The ‘Dredge Report

Part II of my Past Weekend Travelogue.  I drove up to Seattle with two goals in mind: (1) See some family and friends and (2) See whales.  Mission accomplished on both counts.  Friday was all Seattle — I drove up in the morning, intending to get there around noon.  And if not for a trifecta of torrential downpours, traffic, and Google Maps apparently not understanding Seattle’s intricate geography ONE WHIT – I might have actually made it on time.  I’ll be honest; I don’t really understand Seattle’s geography either.  There’s a lake on one side, and a sound on the other, plus islands, and outside of downtown, the street grid doesn’t appear to follow any set of rules that I’m aware of.  Throw in a bunch of 60-degree-incline hills and not one single parking spot anywhere, and you’ve got a recipe for getting lost, constantly.

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I actually did it.  I did the Eagle Creek to Tunnel Falls hike, one of  the Columbia River Gorge’s crown jewel hikes, and though this page says it’s 12-miles round trip, they needlessly neglect the lengthy distance just to get to the stupid trailhead, so I’m booking it at 13 miles.  Which is to say: I hiked a half-marathon. And also: Why would anyone do a full marathon? Why do that to yourself? Photos and descriptive adjectives after the jump:

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I haven’t posted in a month! It’s because I’ve had nothing to say.  Portland is transitioning from its nice, mostly-mild summer to its nice, mostly-mild fall, before the bone chills, knotted wind, and constant drizzle set in. You’d better believe I busted out not one but TWO slow cookers this weekend to get some carnitas and beans slow-simmered to perfection. It’s not chili, but patience is a virtue, I’m told.

Not much else going on. I’m going to D.C. for Halloween and I have a really sad, sad costume planned.  I can’t compete with the Halloween-heads; it was never my favorite holiday (you should have seen some of my pathetic costumes back in the day).   And then I’m taking Thursday and Friday of this week off, for which I have the following adventures planned:

• Thursday: Hiking the Eagle Creek to Tunnel Falls hike. It’s a mere 13 miles round-trip, and that’s only, oh, 5 miles more than the longest hike I’ve done lately.  I’ve actually done some prep work this time, though: I have moleskine and electrolyted water and granola bars, if not weather-resistant clothing (it’s not supposed to rain).  This trail is one of the “If You Live In Portland, You’d Better Do This At Some Point” variety – in a relatively short (and level) span, you see about a billion waterfalls, including Punchbowl Falls and Tunnel Falls, and other dazzling stuff.  I decided to wait until the crowds thinned out, and I can’t imagine I’ll have a ton of company on a Thursday morning in October. Photos and war stories to come.
• Friday: Driving to Seattle for no real reason at all. I have a colleague and a friend, each with a new or relatively new baby, and I’m planning on seeing them both.  I’d like to try and see the Seattle Art Museum. Mooch a homemade dinner off of my uncle, maybe see a cousin. I’ve only been to Seattle once before, and it was on my Great West Coast Road Trip of 2006, so I did a lot of touristy stuff.  This time I’m just trying to get out of town.
• Saturday: WHALE WATCHING DAY.  Guys, I have a very short list of things I want to do before I die. It’s basically: Learn to surf.  Read Proust. Skydive. Visit the Seychelles. And see some whales.   So I’m getting to the San Juan Islands for a — wait for it — 3 HOUR TOUR. To see whales.  Orcas, primarily. Porpoises, seals, and other reject animals might make an appearance too, I’m told.  And by waiting this long, my chances of seeing Keiko are fairly slim (50%), but it’ll be beautiful and fun nonetheless.  This involves 3 hours of driving round-trip from Seattle, a round-trip ferry ride, and the whale tour itself.  A full day’s worth of effort and $75 to, let’s face it, end up disappointed.  But, hey.  Why not try?

What else? MusicFest NW came and went, and I made a poor showing.  I went to Explosions in the Sky, a show that I had waited 5 years to see (sadly, I am not lying), and during the 2nd song I became violently ill and had to leave.  I want to blame everything on swine flu, but apparently it doesn’t have a GI component, so I’m stuck with the lamer excuse of food poisoning, or something equally banal yet sinister.  I wanted to stay, but their loud experimental rock just doesn’t sound the same when one is puking in the Crystal Ballroom’s bathrooms.  I was really crushed. 5 years!  I also went to Modest Mouse and had to leave halfway through their set because it was so late, and a Sunday night (Hi: I’m old).  Big disappointments on my part, all around.

