Ok. No more daily updates. My coast to coast adventure is over (at least for this particular trip). Now it's time to get acquainted with this green town called Portland. There are many places to explore, and I can't think of any greater city to land in (and we've seen many cities and towns). I like it more here everyday. But my heart is still up in the air with not having a job yet. Oh, and to make matter's worse, my car just lost another life (it has lost several so far). The transmission is toast, and completely unrepairable. We certainly don't have enough to fix it, and I'm not entirely sure we want to anyway. It's a bit of a money pit, and I think we can do just fine here with our two bikes and the city's transportation system. Having a car is great, but having somewhere to live is more important.
So here I sit in our small room typing away on my laptop, reminiscing in my head about the places visited, food eaten, and friends made over the past.. how many weeks? I haven't even counted it out yet...ok, it was 2.5 weeks (18 days). I'm actually already missing life on the road, but it also feels really good to be sleeping in the same place every night, and not having to worry about packing everything up. It was the right time and place to drop our packs and make camp.
Every now and then I remember something about the trip that I forgot to write down. One of my favorite experiences was when we visited the Antique Arcade on Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco. We put money in a player piano (the kind that play on their own), and then Arlo grabbed my hands and proceeded to dance with me. We danced and danced, right there in the aisle, until the song was over. It was an elating 40 seconds! We were smiling and twirling, and life was good. It was like something from a fairytale or a romantic comedy. It's one of my fondest memories. =)
This trip has been a big lesson for me about planning. Some things work best planned out, while others are better when done spontaneously. I tend to over-plan things, whereas Arlo tends to under-plan. Neither are terrible qualities, but they both have drawbacks. We have slowly been working on learning from the other. It's a process, and I feel I have made several big steps in a good direction.
Here's another arcade experience I forgot to mention: we went to this nickel arcade called Wunderland in Beaverton, OR (right next to Portland), and it was soooooooooo coooooooooollll!!!! It's the arcade-goers dream! 5 cents per play? YES PLEASE! Some of the better games cost 20 cents, but that's still less than a quarter!!! Some of you know that I'm a sucker for those games where you drop coins down into this bed of many other coins, and they're slowly pushed until you add enough to make them fall over the edge. I once spent $10 in quarters at an arcade in Cape May, NJ in about 60 seconds on one of these machines. And now look! I can support my addiction for much less! Nickle arcades are the best things ever. EVER! It's a good thing we don't have any within biking distance from our place, because we wouldn't have a place very long...
Poor Arlo is still sick. =( His ears are clogged and he can't hear well because of it. Plus, his body feels poopie. It's hard to be aggressive about getting a job when your body just needs to rest. I have two potential jobs, and I super-triple-doggie hope I get one of them!
I hope my next update is about my new job... that would be nice. Very nice.
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