Oregon / Washington, Part 4

I am in Eugene, at the Best Western New Oregon Motel.  Looks more like the old Oregon motel; a low structure, single rooms around a central parking lot.  Updated in that they are all painted sort of a charcoal gray with maroon doors.  I can also see it, in my mind's eye, in flaking white (or pink) stucco with brown (or white) doors.  They actually have outdoor carpet on the sidewalk, which will be nice to muffle suitcase wheels tomorrow morning, but there is nothing muffling the family group next door, which seems to be comprised of college-age guys, at least one teenage girl, one deaf geezer, and a screaming baby.  I might have even heard a dog.   I think it's going to be a long night.  The room is small, as befits an older motel, and they didn't have "accessible" rooms but supposedly this one has a walk-in shower.  Suits me; that's the big thing, anyway.  I can deal with all the rest.  No, I haven't seen it -- I walked in the door and found they had the same type of armchair as Astoria, so I sat down and have seen no reason to get up.  One nice thing is that since they don't have room for a desk, the armchair has a swiveling little oval tabletop on one arm.  Good for drinks and snacks, or a laptop.

The only other Best Western in Eugene is right next door.  How do they plan these things?

I did next to nothing yesterday. Just the laundry, basically, and of course the laundry room was in the other wing of the hotel.  I thought the Tide packets I had in my stash were regular detergent, but they were hand-laundry sizes, so I ripped open all six of them for the load.  Seemed to do okay.  But that's another thing for the "Must Include This Next Time" list:  individual laundry soap packets.  I was wearing my jeans since I needed to wash the black polyester pants that were the only ones I had otherwise, and I felt like a bag lady every time I walked down the hallway, keeping one hand in my pocket so I could grab the pocket lining and hold my pants up, and walking on the hems anyway because I'm 2" shorter now than I used to be.  I decided to dry everything (a risk) and after starting it up, I asked at the desk how long the dryer took.  The girl apologetically told me that they ran for an hour because it was hard to get things dry.  An hour?  So an hour later I went back down to find that the laundry room was a sauna (now I know why nothing dries), the dryer had finished and my polyester pants were now a mass of wrinkles. So I dutifully got the ironing board and iron out and steam-pressed the wrinkles out of the pants.  Then I decided that it was about time I quit faffing around and got a belt for my jeans.  I left early for dinner and went to Fashion Bug only to find it was closed permanently and being remodeled for something else, and I went to Catherine's and they don't carry belts.  The woman told me she didn't even know where I could find one.  So much for that idea.

I had dinner with my friend and former co-worker, Cathy.  It's probably been 15 years since we've seen each other.  I'd forgotten, until she reminded me, that she visited me in Coach Cottage, and helped me move a big chair up to the loft.  (I do remember her sitting on the loft stairs and saying, "There's got to be a way to do this.  I'm a math major; I should be able to figure something out."  And she did.  But I still think we cheated.)  She got married six years ago, and when we first made plans for the evening she said something about having stuffed peppers in the freezer and I thought, "Oh, good, I won't feel guilty about not bringing a hostess gift, since that's just family fare."  I got there and Andrew, her husband, was making roast lamb and twice-baked potato pots, with peas-and-onions as a side.  It was DELICIOUS and the cabernet he chose was spectacular -- I don't even like cabernet and this was wonderful.  I guess most of it is served way too young.  I'm glad I didn't bring a bottle of wine, or I would have proven how little I know about it!  And Andrew didn't even get to share in it, as he had to go to a meeting immediately.  He wasn't back when I left, so I didn't get a chance to tell him how great it was.  I also didn't get a chance to meet Charley, their cat, but he left a couple muddy paw prints on my windshield, so I know I was investigated _in_absentia_.  Cathy reminds me of my friend Cindy Wyckoff, in that she buys furniture off Craigslist (Cindy goes to the auctions in England), gets something and puts in place, takes a few weeks to decide if she likes it, and if she doesn't, it goes back on Craigslist.  Andrew and his father have refinished a number of the pieces so that they look beautiful; I didn't get a chance to ask if sometimes they do it before she's decided she doesn't approve of it.  It makes for an interestingly eclectic furniture arrangement.  And her dining chairs were the most comfy ones I've sat on for a long time.

Coralee told me to eat at an Original Pancake House, so I went to the one in Portland on my way out of town today, and it turned out it was a split-level place and although they had handicapped parking, I could see no way to avoid using stairs at some point.  I tried to call to ask them, and the phone rang ten times and no one answered.  I told TomTom to find the next nearest one and he said it was in Salem, so I said "Okay!" and drove south to Salem (since it was on the way to Eugene) and the one there was a plain old coffee-shop type.  I had a sturdy blonde young waitress by name of Taushia (I think) who was terrific and rated a tip that was just under 50%.  I didn't know whether to order the Apple Pancake or the Dutch Baby, so Taushia said they were probably BEST known for the Apple pancake, but it would take about 30 minutes as they baked it.  I said that was fine, I had lots of time to kill and an Ellery Queen magazine with me.  I drank coffee (really good coffee) and read and just as I was wondering where my (by that time) lunch was,  Taushia popped back around the corner holding a plate that looked like it contained the angel-food cake from hell.  It honestly was the size of an angel-food cake, and it steamed and smoked and the caramel bubbled like the La Brea tar pits.  Luckily, it deflates into something much more manageable, although it did stay so hot that even after eating 3/4 of it, I was still having to suck air when I took a bite.  I had been thinking about ordering a side of bacon and I'm glad I didn't.  The price was reasonable -- $11.25 for the pancake and something like $2.50 for the coffee.  And I impressed Taushia by eating the entire thing, although for a while I wondered if that was such a smart idea.  I didn't like the idea of taking it with me as I didn't know what it would taste like cold, so I soldiered through.  *burp*

The drive from Portland to Eugene (via Salem) was interesting.  Because of my out-of-state plates, I try to stay at the speed limit or just under.  At one point I noticed I was being passed by everything:  cars, SUV's, VW vans, semi's… so I checked and the speed limit had gone from 50MPH to 65MPH at some point and I didn't notice.  Whoops.  The driving was comparable to what I encounter in Silicon Valley, which is to say aggressive and scary and fast, so when I saw interesting things, I couldn't take my hands off the wheel to take photos.  In Portland, a car got on the freeway behind me that I was so hoping would pass me.  It looked like a boxy little early-1960s something or other, with a metal chrome bumper held on by ropes on either side, and the body was spray-painted all the colors of the rainbow, but with no real pattern to it, as if they had just grabbed the nearest can and used it to cover the latest rust spot.  It was beautiful in its Bohemian way.  And a little farther on, I passed a pickup truck hauling a small flatbed with a plane on it.  The wings had been detached and placed under the body, and the propeller was missing entirely.  I told Jim it reminded me of a Spitfire, and he said it might have been a homebuilt RV-3.  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van%27s_Aircraft_RV-3)  That looks enough like it that I think that's what it was.  But I've never seen a PLANE being towed on a trailer before!

So here I am, it's 6:30 PM and I'm not even remotely hungry.  I think there's a coffee shop next door (between us and the other Best Western) that I may try to hike to later on, or I may just wait until brunch with Janet tomorrow morning.  (In case you're wondering why I don't nosh on some of that Tillamook cheese, it's because I realized soon after I arrived here that I had left it in the fridge in Portland.  The Inn at the Meadows will be mailing it home to me in Los Altos and charging me accordingly.)

This has been a great trip, making connections with people I haven't seen in years.  I'll have to do this more often… although I do miss my cats something dreadful.  I think if they were with me, I wouldn't want to go home at all.