Life on the Outside

This picture was taken this afternoon on the way home from a Pioneer Association meeting. Not bad. Not bad at all.

It’s hard to believe it’s been nearly six months since I last posted to my blog. Man, time flies when you’re stressed out. Since last posting, I moved 1,400 miles from Colorado to the wettest place on earth (the NW coast of Oregon) with my mom, two dogs and a cat; started a new job; gained yet another 5 pounds; failed to start writing that best-selling novel I want to write (boy, some things never change) and finally broke my daily addiction to Starbucks’ triple-grande lattes.

When you move to the coast of Oregon, it’s really great how the people here warn you about the terrible storms, dangerous high waves, torrential rain, potholes large enough to swallow my little car whole (Tillamook County was classified by Oregon Dept. of Trans. as having the worst roads in the state) and that there are more cows than people. But here are the things they don’t warn you about.

• All those cows translate to a pervasive, revolting smell that permeates clothes, cars and buildings. The “brown spray” used to fertilize cow pastures is a mixture of water, manure and gods-knows-what-else and is absolutely vile. Even better, there are days when that smell seems to combine with odors from fish processing along Tillamook and Netarts Bay. Mmmm….mmm.

• It’s wet. I mean, it’s really wet. Not just when it rains. Even on the rare days when the sun does come out — which has been less than 10 times in more than 3 months — there’s still a damp mist in the trees and hills. It seeps into everything which is something my soft-top car isn’t particularly appropriate for. Despite repeated applications of automotive weather stripping around the doors and windows, I can still open the car door and find one to two inches of standing water in both the driver’s and passenger’s side floorboards.

• Be prepared. Not for emergencies but for a giant step backwards in technology and access to services. When I asked the local cable provider when On-Demand services would be available since it’s on the cable box menu, they said, “What’s On-Demand?” When you need phone, cable, water, gas or electric service, you won’t be able to get same day or even next day service . In dealing with the cable company and gas company I’ve been told the service truck broke down, the truck driver was out sick, had a family emergency or (the best one yet) tried to call you but your phone was disconnected. Naturally, they were calling the number that was supposedly disconnected. Unless you like paying nearly double for groceries and household items every week, you’ll have to make the hour-and-a-half drive to Portland. So far I’m averaging once every three weeks.

• A particular fondness for drivers to clog the left lane while driving 5 to 10 mph under the speed limit. For those of us used to high-speed, super aggressive metro driving, being stuck behind the umpteenth Ford F150 truck is more likely to give me a coronary than any 8 a.m. rush hour drive in downtown Denver ever could. But to be honest, this is an issue everywhere I go.  Hmm… I wonder … does that mean it’s me and not the other drivers?

• The log trucks are another story though. They generally haul ass along curving, wet highways without missing a beat. I’ve pulled off the road after being tailgated by log trucks so many times now that I’ve started to develop a Pavlovian response. All I have to do is see a log truck and I pull of the road.

There are definitely some advantages here though. The people are really nice and there’s a tremendous sense of community that you can’t possibly get in a bigger city. Just like the mountains of Colorado, there are lots of opportunities to get outside and enjoy. There’s fishing, clamming, hiking, kayaking, sailing. Hopefully, the sun will come out long enough some day for me to get out there and enjoy it.

Since we writers have a tendency to spend a little too much time sitting on our butts, I’ve been trying to get outside weather not withstanding. Several times a week I take the dogs down to beach to walk and let them run free. It’s an amazing sight. I even spotted a couple of humpback whales of the coast during their migration.  Not a bad way to spend the day at all.

I’m sure I’ll eventually adjust — whether I want to or not. I promise to get back to commenting on journalism next time.

Sláinte