First Post

December 3rd, 2008
Roseburg, OR

Hello, welcome to my mid-life crisis blog!

I'm counting today as the first official day of my trip even though I was supposed to leave two days ago and actually left yesterday. Today I crossed out of my usual range and had my first try-out of writing the script of my trip on the fly. I spent last night with Tess in Portland (thank you), had my first greasy spoon breakfast in Multnomah, hit Powell's for a Lonely Planet travel book of California that Tess recommended, and finally got on the road by noon. Eugene is the furthest south I have ever been on I-5, so crossing that line and checking into my hotel here in Roseburg makes this my first official day.

Tomorrow I'm heading up to Crater Lake National Park, swinging down to Klamath Lake, and then seeing how far I can get towards the coast before dark.

Between paying $1.80 per gallon and averaging 50 mpg on the highway, my travel costs are an insanely low 3.6 cents per mile. That means the cost of driving the 500 miles from Seattle to the California border will have cost me all of $18.00. This is absolutely unbelievable, my lunch today, french dip and a beer in Eugene, cost $16.50 in comparison.

My Broadband adapter for my laptop works like a charm. I have internet everywhere I go and can just pull over to the side of the road and do a quick google search for 'good food in Eugene' and find a great brew pub and quick directions on how to get there. It couldn't have been simpler. It might be harder to find my way around bigger towns but so far everything looks great.

I thought I would splurge today and stay in a $65/night hotel because it listed and 'Exercise Room'. I haven't worked out since Saturday so it sounded like a good way to kill an hour and work off my greasy spoon food. Unfortunately, 'Exercise Room' is apparently a loose term. I was imagining some cardio, some nautilus machines, and hopefully a few dumbbells. I suppose I am going to be forced to learn hotelspeak, perhaps what I was thinking of would be referred to as a 'mini-gym', be that as it may, I was disappointed with what I found.

For $65 at the Quality Inn in Roseburg, your Exercise Room consists of a treadmill, a stationary bike, and a stair-climber. A cleverly placed wall of mirrors makes it momentarily seem that there are two treadmills, two stationary bikes, and two stair-climbers. Ones rational mind immediately rejects such silliness and tries hard to resolve one or two of the superfluous cardio machines into actually being a weight machine, perhaps with a rack of dumbbells hidden way off to the left behind it . . . but no, its just a wall of mirrors reflecting the completely pedestrian treadmill, bike, and stair climber directly in front of you.

This makes one wonder about the minimum legal definition of 'Exercise Room.' Perhaps somewhere in Texas there is a $45/night hotel whose listed feature of 'Exercise Room' is actually just an empty room with a medicine ball in the middle. And I suppose if we are putting this hotel in Texas we have to assume that there is also a Coke Machine in the Exercise Room; one with no 'Diet' selections and 1.5 litre bottles . . . Actually, a medicine ball is probably way too metro for Texas . . . let's say: an empty room, the aforementioned Coke Machine . . . a 60" plasma T.V. locked in on the NASCAR channel . . . and (for exercise) no place to sit.