Oregon - Days 1-3 - Stress and Tempers

8/23/14

Vancouver, Washington (Fort Vancouver)

Sometimes in life you get a second chance at something you effed up the first time around, not always, but sometimes.  It could be something huge, like kissing a girl you should have kissed a year ago, or it could be something small, like revisiting a NPS that you should have visited a month ago.  What matters is not how you effed up the first time around but rather how you succeeded the second time around.  I suppose there is some irony to the fact that my last official entry was written in Vancouver, British Columbia, and this one is now written in Vancouver, Washington.  To cross from Oregon to Washington entails no effort at all, while crossing from Washington to British Columbia took two hours.  After I closed en route, I managed to get some sleep but not much.  PDX was one of the nicest domestic airports I had ever seen, very much deserving of its number one ranking.  It was hardly any effort at all to get to my car, check the legroom to make sure everyone would be happy, input my brother’s place in the GPS, and be on the road.  As soon as I got on the freeway, he called me to tell me to be quiet when I came, the exact same thing that I had already been told in email.  He reminded me where the couch was, which bathroom to use, etc.  I kept replying, “Just like last time?”  It could have been a year instead of a month, and I still would have remembered every detail of the layout of his apartment and where to go.  A few minutes later, he called me, reminding me to turn off the lights.  That was when I missed my exit.

Now, I was pissed.  It added 7 minutes to the drive and all because he couldn’t just trust me to figure out what needed to be done.  It was two weeks ago all over again, when Stuart kept calling me while I was driving to pick him up.  It did him more harm than me, since I had my music and cigars, while Stuart was bored out of his mind.  It was the same thing here.  It didn’t matter to me if I spent 7 minutes listening to two Taylor Swift songs, instead of sleeping.  I knew that I would get plenty of sleep.  I parked in a lot since the price was extremely reasonable for the night, and it was a block away from his place.  When I got there, I changed, took my first official U of the trip, and was soon asleep.  I knew that I would sleep fitfully, so I didn’t bother to set an alarm.  I woke up a little before 7 AM, showered, got ready, and was on my way.  My first stop was breakfast at Petit Provence, the top-rated breakfast place on TripAdvisor.  I already knew what I wanted: northwest hash, which was like corned beef hash, but made with salmon.  It was possibly the single best cooked to order breakfast dish I’ve ever had.  I accompanied it with crisp bacon and lackluster coffee.  After breakfast, I made my way to the fort, where I proceeded to write this entry, which I will now close since the VC is about to open.

Portland, Oregon

After I closed in Vancouver, I ditched my God of Fire, took care of my business at the VC, and then walked around the fort for a little bit before making it back to the car.  From there, I drove back to my parent’s hotel, arriving at 9:55 AM.  My brother then texted me to say that he was running 10 minutes late.  That meant we would have to wait around for 15 minutes and then go to Hertz to add my mother’s name to the reservations so that she could drive the car.  Instead, we made them wait, going to take care of our business at Hertz, arriving back at the hotel close to 10:30 AM, now almost 30 minutes behind schedule.   It was okay, we had built in a 90-minute buffer.  Wow, I’m mamash toasted now, and I don’t know if I can finish this entry, so I will be have to be brief about it.

Anyway, my brother's fiancee was freaking out about not getting to the venue in time to tour it before their afternoon wedding.  I could go into every detail and minutia of the tour, but I will just say that it was a very nice venue, though not one where I would want to have my wedding.  They had me take about 300 photos of them in various poses and from various angles, holding their “Save the Date” sign.  I was happy to oblige, even though we were now 45 minutes behind schedule.  From there, we went to the hotels, where we had a nice lunch and toured the hotel.  If I had thought travelling with them was hard, eating with them is even harder, they agonizing over every decision on the menu.  My mother was the same, and she gets that from her mother.  My father and I ordered quickly and easily.  From there, we headed to the hospital where my brother works.  Our original plan was to arrive at the hospital at 3:30 PM, allowing 1:30 of Dutch Time, and have dinner at 8:00 PM, pushing it back further if I did not have 3 hours on my own in Portland.  However, my mother found a brochure for a cigar store in Portland, so, all the sudden, that 3 hours did not seem enough.  I need the full 3:30.  I was going to drop them off at the hospital and then make my way on my own.  It would have been perfect timing, for me at least.  For them, although it was the plan to which they all agreed, it would have effed everything up.  My brother insisted that I go see the office, a process that he said would only take 10 minutes (Spoiler Alert: it didn't).  I said that I would do it if I could be in the car by 4:45 PM, and they would take the tram back, as originally discussed.

