Trip Report, part one

[jinian]

At 7:30am I was awakened by my mom calling me on the damned telephone. We had discussed the idea of her calling to tell me what ferry she'd be on, but she'd left that information on my voice mail while I was out fo sushi the night before. I am still not certain why calling at 7-bloody-30 was thought to be a good idea. I would've been able to get up later if I'd been going to work. Oh well. I got ready, packed a couple of things, cuddled the Wim, and posted my away message. I caught just the right bus and got down to the ferry terminal to meet Mom five minutes early. Turns out the ferry was even earlier than that, but she hadn't been waiting long.
We drove to the southern suburbs of Seattle and acquired one aunt and three cousins, who all elected to ride in said aunt's convertible rather than trying to cram themselves into the cruel pseudo-seats behind the actual seats in Mom's pickup. Go figure.
Much driving ensued, and I read Issola, which is very good indeed. In the mountains, I saw a trio of what looked like young male elk browsing back among the trees. I'm only 90% sure they were elk, but they certainly looked like it. We saw some deer, too, and various smaller beasts, and raptors here and there. From Western Washington temperate coniferous forests to similar mountain flora to very different desert plants to little city of Bend.
We arrived in Bend around 7 pm and found a vacancy that would sleep all six of us at the Rodeway Inn. Upon going to the room, we discovered that it was completely disgusting. I'm used to hotels where even if you don't get a non-smoking room they've made some attempt to cause it not to smell of a thousand years' worth of encrusted tobacco smoke. The Rodeway Inn is not such a place. There was no way I was going to survive a night in there. My aunt sprayed Febreze around liberally and I tried to convince myself I would live.
Dinner at Applebee's was pretty crummy. I offended the dork waiter by telling him I wasn't a lady, but what's a person to do? Maybe that's why our food ranged from lackluster to crap, I don't know... I only tipped ten percent, and I usually do twenty. It takes a lot to get me that low.
I had pretty much decided that I had to get another room, and a sniff of the main room confirmed that for me. I went and rented their only non-smoking room that was still open, which had a king-sized bed and cost $15 less than the giant room with three beds. Whatever. It's worth it. I invited Mom to stay with me, partly to share the cost and partly out of an altruistic interest in being the only one kept awake by her snoring. She accepted.
Digging geodes just seemed like a situation in which one would require those spiffy pants where the legs zip off so they turn into shorts. Wim has some and I'd been wanting them for ages. Mom and I took an expedition to Target and found some, on clearance, even. Yay! They're not the perfect size, which would be fairly difficult to find for my body in men's pants, but they didn't fall off, and they'll probably be better once they've had a wash. I hunted for a bikini, too -- since nobody had mentioned we were going to stay someplace with a swimming pool, I hadn't brought a suit -- but didn't find what I wanted (though the blue tankini thing was cute).
And then we went to bed. Yep, Mom still snores. I was mostly able to sleep despite that, though I woke up a bit early.

Comments

[marzipan-pig.livejournal.com]

I love those pant/short things. my favorite pant/short story is when I saw one of my friends dealing with them (making them into pants I think?) and got all fascninated and he said "I KNEW you'd like these!", which cracked me up, that I'm that predictably taken with multi-purpose garments, ha ha!