In for a penny…
I’m still alive, in case you were wondering.
For one thing, I greatly overestimated the ease of finding an open internet terminal these days: The wifi revolution has made ‘net cafes scarce, and colleges and libraries now lockdown their computers or enforce strict time limits. The clock on this machine is ticking even as I write this.
California nearly beat me to a pulp. As Woody Guthrie sang, almost 70 years ago, “Believe it or not, you won’t find it so hot if you ain’t got the dough-re-mi”. CA is every bit as overcrowded, overpriced and overdeveloped as I (really should have) expected.
Car trouble in Santa Barbara left me waiting for a mechanic until after the holiday, with the light at the end of that tunnel being a new muffler and a fat repair bill. My traveling money was rapidly evaporating, my spirit and enthusiasm for this entire trip was on the razor’s edge of breaking, so yesterday I decided to get the hell out of California.
Orginally, I’d planned this to be a coastal trip, San Diego to Seattle, but now I’m switching up my approach. I’m turning this into a circle tour of Oregon, ending in Portland. It was obvious from the moment I crossed the border that this is where I want to stay.
Ashland OR, the village just outside this library window, is the gateway to Oregon, the first town to you come to once you cross over Siskiyou Pass from Cali. I wouldn’t even have stopped here were it not for a tip-off from [a trusted source]. And it is almost impossibly nice. If the rest of the towns are as good as this, wild horses couldn’t drag me away.
