Oregon & San Francisco

Building forts and pitching tents in the Pacific Northwest

August 11-19, 2007

Saturday, August 11th:

Since our current definition of a trip is “3 or more people, with at least 2 visiting a city in which they do not reside,” I am offering a recap of the “trip” that began when I arrived in San Francisco and was met at the airport by Ross and Joanna (hereafter: Jojo). After an adventure-filled ride home from the airport, we arrived at Ross’s house in San Rafael and set up camp in his bedroom. And by “set up camp,” I mean “built an awesome fort.”

Our fort had no moat, but Ross’s face was the next best thing for keeping out intruders.

Ross and Jojo offered for me to color in the activity book, but I was intimidated by the raw talent of works such as “Wedgie and Space Boy” and the fill-in-the blank for the fruit B_n_n_ (only the linguistic elite would have recognized this as the word “bontnx.”)

Exhausted by all the intellectual electricity in the room, we eventually put the fort to good use, passing out in it.

Sunday, August 12th:

There are few things more entertaining than waking up while watching a Lifetime Original Movie—especially when that movie is called “My Best Friend’s Husband.” Key scenes included:

1. The symbolic dropping and shattering of a plate

2. A scene in which the mom, dad, young-adult daughter, and mom’s best friend go to see the daughter’s boyfriend’s band perform. For some reason, Mom’s Best Friend has a handheld tape recorder for the concert. Mom and Dad dance, start fighting, and run outside dramatically. Mom’s Best Friend runs after Mom, precious tape recorder in hand. Ross voiced her thoughts: “Don’t worry, I got the whole thing on tape.”

3. Mom’s Best Friend and Daughter have a brief and unconvincing heart-to-heart.

MBF: I just wish I could say some magic words to make this all better.

Ross: Abra cadabra.

I think we all lost our appetites watching that, but luckily we gained them back in time for brunch. The café we ate in had one of those machines where you put in a few quarters and get a button, so we each decided to spring for one. Mine had a pineapple on it and said “Hi Pineapple”; Jojo’s featured a Hawaiian-looking flower; and Ross’s had a whole bunch of something lined up in rows—we think it was either pastries or pacifiers.

We walked around San Rafael a bit, then headed into San Francisco to meet up with Kathleen.

We all spent the afternoon walking around SF and returned to Kathleen’s place for a special viewing of the She-Ra DVD I’d given her for her birthday. I think we were all better people after seeing She-Ra fight “ for the honor of Grayskull.” Kathleen also gave me a few important gifts she’d been saving up for me, including:

-2 road trip CDs from her recent drive up through Oregon

-a plastic weaving craft thing she’d started one childhood summer at camp (she’d recently found it at home in Florida and determined I was the right person to finish the job)

-The greatest gift of all: a story about how, when she was a teenager and had pulled her car into the driveway with windows down and music playing, her mom was standing 10 feet from the car and got indignant at what she felt was blaring music. She reprimanded her, “Kathleen! I can’t believe you’re playing your bass loud enough for the whole neighborhood to hear!” Did I mention she pronounced “bass” like the fish?

After we left Kathleen’s place, Ross, Jojo and I had an exciting ride home (the highlight being when Ross helpfully maneuvered into the merge lane, only to rejoin the same traffic seconds later). We picked up a pizza and some Korbel champagne for dinner. We were determined to drink plenty of Korbel on the trip so that we would be true connoisseurs by the time Ross and Jojo unveiled their new marketing plan to Korbel. “You should put this shit in a can!” they planned to tell Korbel execs. Ross and Jojo came up with several varieties of Korbel (pronounced “Korble” in the canned version)—for example, the “rose” flavor would be Rosie (“Snag me a Rosie!”), and other potential flavors were Brute, Champ and Natural (“Snatch a Natch!”) They also had several ad slogans prepared, such as “Cheaper than shit, and twice as good!” In that elegant way that we have, we managed to spill some Korbel on our pizza, adding what Jojo called a “champagne reduction sauce.”

