TWNW #10

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Ah, Oregon.

I made it to Grant's Pass last night, an hour or so from the California border, and I've come to an important conclusion about Oregon.

Oregon, see, is the embarrassing hillbilly cousin of the otherwise delightful west coast. Washington and California, those are fine upstanding states whose scenery is matched by their charm and civility; Oregon, though...

This whole state is the green room for the television show "Intervention." I'm from east Texas, and I've never been in a sadder, more meth-y place. Even the women here are too rough-looking for me, and that's kinda my thing lately.

The scenery is low-key lovely, but all the fulsome hills are scarred and pocked by ad hoc logging cuts; need some money for Junior's new false teeth? Well let's cut a mess of them trees for the mill!

Just playin', nobody here replaces their missing teeth.

I stayed at the Motel 6 here in Grant's Pass last night, which for me is the lap of luxury and it really is an incongruously nice place here in Oregon, but the first place I stopped was a motor court in Sunny Valley where the check-in protocol evidently requires that the guest mediate the ongoing spousal shouting match between the owners. The rooms were a cut below the mouldering toolshed in my backyard, there was a dead possum on the porch, and they wanted $55 a night for that mess so I pushed on a bit to Grant's.

I don't mean to give the impression that it feels unsafe here, it doesn't. It just feels sad, careworn, benighted. The laws are weird too - I'm not allowed to pump my own gas, but my pistol HAS TO BE loaded and right in front of me in plain view. You'd think a hot firearm would equal being able to pump my own gas for free and take some money out of the register too but it doesn't.

It goes without mention that people don't know how to drive here, either. My beloved Audi guy in Washington and I had a blast dicing through traffic, but here we'd be flummoxed by 1000 homemade RVs and 80's-era Tercels with temporary spares doing 50 in the left lane, all with their blinkers stuck on stupid.

And so it goes, for another hour at least. Then I'll cross into California and this evening I'll be with Mark and Zana in the Bay Area. I don't know what they've got planned but it's safe to assume that it'll be some sort of rally for disenfranchised transgender sea lions, or something.

OK! Thanks for reading!

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