You know what? If I were dictator for a day, I would:

• Ban motorcycles within city limits.
• Means-test Capitol Hill internships.
• Require tortilla chips to be sold in individually-sized bags, like other chips.
• Force the Hold Steady to write a song that wasn’t about drugs.
• Slap a 40% VAT on every good and service sold within the wedding industry.
• Fine airlines for every flight departure > 30 minutes late.
• Reunite the Cars.
• Also Wings. The band, not the TV show.
• Give Clint Eastwood a Lifetime Achievement Award and then place him under house arrest, never to make a film again.
• Segregate all music venues into “under 21″ and “over 21″ sections.
• Implement the Calculus Tax.
• Dip Bruce Springsteen in bronze and set him up as a statue somewhere.  Mostly to make him stop touring.
• Ban senators from Twitter.
• Disable cell phones on all forms of public transportation.
• Mandatory yoga in the town square.
• Send all pugs, pitbulls, Labradoodles, and Bichon frises to the dog equivalent of leper colonies.
• Designate Willie Nelson’s birthday a bank holiday.

That’s all I’ve got right now. I’m feeling a little cranky today.

Two of my best friends from Smith, C. and R., live in Maine. They’re Mainers, which necessarily means they’re a bit different than the rest of us. A little more private, a little more reserved, a little more protective of their state and its natural beauty and special history. One’s into agriculture and animal husbandry; the other’s into teaching special-needs children. They work and go to school. They live simply. For fun, they like to attend church potlucks the way I attend, say, wine tastings, and rate them on the variety and quality of the culinary offerings. They pick fruit and turn it into jams and preserves that they then give to visitors, sometimes stuffing eight jars into one’s overnight bag if necessary (I should know; I once benefited handsomely from their largesse). Every Christmas, they bake Christmas cookies – not piece-of-crap generic sugar cookies, but really beautiful and delicious cookies and treats, and send them far and wide to their friends.

I know a lot of good people, but they’re two of the best.  They are kind and generous and fiercely, absurdly funny. They live too far away from me for comfort, but I suppose that’s my fault for moving 3,000 miles away.

They’ve been together for a long time, many years. At some point, they got engaged. When they realized that they needed a good (a marriage license) that their home state’s government did not offer, endorse, or recognize, they decided to go up to Canada to procure that good instead. So they did. Their visit there was apparently very cold, and full of mishaps, but they got what they wanted and rightfully deserved: married. They invited a bunch of us, a core group of friends from college and before, to celebrate their new marriage in a weekend-long fete up in Maine, about an hour outside Portland, in a lovely house they’d rented for the occasion. I drove up there with the Boston-based contingent and had one of the best weekends of my life. It was in October right as the leaves were turning, and as someone who lived in New England for many years, I’m well within my rights to say that Maine foliage is the prettiest foliage of all.

So instead of fluffy sequined white dresses, First Corinthians verses, and overcooked salmon entrées, we hiked around technicolored woods, ate lobster and steak and cheese and pie, laughed about the past, talked about the future, and drank an obscene volume of New England microbrews. Some whiskey may have been involved as well. We went around the room at one point and offered up our congratulations, our favorite memories of them as a couple, our joy at the fact that they had found each other, and that they were and are meant to be together, even if their state and their country couldn’t acknowledge that fact.  We are not a crying clan, so this was, you know, one of those moments, where everyone’s in tears but no one mentions it, then or ever again.

Here we are a few years later, and Maine, like a number of other states, has made some moves toward legalizing gay marriage.  The legislature there passed a marriage equality law that would have gone into effect on September 11, but because anti-gay-marriage types gathered enough signatures, the law is instead going to become a referendum for Mainers to vote on.  My friends C. and R. have been working tirelessly, giving time and money, to help the “No on 1” campaign that would defeat the referendum and make gay marriage legal in Maine.

