromptu trip.

Asa had found some campground online that sounded a) quaint b) somewhat remote and c) less treaded. Due to a series of miscalculations, some wrong turns and a pit stop at the Full Sail brewery to pick up a growler of IPA, what should have been a quick, hour-long car ride soon morphed into a three-hour adventure.

Moreover, the back-country road that was supposed to take us to our quaintly remote campsite ended up circling back and meeting up with i-84. Bummed that we’d be camping alongside the Interstate but wary of the setting sun, we sucked it up and put on our blinker for the exit, which led to a rest area and beyond that, a campground.

But it was closed. We slowed down by the barracaded off-ramp to see if we could slip through but three neon-clad workers waved us on. Undeterred, we pulled over and Justin ran over to find out how we could reach our site. He spoke to them briefly, and climbed back into the car laughing.

“Well, Asa, you sure know how to pick a good campsite!” he announced.

Turns out, no one was getting into that campsite—and no one was leaving, either. The three workers wouldn’t reveal any information, but assured Justin that we “do NOT want to go in there” and that we’d be able to find out why “on the news tomorrow.”

We got back on the road and as we drove past our would-be site, we could see the flashing lights of every cop car and SWAT team in the state of Oregon. Guns, riot gear—this was a full-on commotion. The entire rest area and campground was littered with officers and the people who hadn’t been as lucky as us—the ones who hadn’t gotten lost on a back road and got in early enough to pitch a tent—were hanging out in the back seats of their cars.

“Holy shit, it’s a serial killer!” I started in.

“It’s not a serial killer,” said Asa. Always so rational, that boyfriend of mine.

“It was probably like an exploding latrene or something,” Justin offered.

“But then why wouldn’t people be able to leave?”

He shrugged. “Maybe they’re being quarantined for diseases from the shit explosion?”

“Maybe it’s an outbreak of leprocy!” That came from me, obviously, because my fears are always so rational.

Three miles down the road, Asa tried to pull off at the next campsite. “No way!” I protested. “Three miles is within walking distance of the serial killer!” Luckily for us, it turned out to be a day hiking spot anyway and we were saved from the killer on the loose. We kept driving.

When we finally found a site that was cop-free, it was pretty much dark and the fact that it was right alongside the freeway didn’t really matter. Most importantly, it was a good 15 or 20 miles west of the serial killer, so I knew I would be able to rest soundly. We pitched the tent, made dinner, drank our IPA and headed to bed.

And then: AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRNNNNNNNNNNNNN!!!!!! AAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!!!

Turns out, our gem of a campsite was even closer to the train tracks than it was to the freeway. Which meant that between the roaring bustle of semi-trucks barreling down the highway, the flicker of the televisions and laptops in nearby RVs and the incredibly, ground-shakingly loud freight train every 15 minutes throughout the course of the night, none of us got much sleep.

Ironically, Chelsea only woke up once. I took her out for her usual 4 a.m. stroll, during which time I noticed that we had left a mallet on the picnic table after using it to hammer in the tent stakes. What were we thinking?! There was a serial killer on the loose, after all, and we might as well hang up a sign next to our tent with a giant arrow and the words, “FRESH MEAT HERE.” Next to the hammer lay the car keys, which was an even bigger WHAT WERE WE THINKING?! Supplying our maker with an implement of destruction is one thing, but giving him keys to the getaway car is even worse.

I tossed and turned for the rest of the night.

Columbia River Gorge

In the morning, the sun rose to reveal one of the prettiest things I have ever seen: the Columbia River Gorge. We mosied across the train tracks to the shore and watched the windsurfers for a bit. Asa started chatting with a dude who was rigging a sail, and he turned out to be someone who had a wee bit of information to offer about the events at the serial killer’s lair.

It wasn’t a serial killer. It wasn’t a leper, either, and it certainly wasn’t an exploding toilet. It was a bank robber. Wanted in Idaho and Wyoming and who knows where else. Was living in an RV in the quaint, remote and lightly-treaded campsite—and by “quaint, remote and lightly-treaded,” I really mean “ugly, directly off of the freeway and jam-packed with RVs”—you know, the one we had been trying to find when we got lost on the wrong road.

The windsurfer guy said that the robber been found out and was holding a woman and some children hostage in his RV. He finally surrendered at 5 o’clock this morning—in between the 4:49 a.m freight and the 5:06—and rumor has it that no one was killed.

Turns out, according to the folks over at one of the local TV stations, our informant was almost entirely correct.

