Dear readers, I am very sorry I have left you for so long, thinking that I was at Crater Lake. I have been staying places that do not have internet. But never fear, I have been writing my blogs in Microsoft Word each night, and can now present them to you. Without further ado, you will find Wednesday, Day 3, below.
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Well, I’m not going to lie to you, today started off kind of crappy. A pole came out of nowhere and hit the back of my car so it’s a bit dimpled. Then I finished the long and grueling drive to Crater Lake, only to be told that fog had descended on the lake so that all views were obscured, and also all of the roads were closed due to snow. So it was sort of a pointless detour, because I just had to turn around and go back. So due to these circumstances, as well as your poor signage and maps, I must take back all the nice things I said about you, Oregon. I’m sorry. But really, what is traveling but a series of opportunities that can either go really well, or really poorly? Sometimes you win, sometimes not.
As long as I’m moping a bit, let me go ahead and tell you about my last day in Seattle. It started off well enough, with a lovely breakfast with my friend Elizabeth. Then it was off to Goodwill, where, for the first time ever, they rejected something I tried to give them (perfectly good exercise equipment!) and the rest of my donations they just let sit in the rain. It gave me some doubts about Goodwill.
The rain I mentioned…it was raining cats and dogs. I could not have picked a worse day to move if I tried. I wrapped my tv in sheets so it wouldn’t get wet, and then had to spend an hour wrestling it into my car. Apparently I have the biggest tv in the world. It did not get much better from there, because the thing about packing is, it’s best to kind of move things around to see how they fit. But it’s hard to do that when it’s pouring.
Then the cleaning. Cleaning an apartment always takes longer than you think it will, and my situation was not helped by the fact that the girl upstairs was moving out too, and she got to the dumpster before I did. So I was trying to make clandestine trash runs to other people’s dumpsters. Plus I was just finding it hard to make the place look clean. I don’t want to live in another place with hardwood floors for awhile.
The knocks kept on coming, such as when I broke a lightbulb I had bought to replace a light in the apartment and glass went everywhere. I was supposed to go over to Elizabeth’s for dinner around 7:30, but around 9:30 I was still cleaning when a truly awful thing happened.
That thing is my toilet overflowed.
And not just overflowed a little bit, but flooded the kitchen. How things get more miserable than that, I am not sure. But Elizabeth’s fiancé came over and fixed the flooding thing, and I guess it worked out because I didn’t end up mopping my floors, just wiping up the water.
But back to today. A tip I learned long ago about traveling is that once things start going badly, you should buy yourself some ice cream and the new Bruce Springsteen album, if applicable. In this case, the second item happened to apply, so I bought the new CD and went to Dairy Queen for lunch.
Things started going better once I got to California. In case people don’t know this, a fun fact about me is that this is my first time to California. The sun was shining, I was back to beautiful beaches, and I got to drive through ginormous trees (aka redwoods). I stopped by Arcata, which had been described to me as a giant hippie town, and I certainly found that description accurate. It did have a cute little downtown square, but I was not hippie enough to stay, so I came down to Eureka for the night.
For dinner, I went to a brewery and had a sliced beef sandwich and a beer that made my night. Now I am back in the internet-less Motel 6 watching television and planning tomorrow.
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