Pre-dating this for when I should have been typing it!
Monday was really honestly just a driving day. Nothing overly exciting happened. In exchange for photos, one of my room mates bought me Starbucks. My drink of choice over the con-weekend was a Iced Dirty Chai, and a the only food I really bought there were danishes. Blueberry on day 2 and Cream Cheese on day 3. Got my shower prior and started loading up the car on the coffee run. Unfortunately, car smelled RANK. I left my coffee cup in there from my Billings to Spokane leg and I guess the sugar and cream must cooked all weekend. Oops. That, and the air blowing smells bad too.
Daren has agreed to give me a scented cone because it's that bad. (or because I asked.)
Anyway, I had Anisa (our room head) in the car with me. We headed out about 9:15am, got my car parking sorted and hit the road. Of course, the GPS couldn't get anything done right for awhile so I did totally go the wrong direction. ANYWAY once I got on the right road, getting out wasn't a problem and we hit the highway.
The city of Spokane itself does have plenty of cute things to offer, the firework show, live performances, festivals, plenty of food options and shopping all over. A china town, it's got full city stuff, though there was a great debate about if Spokane actually has delivery pizza (it does).
I ended up eating so much sushi I got sick of it, so that's pretty cool.
Anyway, road again~ my water didn't freeze so that was annoying. Would've been nice to have COLD water but meh. I hear north of Spokane by a short ways has trees and hills and is nice, but Spokane itself is FLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT. about 20 minutes to the west it gets pretty again too. Trees, hills, life in general. On and off, other than being a cripplingly slow boring straight drive (i'm used to the 80mph that Montana/Wyoming are, 70 at the high is murder), there are lots of hills and such. Honestly though, everything in Washington is brown. Even when I got closer to Seattle, it was still pretty brown... Heading down to Olympia/Tacoma area was pretty finally. Anisa lived in that area and it was lush and green for once. Most of the plants are suffering from a drought and intense heat, so they've lost their beautiful glow and are already dieing off and changing colors. Tacoma traffic I thought was bad, but really it wasn't... the next place I hit was Portland.
Shoot me.
Never driving through that again. Unfortunately I was hitting it at about rush hour, which really shouldn't be called rush hour. Maybe Sloth hour. Everyone forgets how to drive, and it doesn't help that Washington drivers already suck and they're right on the boarder to portland. Driving over the bridge into portland was pretty cool, I wish I could've really looked around but TIGHT packed traffic meant my eyes were on the road.
I have no idea how long it took me, but I'm pretty sure it was stop and go for an hour and a half. Before I got to Portland I had gassed up (and was briefly targeted by some guys wanting to leech gas off of people, no thanks.) so at least I didn't have to worry about not making it. But I didn't really get free of traffic until Williamssomething, wilsonsomething. Not sure, W something. Atlas is in the car.
There was some crazy bitch who wasn't paying attention to the traffic and repeatedly almost rear-ended me. I brake checked her once and she did, for a minute or two, back the fuck off. But the rest of the time she'd fly up my butt and there was no room between us. I'd crawl forward, she'd crawl right up my boot. GTFO. I dodged away from her as soon as I could.
The drive did pick up after that, and I was able to text Daren that I was hungry. Agreed to pitch in, and he ordered pizza hut (double cheese, single pep, hand tossed). The roads in Eugene are a little confusing for me, the GPS didn't do great directing me and I got off the highway at the wrong exit. Fortunately that just meant going through town, which was super cute (kinda like pearl street in boulder, Co). Driving into the sun, I was worried that I'd not see Daren's apartment, but I did! I'd googled it so knew what I was looking for vaguely, and I spotted his car and parked next to him. Called him, since this complex is actually way bigger than I thought it was, and 2 wasn't exactly easy to spot from where I was. He popped out as I called him, and we went on in to see his humble home.
My bro lives like a bachelor. He cleaned up a bit for my arrival, but he's still totally a single boy. I drug some of my stuff inside after Pizza (which arrived moments after me, and was delicious!) and then went out for a stroll around the block, he let me play Pokemon Go while we were walking. IT'S TRUE, there are actually people just, everywhere, playing it. Standing there catching pokemon, gathering at stops, fighting Gyms. I even beat a Gym (though we had other team Valor people come help, I'd totally be Instinct.)
Headed home and realized there were no clean towels so ended up doing laundry while watching Kono Suba like the total nerds we are. Didn't get to bed till after 11 due to laundry and anime and gabbing.
Eugene is beautiful. Gotta say, it's what I pictured this area being like. A little sad it's not more wide-spread beauty. Washington still is very American West. Lots of Native-American reserves out here too.
There's some stinky canals around here, but it's apparently for weather protection of some sort, pretty cool.
So Daren and I have plans today (as I'm writing this on Tuesday) to go see his friend Miles and watch anime for a couple hours. I need to do my laundry, I have one outfit left... but that might be for tomorrow. Today is Miles, probably Safeway, taking it easy. Might go out to dinner tonight but I'm dressed like a hobo so we'll see. Dad gave us some dinner money so we can go out to eat on him.
I'll be here until Thursday, when I head out to Mountain Home, Idaho.
