7/19/14
Portland, Oregon
Utterly and royally toasted. It
seems that that’s what happens every time I hang out with my brother. Crater Lake NP is looking less and less
likely for tomorrow given the potential wisdom of driving 4 hours at 6 AM with
a severe hangover and less than 5 hours of sleep. My brother is convinced that it won’t
happen. I am convinced that it will. If it doesn’t happen tomorrow, it will
probably happen during one of my future trips to Oregon. I already have two more planned over the next
13 months, but I would prefer to use them to try and say PNW (Washington and
Oregon) Complete. It is doable. My definition of the PNW is different than
that of the NPS, though, so it wouldn’t really be official. I believe that we are all toasted, excluding
Sokol and Ceal, meaning it is just my brother and I are toasted, utterly and
royally. We are barely functional, and
we have reached that special place where something as mundane as a blanket
seems the funniest thing in the world.
After I closed from Ted Stevens, I got on the plane. I polished off a Quest bar, and the flight
attendant asked me what I wanted to drink.
My mouth was full, so I tried to ask him to hold on, but he thought I
said I was good. After I finished it, I
asked for a coffee and a scotch, which he readily brought. I fell asleep as soon as I was done. I woke up for breakfast and fell back
asleep. Sokol seemed to have calmed down
by the time we landed in SeaTac, but I was still mildly annoyed. I told Sokol I would meet him at baggage
claim, and I picked up some McNuggets for the walk. My bag was the first one out, and Sokol’s was
out before he was. I realized that I had
not received my email from Hertz.
Something was wrong. It turned
out that I had forgotten to make the reservation. I went up to the reservation desk and told
them that I was a Gold Member and had forgotten to make a reservation. She quoted some outrageous sum for the two
days, twice what I usually pay. I asked
about my Gold discount, and she said that there was no such thing. At that point I almost lost it. I always have a line item discount, like
5%. I said that I could show her a
previous contract. She had said that she
couldn’t look up my number since it was confidential. However, my previous contract showed my Gold
number and my discount code. She rang it
up, and it was less than half. I started
to walk away when I realized that she had only given me one day, which could
really eff things up. I told her, but
the total was still about 20% less than the price she originally quoted. No discount my ass. The car was really annoying, but it was
modern and advanced. I could overlook
the design deficiencies.
The convention
was less than a mile away, and we got settled in. The place was, for a lack of words, full of
nerds. It was like Comic Con for
adults. Other than kids of attendees, we
were the youngest people there. These
people knew their parks. However, I can
say with absolutely certainty that I had more official stamped brochures than
anyone else in that room. Sokol then
read my entry from this morning where I called out my behavior from the morning
and rightly said that it was unmanly of me to post it on Facebook instead of
saying it to his face. We made up and
shook hands. From then on it, things
were better, and the trip was more like I had originally imagined. The convention was mostly pretty boring, and
I spent a lot of time on my phone. They
had said that the club had visited 36 of the 40 stamping locations in
Alaska. During the break, I mentioned
that we had been to two more, which brought their total to 38. I grabbed a burger from the hotel restaurant,
which took forever, while Sokol had some cake.
I had more cake than was strictly necessary. After the break came an interesting talk
about “divested” NPS units.
We left
early and headed to Klondike Gold Rush NHP, whose superintendent was in attendance. Driving throughout Alaska with #NoGPS was one
thing. Driving through downtown Seattle
was a lot harder. It was really just a
stamp and pin and picture visit, and the stamp tester was more heavily inked
than any I had ever seen. Obviously the
club had made their way through. From
there, we walked to Pike Place. Our plan
was to go to the original Starbucks and for me to reload on cigars, though I
technically had enough to last me through the trip. I had lit up a Psyko for my official NPS
cigar, and it lasted until we got our dinner, fresh fish (cod and salmon) and
chips from Pike Place. Afterwards, we
headed towards the Starbucks on 1st and Pike. The line was pretty crazy, and when we were
halfway through, Sokol asked if the plan was to just have a cup of coffee at
the original Starbucks. The guy in front
of us then said that this wasn’t the original Starbucks. What the fuck?!? The original one was on Pike Place, not Pike
Street.
We headed to the other one,
which had just as long of a line, and I told Sokol to wait on line while I went
to the cigar store next door. They had a
great selection, including some really good high-end cigars at very reasonable
prices. I got 12, and he told me that
there was a 20% discount if I bought 24.
I figured that they would last, so I did. By the time he rang me up and I got back,
Sokol was next on line. We got a special
brew, which they brew by the cup, exclusive to Pike Place, and I lit up one of
my new cigars, a Casa Miranda. It was
only fitting since exactly 10 years ago, not 30 miles away, I fell in love with
a camp counselor named Miranda. My
father and I have had discussions about crushes and infatuation and love and
the difference among them. With Miranda,
I was 16 years old, and I had no idea what love was. She was everything I could ever wanted and
more. I just didn’t know it at the
time. I just knew that she was a face I
looked forward to seeing every day at camp.
I do not know much about her values or philosophy, but I do know that
she was would have been at least a 9 in terms of physical and chemical
attraction. She seemed highly rational
and is just as smart as I. All of that
is irrelevant. She is married now, and I
was camper while she was counselor then, not that she was interested anyway. I still think about her very often, not
really her, but the idea of her, that someone so smart, so pretty, so athletic,
so perfect could exist. I have no doubt
that, if I knew her better, I would find flaws, but I prefer to believe that
this ideal of perfection could exist.
The Casa Miranda cigar and the Pike Place Special Reserve coffee
complemented each other perfectly.
I had
finished the cigar a little after we were on I-5. We both had to U pretty badly, but we wanted
to wait until we got to the Oregon border to take an official U. With all the coffee, it was going to be
tough. I lit up a Joya for my next
cigar. With the windows opened, the
cigars were smoking very fast, but I was not in the mood for another. We finally crossed the Columbia River and saw
the official Welcome to Oregon sign and took our official Us. We also ordered the wings at that point,
though it would somehow be 3 hours before we started to eat them. I worried that we ordered too many. In the end, we didn’t order enough. My brother had said that he would be “available”
after 10 PM, and we were ahead of schedule.
We picked up the wings and got to my brother’s place a little before 10
PM. I didn’t realize that he lived in a
luxury apartment with a doorman and everything.
The doorman couldn’t reach them by cell, so we had to wait for
them. Eventually, I got a call from my
brother, telling me to look in the library, so the doorman went there, only for
them to walk in the front door. The
doorman then said that my brother was just effing with us, using that exact
terminology.
We went up, and I was
floored by the deluxe apartment they had with magnificent views. It was truly a grown-up apartment, and I
managed to get lost. The plan for the
evening was for us to get utterly and royally toasted while we recounted the
details of our journey. Somehow it took
an hour from the time we finished the tour to the time we were ready to eat,
drink, and recount took an hour. As we
got toasteder and toasteder, sillier and sillier things became funnier and
funnier. Crater Lake NP became
unlikelier and unlikelier. It is now
past 3 AM, and I am not quite done with this entry. We would need to leave at 7 AM at the
absolute latest to visit Crater Lake NP.
We could sleep in and fully explore Portland. I will more likely than not visit Portland at
least once a year over the next 3 years, so it would be a trade, not a sacrifice. Somehow the process of putting sheets on the
coach seemed hilarious. During this
whole time, I proceeded to write this entry while my brother and I continued
another of our Objectivism versus Buddhism debates. I will now close so that I can figure out how
to spend the day tomorrow.
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