Driving to Oregon

Here I am, in Oregon, standing in a light rain (we call it drizzle here). Didn't I just live in Utah? Wasn't it just really cold and snowing? Yeah, I thought so. So what happened and where am I headed?

This is the first entry of a long string detailing my travels in the next year or so. I thought this would be easier (and faster) than writing 20 different e-mails every couple of days. The basic outline is this:

Early January-move everything to Oregon
Mid January-Fly to Thailand and climb beautiful limestone walls over sandy warm beaches
March-ish-Fly from Thailand to Nepal and trek through mountain valleys and raft some rivers
May-ish to September-Go back to the states and guide on the Rogue river in S. Oregon
Fall-ish-Head to Peru and Chile for several months-Machu Pichu, the Atacama, the Futuleufu

So this is the first part. I spent the first week of the new year packing up all my stuff. When I moved to Utah in August of 03, it was an enormous feat requiring a full pickup truck and a 20' Uhaul. For many reasons I have been slowly getting rid of all of my unnecessary possessions over the last couple of years. Everything I own now fits into my Honda Civic. Everything else was given away, sold, or recycled. Damn that feels good...

I drove out of SLC on Sunday the 6th of January. I wasn't going to leave until Monday because of a forecasted snow storm, but Emily convinced me to head out in front of the storm instead of after it. After a sad goodbye at her work, I took to the road. There was only about 2 hours of snowy driving before I hit sunny skies and smooth driving. Well, as smooth as a really overloaded Civic with two bikes and a roof box can be driving into a 50 mph headwind. At full throttle, 75 was my max! The drive was more or less uneventful and I made good time.

I pulled into the Full Sail Brewery in Hood River for dinner after 12 hours of continuous driving. The beer and spinach salad never tasted so good! I had heard about a collective of people from my friend Clayton that allow you to stay for free at their place, called couch surfing. Since I had to stay the night in Hood River, I decided to see if there were any couchsurfing spots available. I checked this all out before leaving and had been in contact with a woman near Hood River who was willing to let me crash at her place for the night. I met Alyssa at the brewery and we got to know eachother a bit before heading back to her place. She is a school teacher and had to be up early, and I was tired from driving all day, so we said good night and I crashed on her couch. She was so friendly and generous! It was a great experience and I would highly recommend couchsurfing.com to any of you looking to do some budget traveling.

In the morning I ate a quick breakfast at Alyssa's house, did some yoga, then went in to Hood River for an interview with ECHO River Trips. I had been talking with the manager about being a river guide next summer and this was the chance I had been waiting for. I was definitely anxious about the interview because I have been wanting to be a river guide for several years now. We walked down to a coffee shop, then sat around talking about traveling, rafting, kayaking, etc for the next hour or so. I walked away with a job guiding on the Rogue this summer, and at least a couple trips down the Middle Fork of the Salmon River in Idaho! There have been very few days in my life that I felt as successful as I did then! I hoped in my car, and finished the last 3 hours of my drive to Eugene. It was surprising how many beautiful verdant fields there were, most of them filled with cute spongy-looking sheep. I met my brother and dad for lunch at my favorite place to eat (Cafe Yumm) and spent the rest of the day catching up.