Rhonda Bracey: At Random

Oh. My. God. Oregon is such a DANGEROUS place!! Seriously.

We left Brookings at 7:40am and headed north. At 7:44am there was a 5.9 earthquake off the coast of Oregon out from Port Orford which we went through less than an hour later. We didn’t feel anything as we were in the car (or out taking pictures of the very scenic views), but we heard it on the radio news. This is AFTER we’d passed through Gold Beach where we saw the “Entering Tsunami Zone” and “Tsunami Evacuation Route” signs for the first time. Obviously California is immune from tsunamis as there are no such signs there, but there are in Oregon.

Add to these the signs for elk and deer, and trucks. BTW, the elk here are very bright – they know which 2.5 mile section they’re allowed to cross! e.g., ‘ELK 2 1/2 miles”. Clever elk. But the trucks aren’t so bright – we saw many signs for ‘Slow Trucks’ 😉 And the wind is fickle too – we saw several signs for ‘Wind Gust’. Just one wind gust, presumably. We didn’t know if we got it or not. Later we saw a sign for ‘Abrupt edges’, when the ‘edge’ was about 2″ deep… this is after driving along Highway 101 where one section had no shoulders and about a 4 foot (or more) direct drop off. No signs there!

While the views were scenic, the rain wasn’t. It rained on and off all through the 6 to 7 hour trip, and once we were on the I-5 (we cut in from Florence to Eugene), there were some phenomenal downpours and purple skies. Fortunately, most of the traffic slowed to a crawl for the worst of them.

So, with the bright elk, the deer, the slow trucks, the earthquakes, and the potential tsunamis, along with the torrential rain, we’ve come to the conclusion that Oregon is indeed a dangerous place to visit!

Just kidding, Oregon’s actually very beautiful, and we made Portland by 4pm after stopping for a bite to eat in Reedsport late in the morning. I finally got to have clam chowder in a sourdough bun, with melted cheese on top. Terrible for the cholesterol, but it sure tasted good!

So now we’re settled in to the hotel for the next 4-5 days. Typically, the more you pay for a hotel room, the less you get. There’s no free internet here, or wireless – you pay $10 a day, or $45 for a week, plus $25 a day to park the car (which is cheaper than San Francisco, but still a hefty price). The conference registration is tomorrow afternoon, and then it starts.

LONG trip today. We left Santa Rosa, California around 9:30am this morning, heading up the 101. We turned in towards the coast at Cloverdale, heading for Mendocino, crossing the Mendocino County Line which was made famous in a song somewhere, sometime…

The drive to the coast was very narrow and winding, but also very beautiful. Lots of Californian Oaks with dripping mosses and lichens. The day was glorious. Mendocino was as pretty as ever, and as it was the first time Char had seen that part of the Californian coast, she was as taken with it as anyone who sees it for the first time.

We continued making our way up the coast (Highway 1 at this stage) until we rejoined Highway 101 at a tiny spot called Leggett, where we took the car through the drive-through tree. (photos to come…). Then we followed 101 to Eureka and beyond, until after some 9 hours of driving we arrived at Brookings, OR, where we grabbed a room for the night. In total I drove some 337 miles, and there’s another 333 to Portland tomorrow…
Some of the highlights of today’s trip:

• Magnificent redwoods
• Lush green forests
• Brilliant coastline
• Raging oceans
• Very winding roads
• Lots of rain in parts; beautiful sunshine at other times; cloudy for the rest; some fog in places
• Very cold wind!
• Expensive fuel ($3.79 average in northern California, but only $3.50 immediately over the border in Oregon)
• Smooth driving and handling in the Mazda6

Char and I walked down to where she was doing her training this morning. We grabbed a bite to eat at “Specialty’s” along the way, then she went on to the training group while I went and checked out the Wells Fargo Museum that Char had recommended, located – not surprisingly – in the Wells Fargo Bank. This museum is probably not something that most visitors to San Francisco know about. I found it interesting. And those coaches were really cool. You could actually sit in one upstairs. Surprisingly, they held 9 people INSIDE and another 9 on the top fully loaded (3 on the driver’s bench and 6 up on the very top).

I then went back to the hotel to upload some photos, do final email checks, and check out. Because the valet parking would’ve gone in to another 24 hour period (and at $43 a day I didn’t want that!), I asked them to get the car and I loaded it up (on the hotel staff’s advice), then put it in the parking garage up the street.

Off I went. I visited the Museum of Crafts and Folk Art (they had a textiles exhibition on), but for $5 it was a bit light on… Then I went to the SFMOMA (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art) where I saw Klees, Mondrians, Dalis, Lichensteins, Warhols, Matisses, etc. So it was a bit of an arty farty day, not the normal stuff most people go to see in San Francisco.

But I had a problem. I realised that the hotel staff had really given me bad advice by telling me to put the luggage in the car and not leave it there in storage for collection late in the day. Silly me. I got all paranoid and stressed out that the luggage was at severe risk (memories of my sister and her husband having all their luggage stolen from the trunk of their car and having to deal with embassies etc. to get replacement passports).

So after leaving SFMOMA and having a quick bite to eat at a Californian Pizza Kitchen (HUGE appetizer!), I skedaddled back to the parking garage, checked that the luggage was all there (relief!), then drove on out of there.

But what to do for about 3 more hours, until Char finished her training course?

I ended up driving down to the Fisherman’s Wharf area and on to North Point as I remembered it being a nice place to just sit and relax, and vaguely remembered that there was open parking there. Yes! I found a 4 hour parking spot in view of where I sat. I read my book, glanced every so often at the car, and just chilled out looking over the bay watching the ships come in and go out. The day was nice and sunny, but the wind was pretty cold. Some very brave people were swimming….