Of course, nothing ever works out right with them.  It was almost 4:45 PM by the time we got to the entrance from the car, a walk of about 2 minutes, which took 10.  The door was locked.  Not wanting to deal with whatever bullshit would follow, I said, intending it to sound far more humorous than it did, “Okay, bye,” and headed back to the car.  There was another complication.  The tramway was too far for my father to walk, and it was the only means they had to get back to the hotel.  I said quite simply that I would wait around if we pushed the reservation to 8:30 PM, allowing me the full 3:30.  They would not agree to that, and we compromised, agreeing to an 8:15 PM reservation.  That seemed fair, until I realized that there was no time limit or push back time agreed based on how long we spent at the hospital.  Of course, everything took forever there, and the tramway was not running.  In other words, they would have been mamash effed if I had left them.  That seemed to be lost on them, and they seemed determined to stay with the 8:15 PM reservation.  It would be tight, and it would mean I would have to smoke in the car for it to work out.  I parked a little too far away from the cigar store, but it was nice to walk around 82^nd Avenue, pretty much a clone of Central Avenue.  The cigar store had a great selection, and I got about 20 cigars, including an Opus X Lost City for now, hands down the best cigar legally available in the US.  I picked up a bottle of rye and then headed back, now ahead of schedule, telling my parents I could pick them up that the hotel at 8:15 PM.

Dinner was great, though the service was awful, exacerbated in no small part by three of their inability to order, and we spent the meal discussing how Ayn Rand influenced the three Margolin men and what the purpose of life was.  My father gave an Aristotelian definition of happiness, while I opted for the Objectivist “man’s own happiness is his highest moral purpose.”  The two women gave BS hippy answers.  After dinner, we (excluding my parents) got mamash toasted on the rye.  Actually, Adam had already had 4 drinks before dinner, we each had a pre-dinner drink, along with two glasses of wine.  Ceal did not have any of the rye, and it just took one shot to get each of us mamash toasted.  Eventually, we just degraded into pure silliness, laughing at the silliest thing like whether or not carrots were causing my brother to gain weight.  I then proceeded to write this entry, which I will now close so that I can get some sleep before I head out to my morning NPS.

8/24/14

Portland International Airport, Oregon

Two weeks ago, I wrote how all’s well that ends well.  This trip ended well.  I did everything I wanted to do.  I had great meals and better cigars.  I got two new stamped brochures.  I saw another state capitol and state fair.  I bonded with my future sister, learning to accept her as she as is and that I can like her, even love her, without having any shared values.  The mutual respect is there, surely, though.  I always saw her just as an extension of my brother, but, due in no small part to the fact she annoys me less than my brother does, I have recently started to think about them more independently.  Anyway, on paper, it was great trip, so why is this not a triumphant airport entry?  I could blame the heat exhaustion from walking around the state fair in the sun in my suit.  I could blame the arguing that is inevitable when five such different people travel together.  However, the fact is that after my “The Past 12 Days,” entry, nothing that happened on the trip could be better than those 12 days.  The Day 0 entry was a masterpiece.  I can tell the difference between a good entry and a bad one.  That was an excellent entry, and the one person whom I most wanted to like the entry did.  In fact, the Day 0 entry was so good, and the Day 1 entry so bad, that I had no desire to publish the Day 1 entry.  This entry will be somewhere in between, but I know that I need to publish it less I start the beginning of the end of the Travelogue.

