Writings By Location| And They're Off... | 1 | 2 | 3 |
For the next three weeks, we'll be preceding our main journey with a little "warm-up lap" by making our rounds and saying goodbye to friends and family along the west coast. The road trip will take us through Oregon, the Bay Area, southern California, and eventually end in Texas, where Erin's mom has been accepting packages for last-minute purchases from us at the rate of about three per day. Along the way, we'll be making a few detours for our amusement (like Crater Lake and Carlsband Caverns), but most of the time, we'll just be speeding along the interstates, with Lyle Lovett piping through the car stereo via my laptop (the good stuff, that is, not that country crap).
We're finding that our American mini-road trip is a good way for us to get into the right mindset, as we are already stopping to meet people, and learn interesting things about the areas we visit. For instance, Tony, a gas station attendent in Portland, taught us the history behind Oregon's unusual law banning self-service in gas stations; apparently, some genius decided to light up a cigarette while self-pumping back in the 50s, and blew up six city blocks. He doesn't mind the laws, since it gives him a steady job, but he also doesn't think it's outdated, given some of the people he's seen come in and try to pump their own. Out-of-towners, however, almost always find the law an inconvenience — a constant surprise to natives, who can't figure out why people would find it inconvenient to be told you can't pump your own gas. (The prices are higher than in Washington, but that's because of state tax, making the prices no higher than most other places, really.)
We also learned in Oregon just how far we have to go to lower our standards about sanitary practices in the rest of the world: not that much. After spending half a day admiring the majestic shapes and colors of Crater Lake, we settled for the night in a cozy little Cascade town called Klamath Falls. Our top restaurant recommendation from the Quality Inn — known so well for their high-class clientele — was Steak Country, just across the street. The first thing we noticed, after the fact that there were about two things that Erin (the vegetarian) could eat, was a roach that had landed on the table in front of me. After squashing him with my menu, we contemplated leaving, as most health-conscious Americans might do. But realizing that we'll probably be seeing a lot more of this on our trip — probably even worse — we figured we might as well start getting used to it now. It's just so much harder to lower one's standards when one is still in the US.
And if we had any doubt we were still in the US, that was solved for us when we had our salad dressing choices: "honey mustard ranch, garlic ranch, italian ranch, ....". I don't know why we thought the "honey mustard ranch" would have anything in it resembling either honey or mustard — unsurprisingly, it was pretty much just ranch dressing. We think it was a joke for unsuspecting tourists, but it came across as a beautiful mockery of deep western cuisine.
