week in review

We've been here in Corvallis for a little over a week now. We're finding our way around the town and making strides to getting our house situated. So what have we been up to?

-Last weekend we hit the Corvallis Farmer's Market. The town blocks off 1st Street downtown and all the vendors set up their booths of fresh produce, fresh flowers, and hot food right in the street. Has the flavor of a street festival, and all the locals come just to hang out, visit with friends, and let their naked babies play in the fountain.

-We met our neighbors from across the street, Wolf and Denise. Really nice people. They have two sons, a really nice flower and vegetable garden, a dog named Ranger, and chickens! The town allows five inside town limits. We can hear them squawking when they lay their eggs in the morning. They've had a pesky racoon hanging around and pestering their dog, and it pulled a wad of feathers out of their hen's back. Since you can't fire a gun in town limits, we're gonna go over there and put it down with Sylvan's .22 caliber pellet gun next time it shows up. We have another neighbor across the road, an aging hippie doctor with a big bushy ponytail, who has a penchant for building decks and runs his pressure washer about every day. Neighbors on one side are rather unsociable, also doctors. Neighbors on the other side are about 80 years old and have lived in this neighborhood since 1946. Apparently they don't like our landlord's collection of Airstreams and old cars.

-Peter had us up for dinner on Wednesday and cooked us ribeyes on the grill. Mmmmm.

-We've been exploring our grocery store options. WinnCo is where it's at. That place rocks. No card required, avocados for $0.44 each, everything under the sun in bulk (mung beans to Jelly Bellies to Sawmill gravy mix to dog biscuits), 5 episodes of Andy Griffith on DVD for 99 cents. I'm so hooked. Kindof like a warehouse, bag-your-own groceries.

-My first week of work went pretty well. I've got a screenshot of ArcMap burned into my retinas now, been sitting in front of the computer for hours on end. I've got about two weeks' worth of online courses left to take so that I'll be proficient enough to start working with the computer model and verifying some data in the field. The building is like an icebox right now--the university cools the building with subterrenain air from a geothermal heat pump (they actually have to heat it before using it for the AC), but the steam has been shut off all week, so 55-degree air is coursing through the entire campus. I have to go work outside to stay warm. My advisor is gone to do research in Cyprus for a month (how unfortunate for him) so I'm pretty much on my own right now.

-Our house in coming together to some degree--we've got the kitchen fixed pretty much the way we want it. Our washer puked up water all over the floor the first couple of times we used it, but a friend of Peter's came over and snaked the drain so it's all good now.

-Today we drove out to the coast to do some exploring. We had planned to go east and go to the mountains (a longer trip), but a long week drove me to sleep late this morning. We drove to Newport and then headed south on Highway 101 to Cape Perpetua. We took a nice hike to a huge overlook, about 800 feet above the sea. Spectacular! That's where the picture up top is from. Later we hiked down on the beach to the Devil's Churn, a big crazy cove the ocean has eaten away in the lava pillows. We saw a bunch of tide pools with shellfish and sea anemones in them.

It still doesn't feel like we're here to stay--I don't know how long it'll be till it sinks in that we actually live here. Homesickness hasn't struck yet, and I hope it stays away. The weather is beautiful, and we don't expect to see rain again 'til October. Gonna be a long stretch.

We made it

We made it to Corvallis around lunch time today. Seven days, 3000 miles, and only one breakdown. We all weathered the trip pretty well, with the exception of the concrete chicken--sadly, his feet fell off en route. We got some gorilla glue to fix him though.

After leaving Fort Collins on Tuesday, we drove north on I-25 and then drove across Wyoming. Apparently, cowboys don't use cell phones so it was a good thing we had our trusty radios. We camped at a KOA outside of Brigham City, Utah on Tuesday night. We were pretty sure the Mormons were spying on us, so we drank our beer quietly in the dark. Wednesday carried us northward across Idaho and into Oregon at last. We spent the night in the River View Motel (strangely reminiscent of a house of ill repute) in The Dalles. On the approach you couldn't really tell if it was actually open for business, the furnishings were ancient, the phone book was three years old, and it had a funny smell but we both slept like babies and enjoyed the pressure-washer-quality shower. The trip in today was short and sweet--only about 160 miles. We got our trailer unloaded and returned and visited the Target in Albany to score some sweet accessories for our awesome new AeroBed Sylvan got for us today.

We love the place--we're just sitting in the middle of our huge, empty living room enjoying our beans and rice and wondering what in the hell we're going to put in here. And so the day closes on the first day of our new life, in our new town.

The respite from the road has been great. We spent Sunday at Rocky Mountain National Park. I would be a fool to try to describe it with words. It was an exhilaratingly cool break from the heat and sweat of the the past few days. I was really hoping to see a moose, but settled for several herd of elk, a marmot, and some interesting bird life. We did a nice hike by a snow-melt fed stream bordered by some awesome cliffs and huge bolder fields. I was surprised by the 20-dollar-a-car entrance fee for the park, but when it was all over I decided it was well worth it. It was pretty crowded up there, and the traffic didn't always flow well, especially when the rubber-neckin' tourists saw some elk by the road. The Floridians building snowmen in the pull-offs cracked me up too.

