The route North, my fall down the stairs, and a few observations

Our route going North.

portland, and seattle...

Our route from home to Seattle is above in a pic.  It says ~ 1700 miles and 28 hours.  I'd say the driving time was more like 25-26 hours, but the mileage is more like 2700 based on all the other stuff we did along the way.  Still way shorter than last summer to the East Coast!

So our exit from Portland started out with probably the most hilarious occurrence yet this trip.  Do you remember the story about Danica running on the beach and falling in the water on the Cannon Beach visit while in Portland?  The good news, is we know where she got that clumsiness from!  The bad news, is I still have the clumsiness!  I know, it's a shocker that I'm clumsy!!!!  :-)  We packed up a lot of our stuff on July 4th, to make the morning of July 5th a bit easier to hop onto the road.  I was up early as usual, and Bish and I started to carry stuff downstairs to the car around 8 am or a little after.  We woke the girls around 8 am also so they could start getting ready to leave.  Bish and I had taken a majority of the stuff downstairs already, and I began taking her backpack, and the cooler with ice/beer/drinks/a few leftover items that needed refrigerated down too.  The cooler wasn't too heavy, but it was kind of awkward to to carry based on it's bulk.  I had her backpack on my back, and opened the door of the apartment to go down the stairs.  There were 3 stairs, and then a small landing, and then 11 stairs to get down on the level of the door that went outside.  I pick up the cooler once outside the door of the apartment, and begin to step carefully down the first set of stairs as it is a ~100 year old building, so the steps are kind of narrow.  I go down the first 3 steps, and then attempt to take a big step onto the landing.

Well, I'll be darned if there weren't friggen 4 steps before the landing, NOT 3!!!!!  And as you might imagine, and could only hope you were there to watch, my big, fat ass, began to fall!  I attempted to catch myself as best I could with my hands full of the cooler, but instead bonked my head against the wall before beginning to tumble down the 11 stairs that went down to the front door!  Using a term my dad used when I was a kid, I went "ass over appetite" down those stairs!!!  I learned that 11 older steps = 1 rotation of me holding a cooler!!!  I somehow friggen rolled down the whole flight of steps with the cooler still in my hands, and essentially landed with my feet back on the ground at the bottom of the steps!  In the tumble, I surprisingly only lost my glasses, 3 ice cubes, a bag of lettuce, and a cherry tomato... and of course I had a bruised ego, along with other parts of my body that seemed a bit sore!  As I was getting my wits about myself, I was expecting Bish to come running from the apartment to see if I was OK, but she and the girls were nowhere to be seen or heard.  I found my glasses, got the cooler situated at the bottom of the landing, attempted to stand up as I was kind of dizzy for some odd reason, and continued to carry the cooler on out to the van.

The scuff on top of my head from rolling down the stairs!

As I went back into the apartment, I asked Bish and the girls why they hadn't come to see what the noise in the stairwell was, and they all replied with "We thought you were just sliding the cooler down the stairs?"  I proceeded to tell them that I knew where Danica got her clumsiness from, of my tumble, and what few items I lost on the downward spiral, and not surprisingly, they all started laughing at me!!!  Despite developing some stiffness and soreness as the day progressed, it was a damned funny occurrence!  :

A few observations along the way....hopefully without offending anyone!  :-)

I had an absolutely wonderful time living in California for 14 years from 1993 - 2006.  I was in SoCal for 1 year, and NorCal for 13 years, and have a lot of great memories and friends from my time there.  I got to travel to (probably) more places throughout the state than many natives have been to, and got to see and experience a lot while there.  I still enjoy visiting Cali when I can, but there are a LOT of friggen people there, and it seems to be a very materialistic place.  Or at least more so than I recall it being that way.  If you're not driving a BMW, Mercedes, Tesla, or some exotic foreign sports car, you are slumming!  I recently heard that if your family is not making at least $117,000/year, then you are considered lower class!  For the most part, most of my close friends there do not seem to be as absorbed in the materialistic aspects of living in Cali, which I am thankful for as I probably wouldn't really be friends with them much anymore.  Money is nice, but there is a lot more to life than having $$ IMHO!  At this point, I don't think I'd want to move back to Cali based on how many people are so absorbed by "what you have" rather than "who you are and how you treat people."

