The Joke That Almost Came True

We have been in Oregon since May 17, and in Portland since the 22nd (today is the 29th). I'm awestruck by how beautiful Oregon is, happy to be where Hannah is, and to have the chance to see a lot of her and of other family members who live here, and enjoying the atmosphere here. I'm also vaguely amused at how a certain part of its culture is reminiscent of the South in a weird way, in spite of the fact that nothing else about the two places is remotely related.

First, about Beauty: Oregon is almost impossibly green and verdant and lush. The beaches are fabulous and extravagant and dramatic. The mountains are enormous and deeply forested; or else, like Mt. Hood, standing above everything, visible from everywhere, and covered with snow. There are waterfalls everywhere; beautiful lakes, rivers, and rolling hills; lovely vineyards; and at least one city (probably more, but this is where we are)  that is beautiful and filled with lush parks, two beautiful rivers, interesting neighborhoods, and more great beer and terrific restaurants than can be visited in a month or even two.

There are waterfalls like this a short drive from Portland. Lots of them.

Beautiful beaches with dramatic skies

Lovely wineries to visit

Dramatic views at the Columbia Gorge, near Portland. That's Washington on the other side

Before arriving in Portland we drove up much of the Oregon coast from coastal California. We stayed  in Gold Beach near the Rogue River, and in Newport, a sweet town midway up the coast (where the great Rogue Brewery, or as they like to call it, the center of Rogue Nation, is located), and it was fine indeed. We then visited a corner of the Willamette Valley wine growing region and tasted some wonderful Oregon wines. Amazing in every case. We fell in love with a town called McMinnville in the Willamette Valley not far from Portland, and this would be a Cottonwood/Cambria/YourTownHere fantasy town I will remember when the trip is over.

The joke is this: for months Bob has been teasing Hannah that she would know we would be arriving at the Portland portion of our trip by the arrival of a box filled with extension cords. This would signal our plan to park our trailer in front of her house and stay for a month. Every time he tells that joke, we all laugh.

We planned to stay here for a week. As part of our being here for a while,  we thought we would bring the car to a Nissan dealership and have it checked out, since 14,000 miles in less than five months, and pulling a trailer, is hard work for a car.

Here is the place where we start thinking about the South again. Nothing in Oregon (or Portland, anyway) seems to happen in a hurry. It's all very relaxed and pretty soon and maybe tomorrow and why don't we talk about it again in a day or two. We discovered that some work needs to be done on the car. Not dangerous, but better-to-do-it kind of work. We have a warranty that should cover it. Can't talk to the warranty people now. Gotta go to lunch. Call you later. Maybe it's covered, maybe it's not. We will get back to you tomorrow. Maybe the next day. Then the warranty people say if they agree that the work needs to be done (which they haven't yet, but maybe will tomorrow) and you leave Portland,  and whatever could go wrong does go wrong, that would void the warranty, which MIGHT  have covered it.  The representative of the warranty company who was supposed to look at it to approve the work didn't come to look at it today, or yesterday, but maybe he will come tomorrow.

In the meantime, our time to leave Portland has come and gone, and we are still here. Eventually, (today) we got a rental car, which the warranty will cover for five days. Which may or may not be long enough, because the service guys work on Saturday but not Sunday or Monday. So the car should be ready on Tuesday. Or maybe Wednesday.

So....another week in Portland. Feels like that joke is coming true. We are feeling glad to find out we are being proactive about the car. Sad to say goodbye to the days in and among the islands of Puget Sound which were to be our next stop. Happy to spend more time in Portland because we get more time with Hannah. But...pretty agitated about the amount of time this is taking. In Boston, both the customers and the dealership would be screaming at each other in two days. This just WOULD NOT happen there. Wrenches, contracts, cell phones would be flying through the air. But......we are RETIRED. We are trying to learn to go with the flow. And what choice do we have? If they have identified a problem and we might void the warranty if we leave, we have to wait it out. And take the opportunity to get another lesson in patience and mindfulness. And just CHILL OUT. Relax! Have another beer! Right?

Tonight we went to the "last Thursday" celebration street fair that occurs in Hannah's neighborhood
on the last Thursday of the month. It was like the 60's all over again, hippies and macrame and health food and free music and kids and dogs and street vendors. But unlike then, there is a more open GLBT culture, and there doesn't seem to be a hostile attitude from the police in an environment that still feels a bit like the "counter culture" from way back then.