Monday, August 13th:

The day was off to a delicious start when Ross burped Cherry Coke in my direction while I was checking my email. I protested, “Eew, I could practically taste that” and tried breathing through the collar of my t-shirt, so Ross grabbed the bottom of my shirt and burped underneath it to thwart my attempt at a gas mask. Thanks, Ross.

Jojo and Ross also filled me in on a recent incident in which Ross kept trying to pull one end of the drawstring out of the hooded sweatshirt Jojo was wearing. She tried to ignore him, so he persisted until she pushed him away, giving him the reaction that he wanted. With that mission accomplished, he reportedly laughed to himself with a self-satisfied, “heh, heh,” which became a tagline for many things Ross did throughout the trip.

As we were getting ready, we watched some Bravestarr cartoon clips, admiring as Bravestarr called on strength of the bear, speed of the puma, and eyes of the hawk to save the day. In the final scene, Bravestarr picked up a woman to carry her off into the sunset. As he lifted her up, Ross narrated, “ ‘Strength of the bear!’ ”

Jojo, Ross and I headed into Tiburon for lunch, followed by wine-tasting. Our wine was served by the next Bob Hope, who informed us that their main exercise around there was “jumping to conclusions.” Ever the great conversationalist, he kept referring to some employee named Cody who wasn’t there that day, but was apparently very handsome and worked in Novato. When Ross mentioned he also works in Novato, the guy asked, “Oh, do you know Cody?” Ross said no. This, however, did not prevent a later conversation in which Ross joked that he was “not as handsome as Cody!” and the guy responded, “Oh, do you know Cody?” He also found some way to liken me to “Lindy Lohan”—I’m pretty sure he was going for Lindsay Lohan and trying to call me tacky. In all fairness, I was probably already drunk off the wine at this point.

After that little adventure, we got ice cream and walked around making fun of random signs.

LAUNDROMAT, LAUNDROMAT, LAUNDROMAT!

Then we headed to Toys R Us for coloring books and other fun stuff.

After Toys R Us, we went to CompUSA for an itrip so we could play road trip music, and an awesome keyboard so Ross could play the Robocop theme over and over. Once we got home, we went to the pool for a few minutes, paying special attention to the “safe diving” signs, which featured zigzag lines radiating from a stick figure’s head after he presumably dove headfirst with legs still sticking out of the 9-ft-deep water. This prompted comments like “Did you get an electric shock with you dove in?” and “No diving, Gigantor!”

After the pool, we hung out in Ross’s room, coloring in our Care Bears book.

A novice may have thought this said “lollipop,” but to the trained eye it is “Pooslllip.”

We also took turns experimenting with Ross’s new keyboard. Jojo was able to recall and play a few lines from the Beethoven song “Fur Elise.” Ross, grasping the possibilities of his new musical toy, added, “Oh! You know that one Beethoven hit no one really remembers? They made a movie about it!” Jojo and I listened intently for Ross’s rendition of it, and he proceeded to play that damn Robocop theme.

Tuesday, August 14th:

We met up with Ocie, Thom and Jason for lunch, which featured, among other things, a brief discussion of the Cru Crew’s favorite scenes from the movie Rad. After lunch we headed to Ross’s office for a quick tour and to pick up Ross’s basketball. Jojo and Ross went to play bball for a while, and then Jojo stayed home to recharge by napping and playing her guitar, while Ross and I went to the mall to see The Bourne Ultimatum.

While we were waiting for the movie to start, we made a quick trip to a mall store that sold educational placemats—among them, a “nutrition” placemat made by the store’s owner.

Can you guess which one is homemade?

A closer look reveals some brilliant touches:

1. The soccer ball kicking away diseases, just like proper diet and exercise!

2. Labels and instructions that stand out from the pictures, due to the artist’s adeptness with scissors and glue

3. Use of advanced artistic tools, such as the crayon

Prior to the movie, Ross had warned me about the “Bourne pause” he and Jojo had observed during a preview, in which Matt Damon says “I know…[3 second dramatic pause]…I know everything.” We decided to apply the Bourne pause to numerous statements made in the movie, and during the rest of the trip in general.