After C. reached out to all of us who were at their wedding reception to give any amount, we responded in kind.  Donations made through August 31, I believe, are being matched by a generous donor.  We gave some.  The campaign needs cash to make calls, to canvass the state, to air ads like this one that was just released:

After the agonizing disappointment that was Prop. 8, I’m not all that confident in referendums to get gay marriage to a place where it’s finally outside of the volatile and contentious arenas of the courts and the legislature.  I’m hopeful, though. If anyone can do it, Maine just might be it.  To be able to shut down marriage-equality-opponents, finally, by pointing to Maine’s democratic process — not “unelected judges,” not “politically correct legislatures” — and the people of Maine saying that discriminating against gay couples who wish to marry is wrong.  Well. That would be a beautiful thing.

So by way of this intensely personal post, if you have any spare cash to throw around in the next couple of weeks, or if you can forego a few comic books or cocktails and donate what you would have spent, this is the place to do it.   I think it goes without saying that it infuriates me that I even have to write this post, or that I feel the need to defend my friends who wish to have their marriage recognized, as good, solid, hardworking, morally upstanding people.  I shouldn’t have to do that.  I should be able to attend their marriage ceremony in their beloved home state, not up in fucking Canada, a foreign country.  But we’re not there yet, so I wrote this.

And if you do donate, please comment here and let me know.  I’d love to pass along to C. and R. that my blog readers are awesome, generous folks, because I know you all are.

Well, another day, another Flaming Lips concert. As this was my 5th time seeing them, I don’t really have a lot to add at this point except to continue to post my Wayne-Coyne-in-the-bubble-ball photos and remind the world that pure joy is the feeling you get when the Lips launch into “Do You Realize?” at an outdoor venue on a perfect summer evening.  They played “Taps,” as they’ve done at every show since the Iraq War started; they played some new stuff from their forthcoming album; they had dancers; Wayne Coyne lavished praise on Barack Obama; there were confetti guns showering the audience with yellow and orange scraps; people in the audience threw around handfuls of glitter, and I still hope no one at work noticed it in my hair this morning.  All in all, nothing out of the ordinary.

As much as I loathe jam bands and as unimpressed as I am so far with the Grateful Dead, I am a giant hypocrite, because my feelings towards the Flaming Lips and their live shows are exactly the same as those of every Dead- or Phish-head towards their respective bands of choice.

I can’t help it, though.  They’re just the best live shows on earth, and they show no signs of ever getting less awesome even after doing this for so many years.  Sure, the crowd is always stoned as hell, but there is an undercurrent of love and (here I use the word again!) joy, a sense that the world is a wonderful place after all and that everyone around you is an indispensable part of your existence, that is palpable and powerful.  Having now written that awful, sentimental sentence, leave me to my shame and I’ll leave you to some photos after the jump:

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I had some friends in town this week and I took them out to the Oregon coast on Wednesday for the usual rounds in Astoria (the Column, the sea lions, the bridge, the Goonies house), but instead of going to Cannon Beach this time, I decided we would check out the Peter Iredale, which is the shell of a shipwreck from 1906.   Apparently, the point where the Columbia River meets the Pacific Ocean (right at the northwestmost tip of Oregon) is some kind of oceanic vortex that swallows ships whole, as it’s been the site of hundreds and hundreds of shipwrecks since the 18th century.  See also, Graveyard of the Pacific.  The wreck itself was unremarkable; the boat wasn’t carrying anything interesting and no one was hurt, apparently.  But it’s still very cool to have this giant steel remnant propping up from the sand like a modern art installation.  Here’s what it looked like when it was whole:

And here’s what it looks like now (from Wikipedia):

And while I can’t necessarily add anything with my sad little digital camera, here’s a photo I took and liked because it was so foggy out (at 3 pm on a Wednesday!)  Pretty.

I’ve been to Starbucks twice in the past two weeks, which is generally two times more than I visit Starbucks in any two-week period.  But last weekend I wanted an iced coffee after a hike in Forest Park, and in the mostly-industrial warehouse-and-wholesale area that the park borders, lo and behold, the only thing I could find on a Sunday was an empty Starbucks.  This morning, I had the most insanely delicious breakfast — blueberry-honey crepes, maple-tinged bacon, and an egg that in retrospect was superfluous — and tea just didn’t seem right, so I walked the block to the corner Starbucks bordering Whole Foods and bought a drip coffee.  That’ll teach me to remember to buy coffee beans.