After we got mamash toasted last night, and my brother and I passed out, him almost passing out on the sofa they made up for me, me on the chair across from it.  We did manage to get to the proper beds in the end, though not without his fiancée yelling at him for some reason or other.  My plan was to be on the road at 7 AM, getting to Fort Clatsop at 9 AM, spending 30 minutes at the fort, turning around, and picking everyone back up at the hotel at 11:25 AM for an 11:30 AM brunch at the hotel.  I also wanted to stop at the Saturday Market to pick up a present.  When I travel, I usually bring home an assorted bag of cheap keychains, magnets, pins, etc. to give out as gifts at the cigar store.  I then pick out a couple of nicer, more thoughtful gifts for the people about whom I really care.  On top of that, I always get myself plenty of souvenirs.  For this trip, I had no desire to do any of that.  There was only person whom I wanted to buy a gift, so I suggest we push back the original schedule 30 minutes, or even use some of the 90 minutes allotted for brunch to stop at the Saturday Market.  It seemed such a simple idea, especially since we had budgeted in like three hours of buffer time total.  Moses had an easier time parting the Red Sea than I had getting the group to agree to push back the schedule 30 minutes.  There was no rational reason why everything could not be pushed back 30 minutes, especially since it was my flight that was the limiting reactant and that the state fair was my idea.  Anyway, even the original schedule got all effed up.

Of the five people on this trip, there are 10 combinations of two people.  Excluding possibly my brother and I travelling alone, if any of those combinations of two people were travelling together alone, there would not have been a single raised voice the entire trip.  I have traveled alone with each of my parents, and there is rarely so much as an unpleasant moment.  I have gone hiking alone with my brother’s fiancée, and we enjoy each other’s company, in spite of our differences.  My brother and I manage to drive each other crazy even when it’s just the two of us.  However, with the five of us travelling together, we spent far too much time arguing and far too little time enjoying each other’s company.  The arguments ranged from the ridiculous (my brother and his fiancée arguing over him ordering liver and onions, despite the fact that he hates it) to the more normal (who would pick up the bottle of rye for us to get mamash toasted) to the more serious (when various people kept others waiting or were inconsiderate to their feelings/needs).  The bottom line is, with two people on this trip, those arguments would not have occurred.  Sure, my brother would still have ordered liver and onions, and his fiancée would have still thought it was crazy, but if she wasn’t stressed that we got a late start that morning, maybe she wouldn’t have said anything.  That’s the thing.  We each have things that drive each other crazy.  Okay, there is no good example I can give that won’t insult anyone, but, if I were travelling alone with my mother, whatever idiosyncrasies of hers that might have annoyed me would have been a non-issue, totally dwarfed by the beauty of where we were.  The same can be said about each individual member of the group, each of the 20 permutations in the car.  However, when you have 20 different permutations of tiny little things that annoy each other, you very quickly have a toxic environment, so it is no surprise that tempers become short and that arguments are quick to develop over unimportant things.

Case in point, I got a bit of a late start, but I was able to make up the time on the road.  I stopped for some roadside espresso, and I was at the fort only 15 minutes behind my original schedule.  I had budgeted 30 minutes at the fort, but I knew that 15 would be plenty, so I was looking good.  This was a triumphant moment, my 200^th official NPS unit, so I took the H. Upmann I had brought, having smoked an A. Flores on the ride to the fort, and did everything I need to do to make an NPS official.  This was certainly a significant NPS, the end of the Lewis and Clark Trail, where the Corps of Discovery spent their last winter before turning around.  I lit up my cigar and took some pictures at the reconstructed fort.  I announced, “That’s Official,” and I was about to leave when I realized that my pictures were not official.  I was not holding my NPS brochure.  I retook the pictures and was then told that I could not smoke at the fort.  I didn’t care.  I was on my way out.  The timing was looking good to get back to the hotel by 11:25 AM, 11:30 AM at the latest.  I knew gas would be tight, but I didn’t have time to stop.  The GPS kept showing an 11:29 AM arrival as I approached Portland, until I missed my exit, and that effed everything up, along with the fact that I had no cell service, so my parents, who tried to confirm that I would be there in time, were unable to reach me.

