Almost three months on the road. 20,000 miles in 36 different states. An Odyssey of the mind, the spirit, and the soul. All that, and this is what it comes down to -- my very own nephew handing me my shorts in a heated game of Uno. Sure, I'd hoped for more -- understanding, knowledge, maybe even something approaching a state of grace -- but that was not to be. Nope. Just pain, loss, and humiliation. Hear me, my Odysseans -- from where the sun now stands, I shall play cards no more forever.
I'd like to thank good ole Chief Joseph for that last line. It has been a sort of goal for this Odyssey to quote from sources as disparate as possible. Adding a Chief Joseph reference to the top of a list that includes G. Gordon Liddy, Alex Chilton, and some really bad rap songs that only I know makes me more than a little happy. I'll be publishing an Extreme Telecommuting Reader's Companion at some date in the future, just so y'all have a decryption key for all the nonsense I've thrown your way. You're welcome!
This day on the Odyssey found us leaving the creature comforts of the Channel House. It wasn't easy. After a leisurely breakfast in the comfortable dining room downstairs, we headed up to get our stuff together and hit the road. It isn't easy to look forward to three more days of camping when you've just been pampered into submission. Nonetheless, we persevered. Kristanne even managed to spot a gray whale before we pointed Otto north up the Coast Highway.
I hit the back seat...fast. With a little concentration and a mild case of nausea, I might just be able to bang out a few web pages before we made it to Astoria, the last town on the Oregon side of the Columbia River. Since the weather was unseasonably rainy and I'd seen this stretch of road many a time, anyway, I set to typing. By Tillamook (home of cheese), I had two in the bag. It was no problem to knock off the third in the 30 miles or so remaining before we pulled into Astoria. Caught up! Whodathunkit?
Astoria has always fascinated me. It's pretty much right at the mouth of the Columbia River, on the Oregon side. It's not a huge seaport, but it is home to a relatively famous tugboat fleet. Before the US Army Corps of Engineers set to building jetties and dredging the riverbed at the mouth, the crossing of the Columbia Bar (where the Columbia meets the Pacific) was one of the most feared passages in all of maritime lore. It's still pretty hair-raising, but back in the day, this area was known as the Graveyard of the Pacific, home to myriad shipwrecks and tales of disaster. The tugboat fleet of Astoria was responsible for helping the big freighters bound upriver for Portland and beyond cross the bar in all its fearsome glory. The sailors of that fleet were famous for their skill and valor, venturing into seas that would make weaker men quail in fear.
| Astoria today shows faint signs of that early maritime glory, but much has faded. Depressed and slightly bleary, today's Astoria is all too reminiscent of many of the other towns we've seen whose bloom came and went in the brief heyday of their resource-extraction days. When the timber was gone, the mill closed, and the money left. When the salmon runs dried up, the canneries closed, and the jobs were gone. Now that the Corps of Engineers has nearly got the Columbia tamed, there just doesn't seem to be much left to do in Astoria other than get drunk and play the lottery. They do have a nice bridge, though. That's it at right, spanning the river to the Washington side. |  |
Before we left Astoria for Washington, we managed to find a fellow selling time on the Internet. As a final Extreme Moment, we FTP'd where we could, sending up the pages I'd completed en route from Depoe Bay. For the first time since San Francisco, we were actually caught up on the web page! As a reward, we decided to get drunk and play the lottery.
Well, no. Actually, we headed north, back into our home state of Washington! High-fives and Extreme Hand Gestures were everywhere as we hit our home turf, terra cognita once more. Celebration completed, we kept on driving to Fort Canby State Park, a park that graces the mouth of the Columbia River on the Washington side. There, we set up a humdilly of a camp to await the arrival of my nephew, Marcus.
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My sister, Steph, was bringing Marcus all the way down from the Seattle area, leaving after work. This was not a small drive. Nonetheless, Steph rolled in at 10:30 with Marcus, Tootie, Alex, and Snoopy in tow. With no time spared for chit-chat, Steph explained how it wasn't really fair that that cop had given her a ticket for 85 mph, that her car couldn't even go 85 mph, and, besides, she'd only gone 85 once on the whole drive down, and that wasn't even when the cop pulled her over. So, it couldn't have been for 85. Once our heads stopped spinning, we realized that Steph had already pulled out in a cloud of dust, headed back home for work the next day. Left behind was Marcus, shuffling a pack of Uno cards and acting just a mite cocky. "So, you ready to play or what, Uncle Sid? I got a bedtime to think about, you know." |
And, well, that's where we came in, isn't it? Check back tomorrow as we head into the Gifford Pinchot National Forest near Mt. Adams, trying to beat the Labor Day crowds. See you then!
Total Miles for 8/28 = 169