The good thing about being home-schooled is that the field trips are way cooler than those of the kids in regular school. The highlights: 62mpg hybrid fuel economy, baby! But at a price:
- driving 60mph when the posted limit was 70
- passing gas stations while my eyes turned yellow
- giving up the rest stops (in Oregon, spaced humanely every 30 miles or so) in order to keep the momentum (again, eyes turning yellow)
Next highlight: I don’t blame Chicago for this, but it’s got to stop. What kind of town is Corvallis that its ’symbol statuette’ is this innocuous watery phallus? Since it’s about 4 1/2 feet tall, I kept seeing its silhouette at night out of the corner of my eye, thinking it was a hooded orphan girl slinking through the shadows. It looks far better in this picture than from any vantage point on the street.
In Daveville, the symbol statuette would be something like this:
But there were little treats along the way like the Korean War memorial off a sleepy Oregonian exit.
And of course Portland was all rainy and hardly walkable for those without very significant raingear, but I parked long enough to check out some of the residents that were more prepared for the weather.