Anyway, both times I was “randomly” selected to fill out a survey online about my experience, in exchange for a free tall drink at my next visit. The first several questions are generic “how was the service / timeliness / cleanliness at the store you visited”, but the last several questions are very clearly designed to get insight into whether a specific Starbucks store should be closed down or not.  As in, “how important is this particular Starbucks location as a part of its surrounding community”?  The guy who served me this morning handed me the receipt with the survey instructions and said, “And if you feel like commenting on the excellent service you received here this morning, just go online and do X, Y, Z.” [*Note: it actually was excellent service this particular morning.]

I haven’t been able to find mention of it on Starbucks Gossip, but this still feels a little weird.  I always thought Starbucks was a fairly data-driven organization, even if the data have led them in the wrong direction on a few occasions.  Not being a Starbucks devotee, I don’t really care if they shut down some locations to trim costs.  But please, leave me out of the market research that could potentially sack the guy who just handed me my drip coffee.

This is partly inspired by Carrie Brownstein’s recent quest to understand, and maybe even like, Phish’s music, but I just walked into Music Millenium and bought American Beauty by the Grateful Dead.  This has been a giant hole in my musical knowledgebase, and frankly, I’m a little ashamed that I’ve waited this long to listen to a Dead album.  There are other enormous voids to get to (Neil Young, for starters), but I can only tackle so much at once.  I’ll let you know how it goes.

…because this has been the heatwave from hell.  I sold my A/C unit a few weeks ago for $40, because I had never once used it while living in the Frosty Basement from Hell, which stayed remarkably cool even on hot days.  It’s a moot point, as it wouldn’t have fit into any of my oddly-shaped windows at my new place anyway.  So, yeah.  It’s been hot, to the tune of multiple 100-degree days, and a 105-er in there somewhere.  Remember: this isn’t Texas. This kind of shit is rare.  And only by the best of luck did I manage to have Moving Week coincide with Want To Die It’s So Hot Week.

It started last Sunday with it remaining well north of 90 even after 9 pm.  So my plan went something like this: sleep in my (third-floor) room Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday nights.  ”Sleep” is a misnomer, because I did nothing of the sort, just laid on my floor and panted and prayed for death or a new Ice Age, whichever was more convenient.  Thursday, I gave up, packed up the cat and my work clothes, and went back to my old house (we had it through this Saturday), where I locked myself in a basement room with Splinter and holed up for the night.  I slept on a bedsheet, using a stuffed horse for a pillow (my mom gave it to me when, oh, nevermind, it’s too complicated).  Splinter had a shoebox for a temporary litter box. It. Was. Ugly.  I left him there the next day while I went to work, too, with RV’s dog locked in the other part of the basement (for some reason, now our landlord is yelling at us about the Smell, but it was basically that or certain death for our animals, and we like them way more than we like our landlord).  Also keep in mind that at this point, RV was 90% moved out but still had some random crap lying around, and ants had basically staked their claim upon our entire kitchen (they must have sensed we were leaving).  It was a hot, sticky nightmare.

Wednesday evening I also went to a movie to escape the heat, and the only one that was playing at the right time was, yes, Orphan. I won’t even embarass myself further by explaining to you how bad that movie was.  (Similarly: 500 Days of Summer was overrated, and Funny People had an unsatisfying ending, but was funny).  From Thursday onward, it got to the point where it was 80-degrees or lower after 9 pm, so I toughed it out in my new place.  Uncomfortable, but I finally managed to get a few hours’ sleep.

At work, there was a clear divide between those of us without A/C and those with.  The Heat Zombies versus the Well-Rested Assholes.  I fell into the former category, obviously, and if you know me at all, I complain if I get one night with fewer than 8 hours’ sleep, so for me to get 20 hours or so over the course of 4 nights was just comical.  By the end of it I had gotten to that miraculous zone of psychosis that some folks get to after their third day on a liquid diet: I almost felt functional!  It was short-lived, and this weekend I tried to make up for it by sleeping approximately a hundred hours in a row.

We’re not out of the woods yet, but it was ugly there for awhile.  Take heed, readers.  Heat is no joke.  Just ask the French.