Char called just before 5, so I headed back to the financial district in downtown San Francisco, picked her up and we hit the road north. The traffic was surprisingly good considering it was peak hour, and we were over the Golden Gate Bridge within 30 minutes.

We headed north as far as Santa Rosa, checked in to the local Holiday Inn Express, and had a nice meal at Applebees. Boy, have they got the marketing down right!! They do these ‘dessert shooters’ for $1.99 – they are just mini versions of desserts in a smallish glass cup. By being small and cheap, I’m sure they get MANY more people eating dessert than when they had those big slices of pie etc. I had the BEST Key Lime Pie ever – it was superbly tangy and with hardly any sweetness. Most Key Lime Pies I’ve had in the US have had a little tang and a LOT of sugar. Not this one. Highly recommmended.

The Holiday Inn Express had free wireless broadband, so at the moment Char and I are sitting on our respective beds working on our latops. Sad, really. And geeky. We even talked about playing Scrabulous online while we’re in the same room, as we don’t have a Scrabble board. What a couple of nerds!!

My new phrase of the day is “artificially heatened” (as in ‘artificially sweetened’), and it applies to all those houses and businesses in southern California that keep the heating turned on, even though the weather and temperature outside is magnificent.

No wonder the Americans are massive consumers of energy. Every private home I’ve stayed in so far has had the heating turned on, day in and day out. It’s springtime, people, and the daily temps are hovering around 75F. You don’t need the heating on. Open a window or door and ‘let the sunshine in’, and the breeze.

It’s springtime in the US, and that’s ‘skunk time’! I’ve seen a few dead in the road, but fortunately haven’t run over any.

If you’ve never smelt skunk, be aware that it’s highly pungent and almost impossible to get out if you get the smell on you – or under your car!

After doing some laundry, I left Monterey around 10am, stopping in Gilroy to change some of the underwear I bought a few days ago (I got the wrong model!). Then it was back on Highway 101 to Mountain View where I had a lovely lunch with Shelley, one of the Lone Writers group.

Travelling through Silicon Valley is such a thrill for a geek… The 101 goes right past these buildings: Intel, Sun, Yahoo, McAfee, WebEx, and more. Just think, back in 1995 when I drove that route often in a two week period, virtually none of those companies existed, or existed in the same way they do now.

I left Mountain View just on 2pm and was in the hotel in San Francisco just after 3pm. Finally, I have wireless broadband!! So I can catch up on blog posts, upload photos etc. Though I think I’ll be doing most of that tomorrow morning, as I’m waiting for my friend Char (from Boston) to return to the hotel room, then we’ll be out of here to go the the monthly dinner meeting of the Berkeley Chapter of STC.

(Anyone notice a theme with many of the blog post titles for this trip, yet???)

Update: Char and I just returned from the Berkeley Chapter meeting where we both met some lovely people. The dinner was good (home-cooked Thai green chicken curry), and the panel of speakers was good too. A nice feature was for each person to introduce themselves to the group prior to the main part of the meeting starting. That gave me a good sense of who did what, and where. The main meeting was a panel who focused on questions about what they looked for when hiring tech writers. While Linda U kept the panel on topic, some of the discussion roamed into related areas such as outsourcing, contractors, and the like. There were some good questions from the audience, and some interesting comments from the range of panelists. Two of the panelists worked for very large corporations in the Bay Area (Oracle and IBM), while the other two worked for (or had recently worked for) smaller organisations. However, in all cases, they each managed a team of at least five technical writers and associated professionals.

An absolutely gorgeous day today, so I’ve decided to take the scenic route via Highway 1 and the coast…. More later…

We’ve missed doing this drive the last few times as the fog or the rain have meant that it’s not worth it. I think once the road was impassable because of a rock slide.

It took me three hours to get from Paso to Monterey, as I stopped quite often on the trip to take photos! (I’ll upload them later…) It’s a VERY winding road for much of the length of the trip, but you get the most SPECTACULAR views of the ocean and the land sweeping in to it. Oh, and there are spots where Elephant Seals come to sun themselves.

I arrived at David’s mid-afternoon, then popped out with his ex, Lee, for a coffee and a natter (oh, and a detour to a fabulous fabric store…). Later David, Rita, and I went to Heather’s home to celebrate her husband’s birthday and have dinner. Heather is such a lovely person – I first met her when she was about 16 and she was lovely then too! More great food and wine and company…

Rita asked when and how David and I met, and we figured it had been 25 years ago since we met in Tahiti. Wow! 25 years!! So David called one of the Canadian guys who was on the same trip, and we all talked for ages. Greg was blown away to hear from David, and then from me! I haven’t seen Greg for at least 10 years, though I get to see David every year or two when we go to California. What a great blast from the past! Greg still keeps in contact with the other two guys, but told us that another who hung with our group died a couple of years back.

I saw the funniest thing when driving up Highway 101. I passed one of those pickup trucks with the big wheels and raised reasonably high off the ground. Hanging down from the back near the tow hitch was a sack, containing a set of balls! They looked like ram’s or bull’s balls.

Too funny! I laughed out loud, but didn’t have the opportunity to take a photo.

Update (7 April 2008): I’ve since found out that these things have a name—Truck Nutz—and there’s a website dedicated to them where you can buy your own. Go figure. I’m still wondering how my friend Dave had that URL right on the tip of his tongue when I mentioned them at one of our conference dinners…