Today we're spending part of the day here in Denver and visiting the Science Museum for the Body Worlds Exhibit. It's an anatomy and health exhibit using real human bodies, preserved with a special technique this guy developed that preserves all the color and texture of body tissues. I'm so stoked. We'll drive up to Fort Collins this evening and stay with another friend, and hit the road again tomorrow. We're planning to make it just north of Salt Lake City and stay at Willard Bay State Park, right on an arm of the Great Salt Lake. Corvallis should be in our sites by Thursday!!

Made Denver, 10:00 MDT

We rolled in to Denver this afternoon, tired but happy to have hit friendly territory. We rolled out of Abilene about 3:00 Central time, thanks to Sylvan's excellent mechanickin' skills. I spent some time collecting various prairie grasses, legumes and noxious weeds from the field next to the parking lot while Sylvan worked, intending to share my vast agronomic knowledge with whomever would listen, but I abandoned my quarry to return the jack we had unofficially borrowed from the AutoZone. We fueled up, grabbed some Full Throttle and Rock Star energy drinks, and hit I-70 W, once again progressing in the right direction. Kansas is big, long, expansive, and flat--'bout all I can say about it. The rolling hills dissipate quickly in the western part of the state. Don't see much but expansive wheat fields, oil derricks, cows, and an occasional old homeplace. It's harvest time for winter wheat, and the heat and wind have helped cure out the crop. We stopped for fuel in Stratton, Kansas, elevation 4414 (still dead flat) and got to see a huge prairie storm. Looked like a donut, with concentric circles inside. Pretty freaky lightning. Local dude warned that it was expected to make big hail and possibly spin off tornadoes, we'd better move on westward. We hit Colorado around 8:00 Mountain time (gaining the extra hour was nice) and made good progress. We landed at Adam's house, and it's good to be in a place where you know somebody. Don't yet know what tomorrow will bring, check out the city, go to the mountains, or go to the museum and see the anatomy exhibit with real human bodies. Awesome.

broke down

What would a cross-country road trip with two loaded vehicles be without at least one mechanical mishap? Current location is the Best Western hotel parking lot in Abilene, Kansas.

Day one went smoothly, traversed parts of six states and spent the night in Graham Cave State Park, somewhere in the middle of Missouri. There were some big pulls through West Virginia and Kentucky, and some serious headwinds across Indiana and Illinois, but we logged about 750 miles on Thursday.

Friday started good, but we were still encountering some strong crosswinds that made driving difficult, both for the trailer on Sylvan's VW and the canoe strapped to the top of my car. We stopped for gas and had lunch at a little diner called Stacy's in Juction City, Kansas, and Sylvan's car was making a whining, squeaking noise somewhere in the engine. He vowed to check it out thoroughly when we reached Denver, and we got back on the road. About ten miles up the interstate, something flew off under the hood of the Jetta. Sylvan said he thought the serpentine belt broke, because the battery light came on immediately. We limped in to Abilene, Kansas, and stopped in the parking lot of an Auto Zone store to check it out. The belt was still intact, but there was a pulley missing from the alternator. Since the car has a belly pan, Sylvan and the Auto Zone dude were able to recover the pulley that had fallen off, but were mistified as to the design of the pulley, and if it could have really come off of the alternator. Apparently, alternator pulleys don't normally have needle bearings inside, as this one did. Strange. Auto Zone didn't have the alternator in stock, but the store 20 miles back in Juction City did. So, we hopped in the Honda and took off to Junction City. However, upon arrival, it was discovered that the alternator they had, that the computer showed, was not the correct part. Was this in fact the alternator pulley? Or did this mystery piece ALSO come off, in addition to the real alternator pulley that wasn't discovered? We were sent to consult with Donny, the local foreign car guru. Since he wasn't in the office, we made yet another visit to the local O'Reilly autoparts, and found a knowledgable and friendly associate who pulled out lots of manuals, made lots of phone calls, and managed (with Donny's phone consultation) to help us prove that this part WAS INDEED the alternator pulley. Some brilliant and foresighted German engineer had designed this alternator pulley with needle bearings inside so that it could pull in one direction and coast in the other, something that had to do with the load on the electrical system and prolonging the life of the alternator. Good news: dealership in Kansas City has the pulley, and they're open on Saturday. The alternator itself is still good. Bad news: Kansas City is 150 miles away, back to the east.

The 105-degree heat led us to rule out the possibility of camping again. Went back to Abilene and scored a room at the local Best Western. Dude at the Auto Zone and his chain smoker girlfriend advised us to come here if we wanted hot water, more than five TV channels, and no bugs. All the things I look for in a hotel room. So Sylvan got the alternator jerked off and we just laid ourselves up for the night with a twelve-pack of Natural Light. There ain't much here but a few gas stations and fast food restaurants, a Russel Stover outlet, the Greyhound Hall of Fame (as in the dogs) and the Museum of Independent Telephony. Put that on your next vacation itinerary.

Made it to KC and back this morning to get our parts, and Sylvan's under the car gettin'er ready to go. Hope to make Denver late tonight. 450 miles. If the injuns don't get us first.