Road trip to SF (Palo Alto)

So I'm starting this blog a bit late.  We left Vancouver on Jan 28 (Monday) after I quit my job on Friday.  Our intended departure time of 4am predictably became 10am or maybe noon.  The border crossing and drive through Washington and Northern Oregon were relatively uneventful, broken only (but frequently) by Bryan Adams "So Far So Good" cassette.  It was the only cassette that Erik could find to bring.

We enjoyed a few tasty brews on the way down, and a couple of less tasty tasty ones (Steel Reserve was $4 for a 6-pack of extra-large cans at ~8% alc).  Erik bought the Steel Reserve based on my previous evaluation of American 7-11 beers with Rob during a dull business trip to South Carolina last winter.

The Steel Reserve helped deal with our $56 motel in Sunny Valley, OR, which ironically was cloudy and covered in snow.  The room was a shithole, full of 1960's top-of-the-line appliances like a vari-temp vari-cook microwave that contained (we're pretty sure) one of the original Bert's 1961 TV dinners, a TV showing the infamous Glencoe massacre (Scottish history lesson), a box spring that looked like a family of ferrets had nested in it for three generations, and a cabinet that I farted in to boobytrap the next guest.  There were fireworks outside in the middle of the night, which Erik discovered while retrieving the aforementioned Steel Reserve from the cool outdoors, paranoid that someone might steal them.

The next day (Tuesday), we were accosted by the Oregon State Highway Patrol who forced us to surrender $70 for snow chains to drive through 1/2" of slush, despite our vehement objections that the Mercury Mystique we were driving had snow tires, and 4 wheel drive, and that we were Canadians used to snow (two thirds of which was true). We were pissed and there was much yelling and cursing in German afterwards.

We arrived in good shape in Palo Alto and visited Dan Green. He took us out to Mexican food and then to the Nut House, an entertaining bar with peanut shells strewn about haphazardly all over the floor. We had a great time, meeting up with Bev (his girlfriend) later on as well and learned how the American tax system tends to keep the rich neighborhoods better educated and thus richer, and the poorer neighborhoods worse educated and thus poorer still. I also figured out that Stanford is going to be an expensive school to pursue my plan of a PhD, so I may back out on that one.

Dan.