Bicycles are EVERYWHERE. This city has gone a long way towards making it possible for bikes to coexist with cars. It's an easy place to use a bike to get around. Another thing we have noticed about Portland (which I suppose might be part of why it's taking so long to get our car back) is that this is a VERY casual place. Everyone dresses so much more casually here than they do in the East, or even in San Diego or San Francisco. It is really a dressed-down and laid back place. The joke that Portland is where young people go to retire, which we have heard a lot, means mostly that this is a pretty slow-paced and relaxed place. Among the fashion trends here is the "utili-kilt," which is not a Scots kilt but a kilt just the same, worn by men with boots and a shirt. We have seen that quite a few times. And dogs EVERYWHERE, at all the sidewalk or patio spaces at cafés and breweries, and in stores and some bars. The percentage of dogs in the total population seems high. Like tattoos, which seem practically a requirement to live in this city, dogs are seemingly part of the whole deal.

Among the sights at this street festival were two that stand out. A man was walking down the street with a sign that said  "Free Shrugs," and, as you would imagine, when people looked at him, he shrugged. We liked that a lot. Then there was a man wearing a Red Sox hat who was standing near me. I commented that I liked his hat, and said "that's my team." He said, "Oh, really? MY team is the NEW YORK YANKEES." So of course I asked him why he was wearing the Red Sox hat, and he said it was just so that every time someone said that was their team, he could tell them he was a Yankees fan! How disheartening is that?! In the first place, I don't believe he was from Portland. Too hostile. In the second place, I don't actually believe a Red Sox fan would do that. It's hard to imagine a Red Sox fan putting a Yankees hat on and walking around with it...even to piss people off.

At a winery in theWillamette Valley

At the Rose Garden, in Portland

My own Rose blooming in the Rose Garden

Calistoga, Wineries, Horses, and Balloons

We have been in Calistoga, at the northern end of the Napa Valley, for nine or ten days so far, and I must say that I am in love. Some of the towns in this valley are so beautiful that they seem almost unreal. They seem like a movie set for A Perfect Town. Calistoga doesn't feel like that. It's pretty regular-seeming, and unassuming. There are natural springs here, which is why people have been coming here for mud baths and mineral baths for a hundred years or more. Like a lot of those kinds of places, there is still something kind of funky about the town, in spite of how relatively upscale it has become since I first came here in the 1970's. Mud baths or something comparable are for next week's agenda, but this week we have been drinking wine and riding our bikes, meeting up with friends,  and doing quite a bit of hanging around. It's all good. I spend a lot of my time fantasizing about how I can spend a month of the winter here every year from now on. We'll see how that goes.

A vineyard on a cloudy day

But in the meantime, one of the reasons we chose Calistoga as our base for our time in the wine
country, besides its beauty and relative unpretentiousness, is that when Bob retired he was given an extraordinary gift by his Board. They gave him a gift to be redeemed in Calistoga, because they knew we would be spending some time here, and because they also knew we would never do these particular things, which we would deeply enjoy, without  their intervention in the form of a gift.

The gift had three parts: a hot air balloon ride (which Calistoga is famous for); bike rentals and trips to wineries on the bikes; and a beautiful champagne brunch in a lovely restaurant.

Because we brought our own bikes and have been riding them to some wineries, that part of the gift didn't turn out to be practical, so we asked at the balloon place what we could do instead. They suggested wine tasting and horseback riding in the vineyards of what is probably the most beautiful winery property in this area. If not the world.

The Chalk Hill Winery, where we drank wine and rode  horses in the vineyards

We aren't exactly horsey people. We have each been on horses only once or twice before. But this was a leisurely and relaxed ride, actually in the vineyards, and couldn't have been a more calm and beautiful and breathtaking experience. Also we got to try some of the loveliest wines we have had. It was unforgettable.

How hard to believe is this? Back in the barn after the ride

On another day, we went on the balloon ride. This included watching the balloon get unfolded and laid out on the ground, filled with air, then filled with heat, and then getting to climb inside! That was so much more peaceful and delightful than I could possibly have imagined! It was not remotely scary. It was just the most gentle floating feeling, looking down over the countryside. As soon as it was over I wanted immediately to go AGAIN. RIGHT NOW.

