UMTravels

Months of work comes down to the closing hours and the final pot of coffee on the front deck.

Some kind faerie (probably my cabin mates) left me a cart to haul all the stuff back to the car:

• Cooler
• Picnic Wine Bag
• Two backpacks
• One duffle bag
• One briefcase

And that’s after giving away the leopard print snugee to Leo Sunshine.

We (DancingBear and myself) had hoped to move lunch to noon (from 1pm) to help everybody (including myself) out of the cabins and on the road sooner, but alas, did not happen. My plan was to leave after lunch but if it’s at 1pm I could be in Estacada having a protein lunch buy the time they served the twigs and leaves.

Lovely drive through the back roads of Oregon with MoTown coming off the MP3 player.

Three pieces of baked chicken, a Diet Coke and a package of beef jerky from the Thriftway will be my lunch and road food.

Next stop in Estacada, no, not the Safari Club (which in the 80’s I used to design their concert posters when I worked at the Sellwood Moreland Bee), but Mikes Second Hand Shop. It’s truly my kind of shop. Tons of EVERYTHING. Luckily the car is small and already stuffed so all I picked up was two 100ft coils of pre-made Ethernet cables at the super-cheap price of $4 each. Don’s need them at the moment, but it’s always handy to have spares.

Back on the freeway to the north end of Vancouver, Washington to the Safeway/Gas Station stop. By the time I was out of there the tank was full AND SO WAS THE COOLER. Lots of lamb for the freezer, a much of steaks, so full in fact that that hearts of romaine had to just stay in the shade by the air conditioner vent.

All I can say about the rest of the trip home is PAINFUL. Three separate traffic messes. It added an hour to my return drive putting me home at 6:45pm. Ouch.

But the steak and salad helped.

[should be interesting tomorrow]