What can I say? Incessant honking of passing trains, the rumble of loaded trucks, the chatter of a sit-com, the ridiculous fear that a serial killer was going to bash in my head with a mallet, a bank robber in a 12-hour standoff with the cops—my camping trips may be disasterous but they sure are eventful.

windsurfer

So how do you know Tim?

The Canadian border patrol dude spoke as if he knew me:”So you’re going to Vancouver, eh?” he asked. He spoke congenially, but it still felt as if I was reporting to the principal of my elementary
school circa 1989—after all, he was walking me to the car to retrieve Chelsea so he could safely search our car for illegal drugs.

“Yep.” We’ve only told you that four times, I thought.

“If you don’t mind me asking, how do you know Tim?”

Funny, in this corner of the Internet, everyone knows TimsHead. At the border, he might as well have been a fugitive. “He’s a friend of mine,” I said, trying to skirt the whole ‘I met him online’ awkwardness.

“But how did you meet him? He’s from New York—that’s a far way away.” Insistent is probably the best word I can use to describe this border dude.

“Well, I used to live in New York,” I said, thinking I had cleverly skirted this issue.

Not so much: “Did you work with him in New York?”

“Uh… well… actually… we met because we read each other’s blogs. See, he’s a writer, and I’m a writer”—nice move, right? Making it sound
professional—”so we connected because we were both writers in New York.”

I feared that the b-word (blog) would have sent off an alarm, but BPD (border patrol dude) couldn’t have cared less—he’d already moved on to his next line of questioning: “What kind of writer are you?”

Etc. It went on like this until BPD search our car and found nothing but a smelly dog pillow, a couple of bikes and several bags of clothes. Finally deemed safe enough to travel to Canada, Tim, Asa, Chelsea and I loaded back into the car for our Canadian adventure: hanging out with people we only knew from the Internet.

I can’t think of a creative way to summarize Xanga: The Gathering (to borrow a term from Ed_Kaz), and so I submit for your enjoyment photos from the event:


TimsHead, visitamanda and myself on the beach after a delicious brunch with Asa, rachELLERACHelle and ssunflungspangles, during which we covered many important topics, including the coolness of Canada versus the embarrassment that is the Bush administration.


After brunch, Amanda took us on a beautiful tour of a Vancouver park in her tiny little Geo Metro (as a proud owner of a Geo Tracker, I took mental note that when I finally part ways with Le Tracquer, I would be lucky to find Le Metro as a replacement. For one, it actually has a roof). Amanda—not that this comes as much of a surprise—is totally charming, witty and wonderfully sweet. It’s no surprise that she swept Dean off his feet!


View from the hotel parking lot—you know, part of the charm of our lovely hotel. Nothing says “five star” like graffiti tags, barbed wire and tennis shoes hanging from the telephone wire.


Tim watches with amusement as I attempt to photograph Gabe, who refused to sit still for a picture—and also refused to let any of us pay for our meal. One of the most generous people I have ever met, Gabe exudes thoughtfulness and was as much a pleasure to meet in real life as he is to read on the Internet.


I’ve joked in the past that Terra is my blogger alterego, and meeting her in person only confirmed that theory. And, she brought candy bars—er, chocolate bars, as they say in Canada—to dinner, including my all-time favorite, the Aero Bar. It’s nice to know that the people I value in the blogosphere are also the people I would be hanging out with if they lived right down the street. (Note: if it looks like I am a little sloshed, it probably because I was—two beers will do that do me.)


Here we see Tim, left, in the process of delivering one of his very frequent and unfailingly witty punchline-observations. I use the hyphenate because what I’m referring to really is a combination of both—he’s very good at making a joke while simultaneously making an astute social observation. It’s like a TimsHead blog, live and in person. Tim and I engaged in much hilarious running commentary about the wonders of the Boz (our classy hotel), and it was great to finally meet the blogger behind the writing I admire so much. On the right, Gabe listens intently.


Dinner was yummy! From left: Tim, me, Gabe and Terra.


Proof that I dragged Asa along for the ride.


And Chelsea, too.

The weekend concluded at a lovely housewarming party of a friend of Tim’s, with the following Xangans in attendance, some people I’ve read many a time, others who are new to my Xanga radar: visitamanda, anima_mea, TimsHead, ponder_this, sabrina_locicero, kas_kady, lisalulu, dancin_with_myself and sam_at_large. We didn’t bring the didge, so you’ll just have to imagine what it looked like.

