Coasting Through Life ...

Back when I was a youngster, I could stay up for 2 days straight dancing with the devil, drive for 15 hours without a break to get home, and go straight to work without thinking twice about any of it.  Well, I’m sure I could have, had auto-mobiles been invented back then, and were I able to maintain gainful employment.  The point is that I’m not the tireless young rascal that I’d like to imagine, however erroneously, that I once was.

I drove over to the Oregon coast for the weekend, which, according to the googly map, is about a 9 hour journey.  That was fine for the trip westward, as I was stopping at a friend’s house about 2/3 of the way across, and crossing a time zone and all made it a merry li’l jaunt of about 45 minutes.  I even took time, in fact, to interact with some of the wildlife for which the U.S. Northwest is so famous (I’m the one on the left with the odd sunglasses):

Above: The fur of the North American Brown Bear is remarkably similar to indoor/outdoor carpet, and their noses have an oddly plastic texture.

The locals were quite impressed by my show of courage, though they must have been somewhat concerned for my safety and called the Bear Containment Authorities, or whomever one would call in a situation of such obvious danger, for as I was pulling back on to the highway, I saw several cars with lights a-flashing race past to where I had just departed.  Silly Oregonians ... I was just fine.

The rest of the drive to the coast was mostly uneventful; the number of times I got lost was not in the double digits, and I eventually reached the mighty Pacific Ocean:

Above:  I’m not sure if that’s Japan or Korea off in the distance.  That’s Oahu in the middle.  If you look closely, you can also see, just above the QEII, the arriving bubble that carried Glenda The Good Witch.  She gave me directions to the house in which we were staying.

Back to the part about being an oldster:  I was going to stay Saturday night and make the entire return trip on Sunday, but the thought of driving 39 hours in a single day (likely with a … umm … touch of … influenza, let’s say) made me a little sick inside, so I packed up my walker and took off early that evening.  I know ... what a pansy, right?  My friends in Washington were a little surprised at my late night arrival, and by “surprised,” I mean Sherry walked out of the bedroom and asked “Why in fucking hell are you here?”  She’s a sweetie.

The next evening, after several rest-stop naps, I finally made it home, where the dog immediately bit me and The Live Acorn didn’t return my call to say hi.  I can’t wait ‘til next year - I’m sure I'll be WAY younger by then.