I am a person who values punctuality, so much so that it bothers me far more to be late myself than to be kept waiting.  If I am going to be more than five minutes late, I will make every effort to notify the person as soon as I know that I will be late.  As soon as I missed the exit, I realized that I was in a very bad neighborhood and totally lost, my GPS barely any help.  I was going to call my parents to let them know I was running late, but I didn’t have any service.  My GPS said that this detour was only adding 5 minutes and that I would be at the hotel at 11:35 AM, only 10 minutes behind the original schedule.  Of course, when I got there, I saw that I had received a voicemail from my mother and a text from my brother.  I responded to both, saying that I was downstairs.  It took them another 10 minutes before they were ready.  This was what set the tone for the rest of the day.  They were pissed that I was late, and I was pissed that they weren’t ready when I got there 10 minutes late, saying that since they couldn’t reach me, they had no way of knowing when I would be there, so they didn’t bother getting ready until I contacted them.  Needless to say, tempers were frayed, and any little thing that occurred for the rest of the day would snap them.  That was exactly what happened.  I do not need to go into details of who snapped at what point, though I suppose that my brother’s fiancée’s temper did not snap.  The other four of ours certainly did.  The place we wanted to go to for brunch had too long of a wait, so Adam suggested we just wander around the area at that point.

We were now 40 minutes behind schedule, and the rest of the party had no interest in the Saturday Market.  I also knew how much of a fool’s errand it would be to try and find a good place for brunch, not to mention that I had lost my appetite at this point.  I suggested that I take the car, go to the Saturday Market, and then come back to meet them for brunch wherever they were.  I had the utmost confident that I would be at the table before they had ordered.  They were convinced that that was impossible, so that idea was vetoed, too.  The only option that was offered was me skipping brunch and picking them up on the way to the fair, skipping that Saturday Market, or skipping the fair.  None of those seemed a reasonable or rational option.  It is a tangent that I was absolutely right about having enough time to head back and forth before they ordered.  I made this suggestion at 12:15 PM.  They did not order until 12:50 PM.  I then came up with another suggestion.  They could drop me off at the Saturday Market, go get gas, and I would be done there before they got back from the gas station.  My brother and his fiancée both agreed to it, my parents just not caring at this point.

We probably spent more time arguing about this than we would have spent just going.  That seemed to be a common theme this trip.  After sitting down at the table for 30 minutes, the waitress coming by multiple times, she asked if we were ready to order.  My father, repeating his joke from last night, said that anyone who wasn’t ready to order wouldn’t eat.  I liked that idea.  I still had no appetite, wanting to save what little appetite I had for eating fried food at the fair.  I didn’t even want coffee.  After my mother was finished, we headed to get the car, picking up the rest of them at the restaurant.  It was 6 minutes from there to the market, and I would wind up only needing 5 minutes to find the perfect present.  I am not someone who agonizes over decisions.  If I see something that I like, I get it.  It was 11 minutes, less time than we spent walking around trying to find a brunch place, never mind the time it took them to order.  Of course, my brother and his fiancée had to also walk around the market.  They can go there any weekend they want, yet they needed to delay us to explore the market.  When all was said and done, we were only an hour behind schedule, which was not much in the bigger scheme of things, especially with my 3 hours of planned buffer, but it was enough to completely destroy whatever remained in any of our tempers, except for my brother’s fiancée’s.  Hers managed to stay intact the entire time.

By the time we got to the State Capitol, all of the tempers had been mended, except for my father’s.  In a
previous Facebook post, I mentioned how people with quick tempers are quick to mend.  That is not true for my father.  His temper is quick to snap, and it takes a long time for it to mend.  We did a minor photo shoot at the Capitol before everyone was ready to go.  I had an idea for a Facebook photo of me and Ceal at the Capitol, making some joke about how a libertarian and a progressive going to the State Capitol.  I couldn’t quite word it, and I knew that the picture at the fair would be better.