So that’s that. The ultimate nerd vacation: going on a road trip to meet blogger friends. Let’s just say the reactions to the trip among my real life friends have ranged from bewildered and perplexed to “Um, do I know you?” But I, for one, had a fabulous time meeting people I value and respect—okay, so whatever! It’s on the Internet, get over it—and actually getting to know the people I felt like I knew already.

And we’re off to see the Wizard…

Well, more like off to see TimsHead, but he’s just as famous as the mysterious man behind the Emerald City. Asa and I are driving up the I-5 corridor, picking up TimsHead (hopefully TimsBody, too) and then driving northward to Vancouver BC, where we’ll see the likes of visitamanda (we’ll visit her, if you will), her sister and her fiancé, as well as the positive vibin’ Gabe_Real and trcs, who once sent me a big package of Canadian candy. Maybe we’ll meet Jules27?

Basically, if you’re in the ‘Couv, you’re invited to a Xanga gathering! It’s bedtime…. way past it, actually. Goodnight.

PS: Yesterday, my car stereo told me I’m a failure; more on that later.

Life’s a beach

After it became clear on Saturday that Asa and I were not going to accomplish a single one of the many to-do items for the day, he
suggested instead taking a quick trip to the coast. I had only seen the Pacific Ocean, but never touched it, and Chelsea had never seen it
at all, so an impromptu trip to the coast to enjoy the beautiful Oregon November weather—something that anyone who has lived here for some length of time claims is highly abnormal—sounded like a wonderful idea. We were on the road in minutes, and made it there just in time to watch the sun duck behind the waves.


Chelsea was happy to be by the water again. I guess New Mexico was a little too dry for her liking. You can see her pawprints washing away behind her. Isn’t she so cute? Yeah, I think so, too.


I knit both of those hats, btw.


Here Chelsea looks a little confused. I was trying to prevent her from jumping off of the giant tree trunk we were using as a chair, because her previous jump off of a much smaller log resulted in a nasty fall. Chelsea doesn’t learn much from her mistakes, I guess.


This kind of reminds me of Myst—you know, that computer game where you walked around a mystical island looking for clues without ever figuring out what exactly was the point of the game, which, of course, didn’t stop you from playing it incessantly. Or maybe that was just me.


Wouldn’t this picture be way cooler if I had gotten the entirety of her reflection in the shot? Oh well.


See? It’s like Myst. Up around the bend you can find the library with the rotating roof. (Does anyone get that reference? Maybe there was no rotating roof library in Myst. What if I made that up entirely? Am I going crazy? Maybe I was cryogenically frozen in 1802 and just don’t know it yet.)


Speaking of crazy, I’m deathly afraid of certain kinds of seaweed and plants, including but not limited to Venus fly traps, marshlands, skunk cabbages and seaweed that looks like a giant pile of lo mein (note the edge of the pile of lo mein in the bottom left corner of this picture). Asa thinks these terrifying ocean plants are fascinating and make good didgeridoos, so he brought one home for our friend Jeff, who found it endlessly amusing to torture me by sticking that nasty piece of seaweed in my face. GROSS.


Isn’t it just so pretty?

I’m alive!

I made it here, safe and sound. I’ve been slacking in the blogging department, but I’m going to blame it on the fact that I just moved 1,300 miles and haven’t really unpacked yet, let alone found housing or a job. But regardless, here are a few stories from the trip:

Day One, AKA The Day of Treacherous Driving and Nowhere to Sleep

Due to a navagational error on behalf of my Geo Tracker’s high-tech GPS system—okay, let’s be honest here: on behalf of my poor map-reading skills—I ended up on a 13-mile stretch of gravel road through a mountain pass. I know what you’re thinking—”13 miles, schmiles, what’s the big freaking deal?—but please understand that when your 2-wheel drive Geo Crapper is fish-tailing around on a 5-foot wide road that is so steep it warrants the sign “THIS ROAD IS IMPASSABLE IN WINTER MONTHS,” things start to get a little scary. Plus, since I was averaging a solid 15 miles per hour, it took me almost an hour to see pavement again.

My breathing got heavy and all I could think about was what would happen if I got a flat tire. Nobody will find me for days, I thought to myself. I’ll finish that jar of peanut butter in the back seat and that will be the end of me. I freaked out. I started crying and screaming at the road: “F%#! you for not being paved! F@#$ you! This has gone on LONG ENOUGH! I WANT PAVEMENT!”

