Mount Shasta

We are sitting in Woodland, CA which is just about 20 miles north of Sacramento. The hotel rooms were cheaper so we stopped here.

So far the music on the trip has been pretty good, but then, I was the one who picked most of it. We left Cottage Grove at 9:30 this morning and rocked on down the road with a couple of old Creedence Clearwater Revival albums blasting. What a great way to start a beautiful day on Interstate 5. The sky was clear and blue as we rolled into the mountains of southern Oregon.  After a couple of hundred miles we stopped in the town of Weed, California for lunch.

Weed was really cool.

Welcome to Weed, CA

Apparently there was a little bit of a controversy a few years back in Weed. Someone wanted to change the name to Shastina or some such thing. A number of the residents got quite stirred up about it and nipped that whole plan in the bud, so to speak.

My theory is that it was the folks who had invested all of their money in the ball caps, t-shirts and coffee mugs that said “I got high in Weed” who put an end to that crazy idea. But maybe that’s not the whole truth.

Mary Pat in front of the Hi-Lo Cafe

There are a little over 3000 residents of Weed and the town was formed in 1901 and named after its founder, Abner Weed. After filling up the gas tank we had lunch at the Hi-Lo Café beautifully situated in the shadow of Mt. Shasta. The portions were huge. MP got some eggs and French toast and I got the Hungry Man breakfast of eggs, hash browns, ham, biscuits and gravy. Check out the picture and you’ll see what I mean.

A huge breakfast

I showed more discretion than usual and only ate half of the meal but that did not stop me from ordering the peanut butter pie and coffee. Everything was delicious even though I was unable to eat all of the dessert either.

We got back on the road about 2:00 and rolled into California while listening to Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. Soon we began descending out of the mountains. As we rolled into the upper portion of the San Joaquin Valley MP turned the iPod to a greatest hits collection of the Turtles.

The San Joaquin Valley is the bread basket of America. It is here that they grow a tremendous amount of the fruits and vegetables we eat in this country. We saw olive and orange trees and many more bushes and plants that we had no idea what grew on them. It was a perfect day for traveling and after 450 miles we stopped for the night.

Thanks for all the comments and emails from our friends and family. We will miss all the friends we made in Washington and of course the folks in Oregon as well. A special farewell to the Kerner family who will always be close to us and I want to give a shout out to that old goat of a friend of mine who turned me on to the Oregon Country Fair, the indubitable, Randolph. I love you man.

Once again, I would point you towards my wife’s version of this day. She has been known to tell the truth. Check out, http://www.managemypractice.com/road-trip/.

The camels have been fed and watered and the bags are being packed. The road waits for no one and we push on into America. Yahoooooo.

The Great Buster Keaton

We left Seattle today. I hope we come back someday.

I can ride and ride and ride with this good woman I call my wife. But even the best of couples occasionally sail into rough seas. Or at least they sail into some minor squalls. Or maybe at least a few ripples. I think you know what I mean.

We have busted our asses the last couple of weeks getting rid of stuff and packing. I won’t go into any more of the details. If you have checked into these pages at all for the last month, you already know what I’m talking about.

Today we finally got done. The movers came (and did a great job) and when we finally got everything out and into the car and the floors mopped and the fridge cleaned out and on and on and on, we got into the loaded van and headed south on I-5.

I felt a huge relief as we cruised down the road listening to David Bowie and John Prine and looking out the window at the birds and sheep and cattle. The sky was absolutely clear and we could not have had a more beautiful day. My wife put her feet up on the dash and we talked and laughed and even sang a little. But there had been a few squalls prior to this wonderful departure.

Both of us have been exhausted for the longest time.

Both of us have tried to keep up our energy and enthusiasm as we went along, but we all have to stop and rest from time to time and that usually slows the other one down.

I am a single purpose sort of dude and my wife thinks that this is basically a male trait. I find it hard to multi-task. I see the goal in front of me, or in some instances the next obstacle and I aim at it and try to achieve what needs to me done to get it out of the way.

During this whole process I aimed at each successive obstacle, as I saw it, and then rested and went on to the next one. When I woke up this morning my goal was to make sure the movers could take everything that we wanted them to. Every box they were to take needed to be sealed and everything that we thought we could take needed to be separated. Fortunately we added several items to the moving van category at the last minute or we probably would have had a problem, because the van is quite full. I feel a little bit like the folks moving west in the movie The Grapes of Wrath.

When I was sure that we had made those distinctions and the movers were going to take enough things so that we could get the rest. I sat down.

OK. I know what you are thinking.

There is still work to do, Bob. You can’t rest yet. But please, hear me out.

The sun was shining, which is not all that usual in Seattle. I was bone tired of not only lugging things around but even thinking constantly about what needed to be done. I just wanted to sit for a bit and soak up the sun as the movers finished loading the truck. Is that so bad?

When you have been married to the same person as long as I have, you can almost read their mind. If you can’t read their mind then you probably have not been married to the same person as long as I have. You just would not last.

I knew she was upset. She was working hard and I was resting. I knew. She knew I knew and that was all there was to it. I DID eventually get up and move again. I hope I did my share. We got on the road eventually and left.

In the car we laughed and sang and talked (as described earlier). We kid each other a lot and I think people should kid each other. If you can’t take a joke about yourself and hand back as good as you get, then I feel sorry for you.

While we rolled down I-5 my wife talked about us sniping at each other and in the nicest way possible said, “I love the different way you look at life and I really enjoy the different approaches you have to situations but there are times when I wish I had some hot grease to throw at you”.

I love that woman’s sense of humor.

We are in Cottage Grove, OR. We drove 300 miles today and are relaxing in a nice Comfort Inn.

Cottage Grove is a place I always wanted to visit. This is where they shot one of the greatest movies of all time. This is where they filmed the silent movie classic The General starring Buster Keaton.

I know my wife and I are going to have a great trip back to North Carolina.

P.S. If you’d like to read what she has to say about this amazing trip we are taking, check out http://www.managemypractice.com/road-trip/.