I’ve spent more time driving than sleeping these past few days, so please excuse me whilst I put a couple of memorable quotes from that time into the electronic memory.
I had recently left the mountain passes of northern California and descended towards the town of Redding when I decided it would be good to call David and give him an ETA for my arrival.
Me: Heya David, it’s Phil.
David: Hi! How’s it going?
Me: OK.
David: Where you at?
Me: Hell.
David:……
Me: Everything is brown and covered in dust, it’s hotter than f*ck, and I’ve been disarmed by the state government
David: You’ve got air conditioning in the truck, right?
Me: Yeah, but I don’t think that’ll solve all my current issues.
Meh, one out of three isn’t bad for California.
And then on the way home, I called The Wife from just south of Sacramento to let her know I was on the road heading home and that I’d call her once I crossed the OR/WA border. Either I misstated what time that’d be or she misremembered.
Me: Howdy darlin’. I’m back in Washington again finally.
Her: Are you OK? Is everything alright?
Me: Yeah, why?
Her: You said you’d be in Vancouver by two and its six-thirty? I was getting worried. What happened?
Me: Umm, Oregon.
Speaking of Oregon…I’m sorry in advance to any and all RNS readers who are also residents of Oregon, but your state is full of stupid people and you need to GTFO before your IQ drops below the temperature inside of a Frigidaire. Ashland, Medford, Eugene, Portland, it didn’t matter. They can’t drive or cross a street safely. Hell, your state government thinks I need special training to pump my own gas. I felt so sorry for the cutie behind the counter at the Taco Bell that I almost asked her if she wanted to be rescued.
Also, your state must be getting the lion’s share of federal Stimulus cash because of all the damn highway projects with those stupid “Putting Oregon back to Work” signs.
Montana has a two seasons: Winter and Road Construction. Oregon doesn’t have the weather excuse to pull that joke off, but driving through was exactly that, a joke. If a politician wants my vote, they’ll tell me they want to build an overpass from North to South over Oregon from Vancouver to Weed. I’ve got a 650 mile fuel range on my truck. I don’t need to stop in your state to get to the GBR next year and have already made plans to avoid doing so at all costs.
Should have drove through eastern Oregon to Nevada.
The Willamette valley is full of libtards and ex-Californians … so they get the stimulus money spent there to tear up the roads.
Oh, and that gas pump law ( the last one left in the US, I think ) only applies to gasoline powered trucks and autos. Diesel owners and motorcyclists can pump their own fuel.
New Joisey won’t let you pump, either.
Second Kristopher’s suggestion. I’ve only attended GBR1, but I never hit the freeway until I intersected it East of Reno. Check it out in GoogleMap, and you’ll find that your times aren’t much slower by taking the old US highways. Plus, you can cut off all or most of the Kali part of the trip that way. Oregon doesn’t care about your weapons’ capacities.
LOL. You should see these people drive when it RAINS. You’d THINK they’d know how to drive in the rain here, but noooooo!
On the plus side, all it takes to genuinely and deeply piss these people off is a “God Bless Our Troops – Especially Our Snipers” bumper sticker. And maybe an “O Bummer” or two. 🙂
Hey now! I live in Medford, and “can’t drive or cross a street safely” is… well.. pretty fair actually.
Still, rural Oregon is surprisingly red-state. But the Portland-Salem-college town population centers are large enough to steer the state blue. I might get out if I didn’t have roots here.
Did your nice and friendly Oregon state trooper meet you at the board to follow you through the state? or is that just me?
Hmmm…yes, Medford and I had a run in when I made the mistake of stopping there for some diesel instead of waiting until Weed or Redding.
The attendant was courteous and knowledgeable, but we were both verbally accosted by a group of bums whom I’d see earlier walking down the middle of a lane of traffic and acting offended when cars would pass them and/or honk.
All six of them are quite lucky my 8000lb vehicle was attached to the diesel dispenser and that I had already disarmed myself for entry into CA.
No, Dag, My last vision of any highway patrol officer going was a WSP in Vancouver going south and a CHP in Redding going north. Does Oregon actually have highway cops?