Then my body started to get tingly. My hands clenched into fists that I couldn’t undo. I could barely control the steering wheel with my wobbly hands. I’ve never had a panic attack before, so I could be wrong—I am no MD, that’s for sure—but if I had to diagnose myself with something, it would be a panic attack and bad case of not reading my road atlas’ legend.

Had I read the legend, I would have known that a road impassable in winter months is a road that no Geo Tracker should ever attempt to tread. It is a road unfinished.

Anyway, due to my navigational error, I made it to Cuba, NM, a mere 100 miles northwest of Santa Fe, in a record three hours. Obviously, since I had gotten a late start (duh… actually, I was supposed to leave on Wednesday but I didn’t end up going until Thursday, go figure) and had proceeded to make completely ineffecient use of my time on the road, I was never going to make it to my goal of Provo, UT by nightfall. I ended up making it to Moab, three hours short of Provo, when I realized I couldn’t drive anymore.

Asa had done me the favor of researching Moab hotels that allow dogs—I had no camping gear with me, mind you—and so I called the numbers he gave me to find a place with vacancy. Well, as it turned out, not a single motel in all of Moab had vacancies at all. (I started crying again). I could always sleep on the side of the road, I rationed, but with a car whose main protection from intruders is a plastic window that unzips, the thought of sleeping in the car less than warmed my heart. Not to mention that being in the same position I had just spent the last 10 hours did not sound appealing in the slightest.

It was past 9 pm when I finally stumbled across an outdoor gear store that was still open. At first I thought it was a mirage of sorts—a locally-owned ma-and-pa outdoor gear store that’s still open after 9 pm on a Thursday? It couldn’t be! But it was: it was really open. I walked inside with a tear-streaked face and announced that I needed to buy a tent.

The woman looked at me strangely. She knew something was wrong. I started wailing again. Between sobs I explained to her that there was nowhere for me to sleep and that I didn’t want to sleep in my car so I needed to buy a tent.

“Well, I can sell you one, but I don’t have any cheap two-man tents right now. They’re all really top of the line. You probably don’t really want to spend that much.” She was right—heck, the gas alone from Santa Fe to Portland was going to drain my funds significantly.

She pulled out a phonebook. “What about a campsite that has cabins?” She made a phone call and before I knew it, I had a cabin reserved in my name with a bed, heat AND electricity. I have never been so happy to go to bed in my life. And this is what my view looked like when I woke up:

Days Two and Three, AKA The Days That Aren’t Worth Blogging About

The rest of the trip was comparatively uneventful, so I won’t bore you with details like, “And then I drove. And then I drove some more,” but general highlights include:

- I have an incredible bruise on my right shin due to walking into a coffee table in the lobby of a hotel that didn’t have vacancy. Asa says it looks like a tattoo, and I’m proud.
- A truck stop in Idaho advertised having cheap diesel and riblets.
- The very eastern edge of Oregon is marked by brown rolling hills that can best be described as the Sound of Music meets severe drought.
- The northern border of Oregon, along the Columbia River, is the prettiest drive I’ve ever made.
- I listened to almost all of Dude, Where’s My Country? book-on-CD.
- Chelsea farted a few times but did not vomit.
- The Crapper’s timing belt did not explode, nor did other mechanical problems arise.
- The roof started to come off in the back left corner, and against all efforts to make it lock back into place, the stupid thing kept coming off. The good thing was that nothing fell out. Once, when I was driving to Vermont several years ago, one of my Birkenstocks flew out of the opening in the roof onto Interstate 84. I can’t believe I just typed the word “Vermont” and “Birkenstock” in the same sentence.
- The ultimate highlight: The drive is OVER and I am HERE. It is quite lovely here. More on that for another day.

Yours,
Mydogischelsea

When the timing is still off

It’s past one a.m. and I was supposed to be on the road in five hours. But let’s get real—who the heck can drive for ten hours on five hours of sleep? I’ll go when I go, and I’ll get there when I do.

It’s past one a.m. and my room is still cluttered with crap. But then again, I have never packed up and left somewhere on time. Hell, I’ve never been anywhere on time—as my mother always says, “Laura, you were born late.”

Late. But late for what? I’m about to embark on my second across-the-country move in four months; I’ll have no job when I get there and my “plan” to get one has as much premeditated thought as an impulse buy at the grocery store checkout line. I am late, and as far as I’m concerned that’s okay. I am always late—being early stresses me out.

I’m scared, I told Asa last night. This is going to be quite an adventure.