Early in the movie, we witnessed a series of flashback montages, which Ross called “Bourne Supremacy: The Remix.” This was followed by an intense scene in which Jason Bourne visited Marie’s brother to break the news of her death. Their exchange was brief and terse, so Ross suggested one final line for the dialogue, below:

Martin Kreutz: Where's my sister?
Jason Bourne: Why don't you sit down.
Martin Kreutz: Where is she?
Jason Bourne: She's dead. She was killed. I'm sorry.
Martin Kreutz: I knew it was going to end this way. It was always going to end this way.
Jason Bourne: I didn't believe that.
Martin Kreutz: And how did she die?
Jason Bourne: She was shot. We were together in India. He came for me.
Martin Kreutz: Did you kill him?
Jason Bourne: Yes.
Martin Kreutz: And now what?
Jason Bourne: Someone started all this, and I'm going to find them.
Ross, as Jason Bourne [standing to leave]: Also…I brought you some chocolates.

During an intense scene in which target assignments were being texted to a hit man and CIA operatives, Ross kept predicting what the texts would say (“OMG Bourne just called LOL!”) We also narrated a fight scene in which Bourne was slamming a hit man’s head up against a shower wall (“Say uncle! Quit hitting yourself, quit hitting yourself!”)

Back at the house for dinner, Jojo cooked pasta for us, and we consumed wine and Korbel straight from the brown paper bags.

Ross then decided he was a Bag Person who spoke mrmr (if you don’t know what this is, see Pittsburgh post), placing a bag over his head and reprimanding Jojo (who was drinking from the other brown bag), “Yrr’rr drrnkrng mr crrsrn!” Apparently, the bags were relatives.

Next on our to-do list was playing “bite bag,” a game Jojo brought with her all the way from Northwestern. The object is to stand with only one point of contact with the ground (one foot, knee or hand, for example) and bite the bag, lifting it up with your mouth. Just like limbo, the bag is lowered (rolled down) with each consecutive turn, until the winners are separated from the losers.

After bite bag, we retired to Ross’s room so that Jojo could color a “Korble” label. She decided to make this particular label for distribution in the mrmr-speaking parts of the world, so it read “Krrblr” in flowery lettering, and had a few stray r’s scattered around the label.

We were also entertained by Ross’s housemate Jonathan, whose friendly yet incomprehensible Brazilian-accented rambling left us wondering what the “soap” part of an instrument was. While we were curious, it did not keep us up that night, and we went to bed soon after to prepare for our marathon WednesdayThursday in which we would drive through the night to reach Crater Lake in Oregon.

Wednesday, August 15th:

We started off our day with an MST3K movie, “Prince of Space,” and dressed in our Rad Racing outfits that we were planning to wear to meet Vilas at the airport (since Vilas has not seen the movie Rad and is thus not in the Cru Crew, this attire is also known as the “Vilas Exclusion Uniform”). We headed into San Francisco in the late afternoon so that Ross and Jojo could enjoy a romantic dinner date wearing their matching Rad Racing t-shirts, while I hung out with Kathleen and her roommate LJ. After dinner, drinks and a lot of travel stories, Kathleen and I began planning an impressive PowerPoint presentation summer recap for LJ. As inspiration for our upcoming road trip to Oregon, Kathleen showed me pictures from her recent trip along the same driving route, featuring shots taken almost blindly through a broken viewfinder. Kathleen had about a 70% accuracy rate with the pictures, leading to shots like a random corrugated blue tin roof (“This one’s kind of emotional—can’t really talk about this one right now…” Kathleen explained).

Around 10pm, Jojo, Ross and I met Vilas at the airport, very coolly sporting our Rad Racing uniforms.

The road trip up to Oregon was off to a great start when we realized that the airline had lost the luggage containing the tent Vilas had brought, which meant we would be sleeping out in fresh air on a tarp the following night. But we forged ahead, piling into the car and ready to blur the lines between Wednesday and Thursday.

