Morning:
Coldest yet, and I mean the biting fog-damp west coast cold that cuts through your clothing. Half my trip has been below 40 degrees (Fahrenheit, of course, where Burma and the USA lead the world in respecting seniority.) The pod draws so much attention (that's positive attention, Glenn) that the improved model will drop all pretenses and look the role. With the name of this blog possibly emblazoned on the side panels. Sad to say, another directory of pictures disappeared from the Nikon.
It's a good thing I followed advice and stayed off the mountain passes [and did not try to drive to Seattle]. This deep-freeze weather is my reminder why I moved to Florida. The midnight patrolman at my Walmart campsite is a trout fisherman who knows the terrain, and he said don't go there. He can't believe I travelled here on a total of $647.74 in travel costs. (A closer accounting shows $458.13 in gasoline and $189.61 in food.) The value of having ground transport here is inestimable, but I could not have afforded taxis or car rental on this trip at any price.
Checking around, I cannot find an eyeglass place that will sell me a pair of glasses with my own prescription from Florida. They will not explain why thy won’t accept it. I know, it so they can soak you for $200 extra. All the more reason to buy a 3D printer and start making generic lenses again. Here buddy, try on a pair until you can see. That will be five bucks, but you be careful now you don’t drive with them glasses. Oddly the law does not say you can’t, it only says you need “corrective lenses” and does not specify an eye doctor has to say so. It is pretty clear these eyeglass places have an agreement between them.
Most people have one single condition: myopia. Simple lenses could be sold as costume or sunglasses. Of course, with a disclaimer not to be used for anything else.
Daytime:
I stayed over this morning and took another motorcycle course. Most states require a three-wheel test, so I chose it where it was the cheapest. Yes, folks, most states recognize the certificate even if taken elsewhere. But I was not at all happy with the lessons. Why? Because it reminded me of university. To pass the test, you too often had to give answers that you knew were wrong. Also, teachers are not the best people to design clearly worded questions and that was evident in whoever wrote the test.
What? You want examples? Okay. The instructor had no sense of humor and graded by the book. He deducted points from my score because I did not “lean” into the sidecar turns. That’s is something unnecessary on a sidecar and can even be dangerous, so I’ve never done it. Changing the center of gravity on a moving object never adds stability. Then he explains to me it is to “hold down the chair”. Bullshit. If that happens, you are traveling too fast.
However, let’s be fair to that man. He weighed in at 280 pounds, so let’s follow his thinking. When one weighs half as much as the vehicle being driven, then shifting one’s fat ass around does, indeed, constitute a form of power steering.
Evening:
I drove 121 miles to Hood River, OR. This is my longest drive of my life along the Columbia River. I’ve crossed it, but rarely driven it. What a beautiful valley. I hope to see it again under better circumstances. Who even thought I’d see Yakima again, much less stay there three days some forty years afterward.
This last leg, three hours, was truly great scenery along Highway 91. I had time to ponder how things went. Something has changed, Washington isn’t the same any more. It seems to have lost the lead from when I recall it as one of the most progressive western states, the best place west of the Rockies.
It is evident everywhere, the famous western hospitality is not gone but it is surely and badly slipping. Even the bureaucracy that used to be far easier going is getting abrasive in an eastern fashion. The gut feeling is more and more regulation and regimentation everywhere, even the small towns. The home-spun friendliness is gone.
In every dealing with strangers, in my case mostly government offices, the easy-going Washington was absent, replaced by hard-nosed suspicion. I was constantly subjected to weird questioning. Like the land titles office wanting to now why I didn’t have a phone when I put “None” on the form. Is it their business why not? It’s countless little things like that.
My years at the cubicle taught me there is no such thing as an innocent question. I have a sixth sense of when things are a setup. For instance, at one government office they had those stylus pens. They ask you to sign the glass. Then later, they want you to sign a signature card. Why both? Because there is a difference. The stylus is a biometric device. It is not recording your signature, but he pressure you place on the glass. The clerk noticed I was intentionally pressing harder than I should, but was too slow to figure out what had just happened.
As far as that goes, the system already has enough copies of my signature and doesn’t really need any more to do their jobs.
ADDENDUM
Reading material is filling up my camper. I'm reading "The Sooner the Better", which I thought was a detective novel. The pink cover should have told me otherwise. It is adventure, but from a woman's point of view, or more accurately a typical woman. There is crime, narrow escapes, gunfights, but always from the woman's perspective, which to me seems childlike, shallow, and insincere.
Anyway, she is engaged to Gary, the med-supply exec, but takes 200 pages of flirting, swimming in her underwear and flaunting her legs to hop in the sack with Jack--a decision I know normally takes 15 seconds. That is correct, guys, your wife's decision to cheat on you takes fifteen seconds. Maximum.
The book moves along rapidly enough to keep me reading. Despite the above, there is a good mixture of intensity and unpredictability. I’ll keep reading even though I know where the emotional plot is going. The book is carefully weighted to justify to Jack because Garry is diddling the new secretary. The weak-minded always need these dual situations to justify their wrong-doing, or they lose their balance as well.
A week later I gave the paperback to a gal I met in California.
