But, You Know
Sunday. A Travel Lodge Inn: up and out at seven, arriving in Lake Oswego (a suburb south of Portland off Highway 5) at ten. Just like that. Ten hours yesterday, three hours today, so comes to an end another trip up the coast. No surprises. Whatsoever. An interesting run, but - wham! bam! - that was that, pass the pickles please. Nice to have avoided a speeding ticket from the Oregon Highway Patrol of course, who, unlike their counterparts in California, spend their lives sneakily parked under bridges along their roads in cars and on motorcycles, pointing radar guns at people as they pass.
You got a ticket?
Nope, but I know of what I speak.
Both my sister and my brother-in-law did recognize me when I arrived (it has been some time). “How was the trip?” No different from their perspective from any of my other trips, no surprises, the usual arrival. “You talked about taking several days to travel? I believe you did.”
I did take one or two pictures on the way yesterday, buildings I've photographed in trips past. Old hippie stuff, sitting there for years now I guess, somebody maintaining the murals on a turn on 101. There's probably a story there, but, like the KSAN remembrance on hearing the Mendocino station on the way up yesterday, just another flash from the past.
My not pulling over to photograph that stretch of coast while looking for a gas station yesterday was the tragedy in this business, if you can get away with using such a term. Every car with one or two exceptions was pulled over at the side of the road, their occupants out looking at the surf and the fog and the late afternoon sun. Maybe a one time in a summer confluence of events? Is that their normal afternoon fare? And I'm scurrying about looking for a gas station in the middle of all of this? I guess.
An opportunity to catch up on events with my sister over lunch after she'd gotten in her daily swim at the local exercise club. It's a bit more elaborate than the Gold's Gym I have at the base of my hill in Oakland (to say the least). I'd probably get into a pool, though, before you'd find me lifting weights at a gym and if it weren't for walking, well, I'd probably be dead. Happy, but, you know: dead.
Dinner later in the downtown, every restaurant running a happy hour from about three in the afternoon until after six to attract customers, the customers coming in, my sister was saying, but the places pretty much deserted due to the economy otherwise. Such is life, here in Oregon.
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