Filling up the balloon

What it looks like from inside the basket

What Bob looks like when he is in the sky in a balloon

The shadow of our balloon as we float along

Heating up the air in the balloon

The world on the ground as we float along

Speaking of it being over, we had quite a California moment at the end. The ballon pilot sends up some trial helium balloons to watch what happens to them, as a way of guessing where the big balloon will go. You can apparently control the balloon's vertical movement down to the inch, but can't control the horizontal movement at all. It just goes the way the wind is going. So, we were drifting in a very lazy fashion when the wind started to change, and the woman who was piloting the balloon told us that we were drifting eastward rather than to the south or west, as we had planned. All seemed well until I guess we drifted TOO far east, because at one point she said, We have to come down,  NOW. And suddenly we started descending, and it seemed a tiny bit unplanned to us, because  we landed in a golf course! We were all guessing that this must NOT have been what she intended! After our (easy) landing, she told us that if we went any farther in that direction,  we would start to drift over a large marijuana field....and that the one time previously that she had drifted over that field, someone down there had SHOT AT HER.  So....we wouldn't be going that way! I have to say I was just as happy not to have someone shoot at us. And now we are left wondering whatever the marijuana farmer had been thinking...if you have a secret farm, and you shoot down a balloon with people in it, it won't be secret anymore! (I guess he wasn't thinking well?)

Anyway, we had a lovely ride, and then a beautiful breakfast with champagne, and then we came home and slept for a while. The balloons have to take off before the sun is fully up and the weather starts to change. So we had to be there  at six in the morning! It's hard for retired people to be somewhere at six in the morning! What a lovely and special experience, and what a beautiful gift to mark Bob's retirement. Any of the three parts would have been a wonderful gift, and we would remember it always. But this combination of things was just.....magical.

California, Why Did You Let Me Leave You?

I suppose we always think that someone or something should throw its arms around our ankles and beg us to stay and never leave. Somehow I've never had that experience, and maybe it would be awkward instead of awesome. But it's quite a fantasy. I'm having a little trouble figuring out how I ever left California, and never went back. There are so many places here that I love with all my heart. Especially the Santa Cruz, San Francisco, and Napa Valley areas. Why did I ever leave Santa Cruz? (Oh yeah, I couldn't find a job.) But right now that seems ridiculous, like I should have done ANYTHING to stay.

In the meantime,while I'm doing the angst about that, we had a lovely drive up the coast. We spent a few nights in the Santa Ynez Valley, which is quite lovely, and where the town of Santa Ynez seems like an obvious place to live, so long as I'm fantasizing about the Audition of Places, and then we spent the night in Cambria,  which is the new Cottonwood, Arizona in my fantasy life, and where I would love to spend a few months a year. The water shortage during this extreme drought is so serious that the state campground there has closed its showers, and brushing your teeth and washing your face is the most they will give you. At this spectacular location for dinner at Moonstone Beach, where we saw the sun go down in one of the most amazing evenings of our trip, we had to pay 30 cents for water at dinner,   and which came in a plastic bottle. That seemed kind of contradictory, but we heard that every residence and business is on a limited usage meter, and I guess a bottle of water that you sell to a customer won't hurt you the way letting water out of the tap will.  We heard it's  a 500% surcharge for going over  your limit the first time; 1000% surcharge the second time, and they will cut off your water after that. I guess this makes the problem of a plastic bottle to recycle no problem at all.

After dinner at this remarkable place, we walked down onto the rocks, and watched the sun sink into the water as the tide was coming in and crashing around our feet, and I can tell you for sure we won't forget it. That William Randolph Hearst owned everything for miles in ever direction is really awe inspiring and awful, unless you are feeling glad that a lot of it ended up as public land when his story was over.

Sun going down, Bob at the edge

Yes it really looks like this

This is what it looks like before it starts to get dark

After we got up to Santa Cruz, lots of amazing stuff happened. For instance, Santa Cruz is even more beautiful than I remembered. The redwood forest is even more majestic and shockingly holy-feeling than I expected. The roads into the redwood forest were more windy and scary than I remembered. And it was all quite wonderful. Henry Cowell Redwood State Park may be about as beautiful a place to camp as might exist in the world. 

Then today we left for the Napa Valley and briefly drove through San Francisco, which might just be the only city I like better than Boston, but where we didn't stop, and we are now at the northern end of the Napa Valley, where we will settle in for a while and be drunk on the beauty of this place even if we don't go wine tasting, which of course we will.

Would I trade my life in Boston, where I met Bob, and so many wonderful friends, and raised two beautiful daughters? No, I would not. And when people ask us where we are from, I answer "Boston," without a second of hesitation. But my heart sings when I am here. My heart says " I am home." It even says, "this is my planet." I'm not sure why I left, but Boston is my home. The Bay Area still has my heart.

Next: a couple of weeks of wine tasting, beautiful weather, and more soaking up the beauty that is California. Why is California just so much more beautiful than every place else? It just ain't fair. But I'm going to take it in, and love it, every day that I am here.

The beginning of the Napa Valley 

In the vineyard in the Santa Ynez Valley

Campground spot in the Santa Ynez Valley