Grants Pass, Holiday Inn Express

Today I left the Bay Area to go to Portland. I intended to leave my apt. in Berkeley before 9am on Tuesday in order to get to Portland before 6pm. That goal, however, was quickly determined unreachable due to the fact I didn't leave Berkeley until nearly 1pm. I'd been out the previous Monday night drinking too much. By the time I got home on that night, all I was prepared to do was head to bed - packing was yet again delayed.

I rolled into Redding, CA a little bit before 4pm today. For some odd reason, I had a notion in my head that Redding was very near the Oregon border. Sadly, I learned it is NOT. In fact, it is at least 3 hours from the damn border! And you have to go up a treacherous mountain range to get to the border. Along the way, there is a town called Weed, CA that I never seemed to actually reach. Twenty odd miles past what I thought was downtown Weed, I ran into the Weed Municipal Airport. I just kept wondering where the hell did Oregon start. Who gives a flying hoot about Weed.

I thought I could make it to Portland in one long stretch, but then I thought about my sad aging vehicle. Since it arrived in Berkeley in Sept. 2005 the thing has essentially been in automobile retirement. Pulling nearly 400 miles today probably stunned it a bit. I decided to pull into a new hotel in Grants Pass, OR to let the little soldier rest a bit.

Arriving in the parking lot of the Holiday Inn Express, I crossed what I later learned was a family barbeque. A family traveling in several large vehicles and what appeared to be a horse trailer were actually firing up a Weber grill right outside the south entrance. They were also smoking and drinking tall boys of Bud. Nice people - they asked if they could help me with the door as I moved my bicycle off the car bike rack into my room.

I watched some cable television special tonight hosted by Walter Cronkite. The special was about war correspondents in Europe during WW2. Very interesting. BTW, on Saturday I saw a great documentary about the looting of artwork and other masterpieces during WW2, which I highly recommend. Entitled, The Rape of Europa, it is playing in the Bay Area now as part of a film festival.

More from the road tomorrow, hopefully terminating in my arrival to Portland before noon PST.