One of the first songs played in the car was “Walking in Memphis,” and when Vilas accidentally sang the lyrics as “boarded the train” (instead of plane), we decided to go with the flow and just modify the entire song (“touched down in the land of the delta blues” became “pulled up in a sleeper car,” and we inserted phrases like “tickets please” and “you forgot to sign your ticket here.”) Vilas then informed us that he had initially thought the words, “in February of last year” were “in Fairview, where you last year?” in the following lyrics by the Killers: “Somebody told me/That you had a boyfriend/Who looked like a girlfriend/that I had IN FAIRVIEW, WHERE WERE YOU LAST YEAR?” So, we took to singing that in an accusatory tone.

Then, as we struggled to get the itrip to work, the song Right Here Waiting was playing. Just as it reached the line “I hear your voice on the line,” a burst of static clouded the song, and the irony was not lost on us. Ross also had a special affinity for the song “Brown-eyed Handsome Man,” and took to raising his eyebrows and tugging on the collar of his shirt in a “hey there, ladies” manner.

But the crowning musical achievement of our road trip was playing the “Luther Vandross: Home for Christmas” CD that Jojo and Ross had purchased from Walgreens. It featured many classics, but I think our favorite was “My Favorite Things,” because Vilas quickly realized the endless possibilities for substituting lyrics.

Around 5 a.m. we stopped in a diner to recharge, and a few hours later we were entering the park surrounding Crater Lake. We figured we were close to finding Vivek, Dana and Carolyn. Of course, we were wrong. After circling around the park for some time, we finally came upon a mounted diagram at a lookout point on the side of the road. “Finally, a map!” we exclaimed. But when the dust had settled, we realized it was just a giant diagram of the geological history of the lake, and Vilas asked Ross, “Did you find any useful info on the geological strata under the earth’s surface?”

When we arrived at the camp site, Vivek, Dana and Carolyn were still out on an excursion, so we decided to roll out our sleeping bags and nap on the tarp. When they returned, Vilas and I woke up briefly to join them in a planning powwow for the afternoon’s activities, and then I promptly rejoined Jojo and Ross on the tarp to continue napping while Vilas, Vivek, Dana and Carolyn went on a hike. We timed things so that we could make it down to the dock in time for a boat tour of Crater Lake (and in the process, discovered that Carolyn sets her watch 7 minutes fast and is thus very good at counting in 7s). When we finally went to buy tickets, however, we discovered there was no more availability and that we would have to wait until the following day to do our boat trip. So, we went with Plan B—hiking!

Our hike was full of intrusions by annoying people, ski poles and ugly grimacing faces.

Vilas also showed his deep appreciation of nature by making fun of the trees that were dying and losing their leaves (“Well, those trees jumped the gun—‘AAAH! Autumn is here!’”) and admiring the finer points of the trail (observing a point where the trail branched into two paths and reconnected about 20 feet later, Vilas mused, “two roads converged in a wood…”)

Guys, wait! The sign says "trail" and points in the OTHER direction!

Ross also enjoyed the friendly folks we came across on the trail—he remembered passing one older woman who had a smiling-type expression on her face. He expected her to say a simple “hello” as he passed, but instead she made eye contact as she loudly cleared her throat (“eeeeeeeehhhhhhhh”) while holding that smiley expression. That was a special moment.

Vivek and Dana, sittin' in a tree...

After the hike, we all rested and cleaned up a bit. Dana and I decided to take showers—the challenge was that 75 cents only got you 4 minutes of water. I was incredibly surprised when I made it through my entire shower without needing to put in more money. Then I realized that I had been in the handicapped stall, which may have cut me some slack. At first I felt bad about taking that stall, but then I realized that no one is more handicapped at showers than I am.

We ate dinner at the lodge, and while we were waiting for our table, we decided to see what the gift shop had to offer. I noticed Crater Lake was the artistic capital of Oregon when I discovered several variations of dangly earrings fashioned from pennies with designs cut out of them. Jojo, Ross and I also scored some bandanas that we could add to our Rad Racing uniform, and each tied them around a leg the way our hero, Cru Jones, did.

