On The Road, Chico to Eugene

Already the summer of 2011 has turned out to be quite the memorable one. After moving out of our apartment on the 24th of June my girlfriend Eri and I, all of our belongings packed into the back of a Ford truck my Father rented for the day, drove to my parents house in Sacramento California to unload it all for storage in the upstairs bedroom. The next day Eri and I, my younger sister and my mother loaded into my small car and drove the remaining distance to my hometown of Chico. This hour and a half drive made a good prelude to what was just on the horizon, as our plan was to drive, with my little sister in the back seat of my parents Prius, north as far as Seattle Washington then east to Wisconsin, where we planned to visit with family for eleven days before flying from Chicago O'Hare to Narita Japan on the 28th of July. Quite ambitious but nothing the two of us are not confident in undertaking.

The first six days of our tramping was spent in Chico assisting with Dad's plans to build a deck over the hole in the backyard which used to be a pool but hadn't held water in it for nearly fifteen years. This, as it turned out, was not an easily executed task, as it was already averaging 90º F by mid June and one afternoon even broke 100º F. We were graced with two days of thunderstorms which gave Eri and I some time to do some last minute preparations for our trip, but none the less it remained quite hot even during the downpours.

The time we spent in Chico, though brief; filled mostly with deck building, was gratifying. I was grateful to have been able to see Sara off before her big move to Paris France, and the handful of other friends we ran into were all cherished encounters.

On July 5th we began our long drive across the continental United States, totaling more than 2,800 miles. Our first stop was a modest 251 miles to our friend–my old Peet's Coffee co-worker–Reid's father's sixteen acre property in Ukiah California. It was a lovely time, we camped right on the Russian River under the stars laying next to the fire in our sleeping bags and listening to several different musician friends of Reid's taking turns playing tunes they knew on their guitars. The next day we woke up to the morning sun beating on our faces, then made breakfast of scrambled eggs and bacon. We drove a short distance down the road to a large Buddhist community appropriately named The City of Ten Thousand Buddhas. The first thing we noticed nearly the same instant we crossed the thresh hold of the massive Chinese temple styled gate marking the boundary of the city, Prosperity Ave, as I recall the street being apply named, we encountered, in fact nearly ran straight into, a living peacock sitting, statue-like, on the lowest hanging branch of a large Oak. The City of Ten Thousand Buddhas is home to more than a thousand practicing monks and has a boys K-12 school, girls K-12 school, a home for the elderly, and a post office. Reid told us that the area was formally a mental health facility years ago, then sat vacant for several years before being moved into by the monks in the eighties. It was easy to see that this was indeed the case as many of the buildings, including the impressive front gate entrance, looked as though they had been kept exactly as they were, adding only impressive Chinese styled rooftops to enhance their appearances. This made for some very funny looking buildings which remained simple western, flat, and rectangular from the bottom up with huge awkward looking though beautifully artisan-ed rooftops, which seemed to have been lifted directly from an ancient building in China and dropped there to rest.

Leaving Reid's place after such a short visit was a bit bitter sweat, I was happy that we were able to meet up with him but I was sad that it was for just a few hours. Driving all the way through the night and into the early part of the morning we made it to a tiny motel called the Relax Inn in Ashland Oregon. The next morning we woke, took showers and packed up the car, heading into the downtown area around 10:30am. We had a lovely breakfast at a local cafe and walked around for a couple hours before heading to the New Theatre for a bit of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.

The Show was absolutely breath taking. So well done it was actually haunting, and we all left the theatre, I think it's safe to say, a bit shaken. The director made the right decision in changing the gender of the title role, and because it was a small theatre in the round, the actors where able to bring the audience directly into the production, sometimes getting us riled up from within the audience itself.

Our next stop was Eugene Oregon, though as we learned later, not really. Our friend Jessica and her boyfriend Ido had invited us out to Jessica's parents ranch for the weekend to camp out and enjoy some friends company, spending the daytime hours at the Oregon County Fair, apparently a Renaissance fair on acid. The ranch was actually about twenty miles outside Eugene and our GPS device had a hard time finding it. It didn't help that we made it to our destination till around 10pm and when our friendly GPS personality, we affectionately began calling Roberta, informed us we had arrived we were literally spot in the middle of nowhere. Emerging from the car the only clue we had that we were at least in the right county were voices in the distance and the faint glow of a camp fire; now the only question was, how to to get out there.

Walking back to the road we quickly realized our mistake, the correct driveway was about twenty feet further than Roberta had indicated so back in the car, one last quick drive for the day. A knock on the door, then hugs and a few quick introductions later we were lead to the camp, or more appropriately described as the Viking homestead. And it was, Jessica's brother Azoulas built the camp as a kind of nature return/retreat haven. There was a main homestead lodge like tent that was built with long logs, used as support, and canvas draped across the the top ceiling beam dropping around the sides to the ground. Standing inside of the structure was pretty impressive, and roomy. At least ten feet, maybe even as much as twelve feet to the highest point of the ceiling, a long mess table in the center of the room with enough room to sit fifteen people comfortably, two rooms on either side, my guess if I had to make it would be about 450 square feet in total. Three other sleeping tents of fare sizes circled the encampment around a nice sized fire pit.

The Oregon Country Fair was the reason for the gathering of friends at Jessica's so the next morning we dawned our hippie garb – for some this meant zombie make-up in addition to M.C. Escher pants – then headed out for a day of renaissance fairing on acid (only we were not the ones on the LSD, the fair itself was). Other fair goer's costumes were the best part of this fair, and from what Jessie told us, seems like the only way to fully appreciate the fair is to be one of the lucky majority who get invited to camp out and party when the regular fair goers go home for the evening. There were some really fun shows, like the small circus group, who reminded me of a traveling gypsy group from the turn of the century, and the man who demonstrated how to start a fire with nothing more than two sticks. The drum circle was really where the party was at and I noticed some of the same drummers the whole day through, really impressive if you consider the fact that it was about 95 °F throughout most of the day. Our Friend Ryan joined another guy at the gate who was giving out free hugs and pretty much stayed there through the rest of the day, but almost everyone else in the group got separated at some point and trying to find everyone was a task that we were not able to accomplish until we made it back to the ranch, where we were delighted to discover that our group had nearly doubled. Azoul had met some friends and invited them back to the camp to join us for the evening. Lucky for us two of the girls were musicians and they charmed us around the fire with various original songs they had composed themselves. It was sad the next morning saying all our goodbyes, we had to get back on the road in order to keep on schedule to Uncle Jon's in Washington while the rest of the group prepared for another day at the fair.