Saturday begins with the slow, uncomfortable daze of a hangover sans the knowledge I at least had a good time last night. I ache all over from the flight, and it’s only four hours after I fell asleep. Somehow I managed to set the alarm to radio and it thusly squaks static at us. There’s no point in trying to ignore it, or trying to go back to sleep, I have to get the rental in a couple of hours anyway.
Jenny and Bob can’t take me back out to the airport so I can pick up the car from the airport rental place which, for some reason, happened to be closed at 2am. Both have to work, so first it’s a call to the rental place whose ads tell me they’ll “pick you up”.
Lies.
Amanda’s apartment is much too far out of the way for the lone guy working the airport location to come, he suggest calling one of the in town locations. I do so, and I discover that they will not take me to the airport location, are not open when I need to return the car, and that I cannot pick the car up in town and drop it off at the airport.
We make our way to the bus.
However, it turns out we’re bloody brilliant and have read the wrong day on the schedule…either wait 20 minutes, or walk to Albertson’s and call a cab. Seeing as I desperately need breakfast, and caffeine, we opt for the latter. The walk is nice, pleasant, I realize the thing I miss second most is the mild Northwest summer. In San Antonio during August it’s 100+ degrees at 6:30pm, usually over 90 by the time I leave for work at 7:30am, this is more than nice.
Albertson’s is exactly the same as I remember it, and unremarkable. We make our small purchases and find the cab waiting for us in the parking lot. Off we go.
The cabbie turns out to be sort of weird, which isn’t shocking (and he’s less strange than any number of other cabbies I’ve interacted with). He tells a long, elaborate story about credit card debt, Reno, non-payment, bankruptcy, having an all cash job…in the end it seems to amount to having failed at life. I guess that’s why he drives a cab in Eugene, and is now being sued by his creditors for failing to pay somewhere in the neighborhood of $8000. That’s what happens when you spend beyond your means.
We arrive at the airport, $30 with tip. I tip the guy mainly because he was pretty entertaining, and not all that creepy. The counter experience with NCC-1701 rental car is pleasant enough. Then we wait.
Renee and Dave, ye olde sister and brother-in-law, arrive from Japan by way of SFO at 1:16pm. They look completely exhausted. Well, she does, Dave looks like he could go on another world trip immediately, get hit in the head with a brick, and still be ready to take care of problems. He’s got an air of unshakable confidence: I guess that’s what being hard enough to be at the top of your SEAL class and then only wash out because you got hypothermia (from lack of body fat) and had to be revived from death will do to a man.
On first impression they seem like really nice folks, and I’m glad they’re here. Maybe the familial relationships are less than ideal, but I get the feeling they’re here to help. They collect their rental car, say that they really just want to get right on to Coquille, and we all leave the airport.
Amanda and I stop off by her place to pick up our stuff, and we get on the road about 2:00pm or so. It’s sort of a long drive, and neither of us really wants to be there, so we take our time.
The drive along I-5 South between Eugene and Roseburg isn’t exactly the prettiest drive in the country. It’s better than, say, Wyoming, Nebraska, Oklahoma, North Texas, and most of the other dull, flat, boring parts of the country. However, the drive along 101 is much nicer, so about 15 or 20 miles south of Eugene we cut over toward the coast. The drive is very pleasant, longer perhaps, but beautiful. We mostly just sort of chat, which is an under appreciated aspect of relationships, I think. When you live 1600 miles away and see each other about once every other month chatting in person is an incredibly enjoyable experience. Phone conversations just aren’t the same.
The Pontiac drives okay, and has plenty of power, but I wouldn’t trust it to last more than 40,000 miles and it’s ugly as hell. Note to self: do not purchase Pontiac.
Most of the winding trip is fairly uneventful, Amanda is sometimes made nervous by my use of cruise control, and having never driven a car with it before I must admit that it’s a somewhat surreal experience. Setting the car to a speed and just steering is what I imagine a full-scale version of Disney’s “Tomorrowland” car-ride might be like: 70 mph, just turn the wheel and forget you’re actually in control of the vehicle. The feeling of the car accelerating on its own is the most disturbing, I simply cannot get used to it.
We stop because I have the smallest bladder known to man, and Diet Pepsi is a very important thing for my lady love to have at all times. I can understand this because I lead a highly caffeinated life. The entirety of my last year in college was spent on a steady diet of Rockstar and booze*. I still go through six to eight caffeinated beverages a day, I can hardly blame the girl for wanting caffeine. I do tease her about her choice of drink, but only because she’s made a poor one.
After a pit-stop, or was it two, we end up in Coos Bay, the home of Lucky Star, Amanda’s absolute favorite restaurant. It’s early for dinner, and apparently Ye Olde Godparents have dinner waiting, or dinner that will be waiting, but Amanda requires The Best Crab Puffs In The World ™, and thusly she will have them.
The food is actually pretty great, and I never would’ve suspected such from a tiny hole-in-the-wall in Coos Bay. It is also cheap, which is excellent.
We dine, I have the largest pot stickers I have seen in my life, and we then depart for the rest of the trip over to Coquille. It’s only about 25 miles, and doesn’t take all that long.
We get in about…6:30 or 7pm I guess. It’s early evening, a cool breeze coming in. We sit at the table and munch on a little bit of food, I am unable to turn down bread under almost any circumstance.
After dinner we sort of putter-about and chat. It’s good, I like everyone present and absolutely adore one of them, so it’s as nice as one might expect given the circumstances.
At some point Amanda and her godmother, Kay, start going through pictures. They’re hoping to put together a slide show or something, using the resources from an old family friend who happens to be a photographer. I am enlisted to scan and clean-up photographs, using some weird photosuite that I’ve never used before. I do all right with it, but the results are sub-optimal.
After remembering to check into our hotel, we return to Bill and Kay’s where Amanda proceeds to make a list of pictures she wants in the slideshow, and lays the CDs out for use in the morning. Those I’ve scanned are emailed.
Around 11pm we head back over to our hotel: A little 50s-looking place where the manager still comes around the corner from her living quarters if you ring the bell late at night. We close the windows to make the place more comfortable, watch a little TV, and cuddle for awhile before drifting off to sleep. The bed is terrible, but at this point I’m too tired to care.
I’m not looking forward to tomorrow, but there’s no place I’d rather be.
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* More on that little period in my life here.