We finally got a table that could seat all seven of us (in trying to figure out how many people we were, Vivek looked to Carolyn--“You’re good at counting in 7’s!”). During dinner, we also discussed forming our new band around Jojo’s guitar-playing and Ross’s keyboard skills. Jojo and I decided we needed to slow down the Napkin Song, transforming it into a ballad to really bring out its raw elements.

After dinner, we headed to a lookout point to watch the sunset over Crater Lake. The sunset took a while, so we busied ourselves with a few random games and just generally trying to figure out how to keep warm. After a round of “blob tag” in which I ended up at the center of a huddle, Dana suggested, “since Jessi’s head is so big, and 90% of heat is radiated from there, we can all keep warm around it!” Vivek and I also experimented with a couple of enthralling boxing/pushing games: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3cYfDfOQVM .

We started talking about old names that were making a comeback (Matilda, Geraldine, Gladys) because Vilas recapped the story of how James was leafing through our ASH yearbook, came across Dorothy Wang, and asked Sharon and me, “Remember…fuckin…Grace? I can’t believe you guys don’t remember Grace!” Dana noted that Phyllis was becoming a popular name for babies, which for some reason prompted Vivek to repeat the name “Phyllis” in a creaky old woman’s voice with a British accent. “Hi, I’m Phyllis,” he screeched, to which Ross replied, “I’m a witch of some sort…”

And of course, what is camping without…S'MORES! So that is exactly what we made as soon as we got back to our tents (or tarp) and got our campfire going.

It was a happy ending to our WednesdayThursday.

Friday, August 17th:

We actually made it past the ticket booth to go on the boat tour of Crater Lake!

It was gorgeous, but I think my favorite part was when the tour guide described Wizard Island, and how the garter snakes there, isolated from mainland snakes, had evolved to develop special features (like not having an orange stripe on their backs to make it harder for predators to spot them). Vilas remarked, “great, they’re all inbred snakes!” and came up with the following impressions:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YM-YdJxOW-Q

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ba_G6YHybdo.

After our boat tour, we said goodbye to Carolyn and continued our road trip toward to our next destination, a beach town called Bandon. Just as Ross had predicted, Vivek’s car had U2 and Bruce Springsteen CDs at the ready.

Along the way, we entertained ourselves with Phyllis impressions (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsv3dj1XjZQ) and stopped for lunch in a town called Roseburg. After someone yelled obscenities at our car and we observed the words “Wash Me” written in the dirt on another car’s back window, Dana spoke for all of us when she said, “This seems like a nice place, let’s come back!” We determined it was the Gatlinburg of Oregon.

When we arrived in Bandon, we dropped off our stuff in our rooms and then tossed a Nerf football back and forth in the parking lot as we made our way down to the beach. The hotel owner (whom we had named “Grace”) came outside to politely ask us not to break any hotel room windows with our Nerf football, and suggested we take it down to the beach instead. Apparently it was not clear from our swimsuits and towels that we were headed in that direction…

Our beach bliss included throwing the football around, building Crater Lake, and for some of us, wearing our beach towels like mumus.

After the beach we showered and went to dinner at a Thai restaurant, followed by a failed trip to a closed Dairy Queen (we just wanted to ask for the “BUZZARDS” advertised on their sign), and ended up buying Haagen Dazs and plastic spoons from the grocery store. We had a par-tay in our hotel room with all the ice cream and beer we could handle.

Saturday, August 18th:

When we woke up, Jojo complained to Ross, “You hogged all the covers on the bed!” Ross replied with a simple, self-satisfied “Yep!” We all packed up our bags and then headed to brunch, bringing our leftover Haagen Dazs with us as a pre-brunch snack. During brunch, we covered such topics as Ross and Vivek’s Bavaria beer commercial in high school (Ross somehow pulled an interpretive dance maneuver when he reached for his wallet while gesturing about the story, which led us to continue the interpretive dance for other parts of the story, like taking the bus to the video shoot). We then moved on to discussing the kinds of sentences they teach you when learning foreign languages. Vilas commented that when Swathi was learning Turkmen, her sentences were along the lines of “I must milk the cow” and “this field is good for plowing wheat.” Dana told us that when she took Latin in middle school, the sentences included “The girl fetches water for the general’s horse,” to which Vivek added, “I must polish my helmet” and “Where is the orgy?”