WTF is the deal with people driving on freeways/interstates and camping out in the left lane?  I cannot tell you how many times I have had to pass slower cars by moving to the right on the freeways!  I originally thought it was a Cali thing, but have decided the epidemic is everywhere!!!  Get the frick over to the right!

I have been amazed at how many 5 point intersections there seem to be in both Portland and Seattle.  I have traveled to both states/metropolitan areas numerous times previously, and that aspect did not stand out to me.  They seem to have put in a number of streets at an angle that occasionally meet up with the regular cross street intersections.  And in Seattle, they have stop lights that go in one direction, but in the perpendicular direction, there are just stop signs!  So I drove up to one of these intersections the other day, and sat there for a few minutes until I realized (or Bish realized I should say) that the light in my direction wasn't going to change!  Because it didn't exist!  I don't recall ever running into traffic patterns that work in this manner anywhere else.  It definitely seems to be a local thing though.

Bish and I both have decided, actually, we have known for years, but recently verbalized it, that our kids are great travelers!  We are lucky that they are this way.  We have been fortunate to have traveled a fair amount with them since they were little, so they are used to living out of a suitcase at times, and packing light and doing laundry frequently.  They know how to adapt and go wit the flow... at least most of the time.  They are generally game to do/try about anything, whether it be an activity or a type of food.  The do well in the back of the car or on a long flight as they just sit there and read, and read, and read!  I would be puking if I tried to read in the back of a car!  And although they may not admit it, they are OK to visit micro breweries... frequently!  As there is usually some good food, or some craft root beer or games on the patio for kids at these places.

I have been amazed at how many homeless people there are in both Portland and Seattle!  I know there are a lot in SF, as I have been in that city/area a lot and have seen them over the years.  I know that Santa Barbara, CA has a lot of homeless living there, and it has been explained to me that the services for homeless people are really good in the SB area, which is part of the reason the population is so high there.  I'm not sure as to the reasoning in both Portland and Seattle, but man are there a lot of them in these areas too!  I know that there can be a variety of reasons as to why people end up homeless - mental illness, a tragic change/loss in their lives, depression, etc. but you'd think there would be something more that could be done by cities/societies/non profits to help get these people off the street and into a home and a job.  I know many do not want to work, and have heard that many actually enjoy the life that they have being homeless, and I've even heard that many make good $$ begging on the street corners.  I'm not a bleeding heart socialist, but I do think we could do more to try and help these people and get them off the street rather than to continue to give them food and shelter for free.  People seem so interested in helping out people in other countries, not that they don't need it too, but why don't more people help out those in our country that need more help?  That has never made sense to me.  Just my political $.02 for the day!

In the last few years, aka recent memory for the Slackettes, they have been able to travel to, and experience, a number of large cities in the US - Chicago, DC, NYC, Atlanta, New Orleans, LA, SF, Portland, and Seattle.  We asked them how they liked Portland and Seattle in comparison to the others.  They both concur that all of the cities have "too many people and are too crowded!"  I guess that living in the burbs is amenable to them.  They both liked Portland and SF better than Seattle, DC, NYC, Chicago, but couldn't really tell us a specific reason.  They felt SF/Portland were "cleaner" than many of the other cities.  Darby said no to DC so she didn't have to learn/pay attention to politics!  In fairness, everything does seem to take longer if you are in the city due to traffic, lines, etc.  I have always felt it is fun to visit a large city, but the only time I may have been interested in living in one was when I was fresh out of college as I think it would have been a good time to be in that environment.

If I think of more things to expound on, I'll add them later.