Estacada Part 1
I don’t get started nearly as early as I would have liked. I had planned on catching the first or second bus, 6:30 and 7:30. The red wine I drank last night, however (along with Sparks, C-Note IPA, Beck’s Dark, and more Sparks) ensures that I feel ten kinds of terrible when I roll out of bed at 9am. I needed coffee. I need eats. I stumble to the coffee shop down the street.
I get back, drink the coffee, eat some toast. Better.
I shower. Much better. It’s 10.
Check the bus times. I can catch a 10:35, transfer twice, and be in Estacada by 12:30. Not bad. Time to pack.
First up, clothes. It looks warm, but it probably isn’t. I pack my christmas-colored thick flannel and put on my hoody. Good enough. Next, water. One 32 oz Nalgene, one 42 oz Crystal Geyser bottle. Check.
Now food. I have a third of a load of Ciabatta, an avocado, some leftover pasta, an apple and a banana. Looks like I’ve got lunch and dinner!
I’m out the door at 10:30 to catch the bus at 7th and Fremont. The bus is a little late, but I’m still on schedule to make my transfers. I’m listening to the Radiolab podcast. Jad and Robert are talking about how they make the show. Jad is illustrating his sound editing techniques, which are completely mindblowing. He’ll string together bits of sound culled from the actual interviews and manipulate them, twist them, distort them, stretch them to make almost all the ambient sounds you hear. It’s totally unreal. I get off at 57th and Fremont to switch busses. While I’m waiting at the stop, Emily drives by and honks. She rolls down the window and we have on of those obnoxious conversations people have when one of them is driving a car. She hollers for me to swing by her work tonight. Pizza!
I switch buses. The 71 takes a torturous route southwards, traveling almost as far east and west as it does south. We bounce back and forth through northeast, then southeast, into my old neighborhood (what, what Creston-Kenilworth) and finally into the grim expanse of Milwaukie. I’m off at 70th and King to transfer. Some kind of ruined structure slouches in a field just off the road, adorned with a faded red and black “KEEP OUT” sign. Abandoned clothes and bedding litter the grass. People have lived here. A squat stone wall lines the other side of the street, shading some squalid subdivision. I call Tri-Met to see how long I’m going to be here. 14 minutes. Not bad.
My friend Marie in Colorado texts me. I try, and I think ultimately fail, to convince her to come visit.
The 31 crests the hill.
The idea that a city bus goes so far out into the world as this one does (more than 20 miles!) is completely enthralling to me. I always wanted to, but never actually did, take the McKenzie Bridge bus from Eugene to spend a day hiking by the river and growing slowly older with the trees. I think I’d like to. Maybe I’ll live in Eugene again.
continued tomorrow