After brunch we said goodbye to Vivek and Dana, and decided to check out what the town of Bandon had to offer. We spent most of our time in a cool toy store, but also ventured into other gift shops with tempting items—it was hard to pass up a book called “Ghost Cats,” a clever t-shirt reading “Havin’ a bad HARE day?” and an otter stuffed animal created in Vilas’s likeness.

But eventually, we tore ourselves away and continued our road trip, heading toward a town called Eureka. At one of our stops along the way, we spotted a group of birds milling around on the beach, one of whom was black with ruffled, wet, disorderly looking feathers. Ross provided the dialogue, “Hey guys—can I hang out with you guys? I have a bunch of games at my house…you guys can come over…”

When we arrived in Eureka, we walked around to see the sights—there weren’t many, but we did enjoy the window display of an alien who appeared to be immensely enjoying his vehicle and saying “Oh man…this ship is amaaaazing…”

After dinner and lots of wine at an Italian restaurant, we headed back to our hotel room to see what kind of TV programming was in store for us. We were lucky enough to witness a commercial of two girls, with one saying “oh my gosh, is he cute [pronounced “caaaayte”]?” to which the other girl responded, “eeeeeeee!” That dialogue worked its way into a number of our conversations for the rest of the trip.

Sunday, August 19th:

Another road trip day! We continued our drive down to San Francisco, stopping along the way in a lame town called Ukiah, where everything was closed (although Ross and Jojo did spot some trophies in a store window and envision how cool it would be if we walked down the street holding random trophies over our heads and cheering for no reason). We finally stopped for malts and snacks in a town that actually had some stores that were open. I thought, “finally, we’ve found a normal place!” until I went into the bathroom and spotted a framed photograph of the restaurant, taken from across the street. It would have been cool if this was an old photo from 1950…but it appeared to have been taken within the past couple years. I guess they were trying to save me the trouble of walking out the front door, crossing the street and turning around to get the exact same view.

It would not have been a real road trip without a lot of falsetto singing in the car, so we made sure we kept things very real. When we left a message for Gaurav, we even sang in falsetto harmony for the “heeeeeeey” part. Ross and I battled it out with a sing-off of the two most annoying songs my brother sang to irritate me when we were younger—it was “A Blizzard! A Blizzard!” versus “It’s the old Mac and Cheese, It’s the Old Mac and Cheese!” But when Losing My Religion came on, all rivalries were forgotten as the four of us combined our talents to enhance the song. Our contributions to the chorus were as follows:

I thought that I heard you laughing [ha-ha-ha-ha!]

I thought that I heard you sing [falsetto: aaaahhhhh!]

I think I thought I saw you try [grunting]

Also, for the line “every waking hour/I’m choosing my confession,” we blurted out lines like “I slept with your wife!” I am pretty sure REM will be contacting us any day now for the rights to this new and improved version of their song.

We were also highly entertained by other motorists on the road, such as the man with a mischievous overbite and the female version if Eric Cartman. But my favorite was the Upright Motorcycle Driver, whom we imagined was saying the following:

Ross: I’m an Upright Motorcycle Driver! What a fancy day to be riding my two-wheeled motor car! Pip pip old man, cyclist on your right. I do hate motor car congestion. I must get home to mother, the tea will be cold. I belong to the Motor Club of Harley Davidson, pardon me.

Jojo: They are a nice bunch of chaps.

Vilas: I must quit you forthwith!

The Upright Motorcycle Driver reappeared a while later, prompting a reprise:

Ross: Jolly good, it’s me again. Please heed safety and let me pass!

Even with all the safety-heeding we had to do, we eventually made it to the airport, where I had too had to quit everyone forthwith. Luckily, Jojo stuffed my backpack full of See’s candy, so at least I could keep enough of a sugar high going to annoy those around me on the trip home. Heh heh.

Jessi's shutterfy album for Oregon: share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8AZtGbhkzbNWVn