We got to the fair, and I saw the perfect picture, along with the perfect caption, but it was a minor production to get the four of them to line up in the frame to take the picture.  We walked into the fair, and I just wanted to do two things: see the prize boar and eat fried food.  I was disappointed on both fronts.  They didn’t have any interesting fried foods, nothing like the Texas or Minnesota state fairs, just the traditional carnival mainstays, nor did they have a huge pig with a nutsak the size of my head.  They had a big sow, but it just wasn’t the same.  My brother was determined to pet the sleeping pig, which, of course, woke her.  I will not go into the details of the rest of the fair, but everything was just underwhelming.  The corn dog and beer the only decent part.  We all met up about 2 hours after we walked in, ahead of our original schedule, but Adam and Deborah were determined to try the rides.  I said that I would join them on one of the high thrill rides, but they had no interest.

We then made our way back Portland, my parents arguing about how fast my mother was driving and hitting some traffic along the way.  We all got out of the car at the hotel, and it was time to say our goodbyes.  The social situation to which I am most accustomed where I am standing with four or so other people saying goodbye is closing time at the cigar store.  Like the end of a hockey game, we all shake hands and say goodbye.  I started to shake everyone’s hand, each one asking why they weren’t getting a hug, obliging each one with a hug.  After I did it on my father, it became a joke at that point, but it was too good of a joke not to continue with the rest.  I was well ahead of schedule, but I knew that I would want time at the airport to pick up whiskey and wine and to write this entry, which I proceeded to do as soon as I got to the gate.  We will actually be boarding soon, so I will close so that I can upload my photos and decide if I want to publish this.  I’m leaning towards just publishing it and emailing it to my family without promoting it on Facebook.

8/25/14

En route, NYC Taxi 2R32

On Friday, I mentioned to one of my co-workers that I effed up with my summer trip planning.  I have taken three trips from July to August, not including the Labor Day trip, and all three of them were to the Pacific Northwest.  When I mentioned that, my coworker basically said that it must be nice to have to worry about that.  In truth, after having taken two trips to the PNW, this last trip was underwhelming.  Somehow, this 2-day trip to Oregon was more stressful than my 18-day trip to Alaska.  I was so stressed by all the arguing that I got no enjoyment value from my two adventures to the NPS, only fulfillment value, rushing because I didn’t want to keep anyone waiting, not that the courtesy was returned.  In fact, I got so stressed that I didn’t even remember to properly close the entry for the trip from the airport, which is why I’m writing this entry now.  I have set the precedent that once I have a) cleared Customs and b) arrived at my gate for the final leg of my flight back home, I can declare the trip closed.  I just forgot to do that last night.  Anyway, the reason I went to Portland was to enjoy spending time with my family, not to check two NPS units off my list.  It was a free trip, so I can’t complain much, but, just like when we visited him in Seattle, it was high stress.  The reason that the trip to Seattle was high stress because of my brother’s annoying habits, my father’s short temper, and my mustard allergy.  I actually cannot remember a single other unpleasant moment than what will always be remembered as “The Great Mustard and Ice Cream” fight.  During that Seattle trip, I just wanted to drink a lot of coffee.  I didn’t care much else what we did, just as during the Mammoth Cave trip, we flew in on Wednesday, did all the WHS Wednesday afternoon, and I could have flown home happy Wednesday night, so I didn’t really care what we did on Thursday and Friday.

This trip was different.  It was a 2-day trip with five people, which means that is next to impossible to accomplish anything.  I just wanted my own time to visit the two NPS units, which I had accomplished before my brother and his fiancée were ready to get on the road, anyway, my leisure time in Portland, and to go to Salem.  It seemed simple enough.  If I was doing it on my own, I could have done the whole thing in one day.  The state fair was underwhelming, and the sun was in the wrong angle to take a decent picture with the capitol building.  I had to rush through the NPS, and it seemed like we spent more time arguing than not.  I had initially suggested that we get two cars, do our own things during the day, and then meet up in the evenings.  That might have been the best idea.  It was what it was.  Next stop: Colorado to see three National Parks in 3 days.