That’s not fear, my dear, he said. That’s excitement.

I’m starting all over again and there is nothing more exhilarating than possibility. New Mexico to Utah; Utah to Idaho; Idaho to Oregon; Oregon to wherever. It’s all very exciting, but, of course, when I’m excited or nervous (and who am I kidding? They are one in the same) it is all I can do to lie down and close my eyes.

And so it goes. It’s past one a.m. and I’ve got miles to go before I sleep.

When the timing (belt) is off

I’m still sick—battling a nasty upper respiratory infection—but that’s not what this post is about. This post is about my car. My beloved (ha) Geo Tracker. I went to the mechanic today, and it turns out she’s a little sick, too, and needs some fixin’.

Let me give you a little background on the ol’ Geo:

- the roof leaks
- the air vents leak
- the brakes squeak
- it’s rear wheel drive (or front wheel? My car has whichever one is crappier)
- there are at least two (2) pieces of plastic in the trunk that broke off of unidentified locations somewhere in the car
- the floor rug is peeling away
- Chelsea has vomited on the back seat twice
- my Geo is evidently the Number One target for people trying to get into accidents with parked cars
- it’s ugly
- once, someone stole the back window by unzipping it
- it says “TRACKER” on the side… because that’s cool
- when I am driving faster than 40 mph with the windows shut and talking to my mother on my cell phone (with a hands-free headset, of course), she invariably says, “Where are you? It sounds like you’re in a wind tunnel.” I always respond: “I am. I’m in the Tracker.”

Anyway, all of that I already knew. In fact, I? finally decided to put it up for sale on Craigslist. No one responded, due either to an unreasonably high asking price (hey, you can always go down) or to a sarcasm that I’m not sure everyone appreciates. I was going to try to sell the car before leaving for Portland, but finding my dream car (a used VW Golf TDI…diesel!!) at a reasonable price around here is like finding a needle in a haystack.

I actually found something pretty close to the dream car—a 2002 Jetta TDI with 77,000 miles—at a dealership down the road, but when I asked the dealer how much they were asking for it,? he went off to make a long phone call and came back shaking his head.

“You don’t want this car,” he said. “It’s out of your price range. By a lot.”

“But…!” I protested. I tried talking him down a bit, noting that the tires needed replacement, the windshield was cracked, and the body had dents and scratches all over it. “They must be kidding to think they’ll get something anywhere close to that for this car!” I argued.

But the man did not want to sell me that car. He showed me a crappy old Buick instead.

Determined, I went onto a TDI-obsessed website where you can get free Carfax reports for used TDIs, and discovered that when the dealer said you don’t want this car, he didn’t simply mean that it was out of my price range.

He meant: “Actually, this car may say it only has 77,000 miles on it, but what you don’t know is that this car has a Not Actual Mileage title. In fact, only last May, the car clocked in at 125,000 miles. We bought it at an auction in June and it miraculously only had 77,000 on it. Trust me, you do not want this car.”

So I’m stuck with the Geo until further notice. The Portland area appears to be abounding with diesel Volkswagens, and so I will wait until I get there to sell my leaky squeaky car (it’ll be a total hit in a town where it rains all of the time!) and buy a new one. And this brings me to the point of this particular post:

I just got back from the mechanic. He said I need new brake pads ($150). They’re worn down to the nubbins and they’re dangerous, he said. And then he asked me if I would like to have something done to the rotators ($25) and he said it’s about time to change the timing belt ($300), whatever that is.

He said I can make it to Portland without changing the timing belt, but I should probably do it before the winter. However, he noted, while most manufacturers recommend that you replace it after 60,000 miles, he’s never seen one snap until 80,000, but a snapped timing belt means $1,800, a whopping price just a couple hundred under the Kelley Blue Book value of my car. Still, $300 seems like a lot of dollars for a car with a leaky roof.

I’m heading back to the dealer in about half an hour, and I’ll have to tell him if I want that new timing belt or not. Evaluating whether or not it’s worth it reminds me of a conversation I had a few weeks ago, when I was at the Chevy dealership on a quest to buy a tiny $70 piece of plastic to fix my back window. I was telling the parts salesman about my car’s problems, and the buying/selling/moving dilemma.

“Maybe I should just sell that freaking car,” I said.

“You know what I would do if I were you? I would get far, far away from that piece of crap. I bet one of these guys back here would be willing to buy it off you for $300 just for the parts.”

$300?? I hope they’re not looking for a new timing belt.