The reason why most people take car trips in the late spring or summer is becoming quite clear to me. It is because there is no friggin snow on the road! There is no snow falling from the sky! There are no semi- trucks dumping chunks of snow in front of your car at 65 miles per hour! Clarity comes too late, reasoning takes a back seat to opportunity: here's a road, let's take it! Not only did I drive to Bend today (which is a really unattractive city, at least the part I have seen) but tomorrow I need to drive to Eugene, which is back across the mountains, and unless I want to retrace my tire tracks I will need to go on even snowier roads to get there. The roads are plowed and relatively clear but messy and rocky and dirty as hell. The car looks pathetic, covered with road spray from aforementioned semi-trucks. The big trucks can only get to Bend on one road (the others are too narrow or icy) and that was the same road I chose to take. Fun. Loads of fun. There were road signs indicating migrating bears and I held out hope that I would see some but alas, nothing furry appeared except the occasional small road kill.
As I was traversing Oregon (some of which was very scenic, some not so much) I was wondering if there was a metaphor in taking the back roads. Maybe something about moving out of the safe life and trying to expand my horizons, leaving the ease of the known and venturing into the scary unknown. This search for the metaphor that could apply to my new untethered life occupied my thoughts for a little while until I decided "no, there is no metaphor here, just a stupid idea to take the back roads." Perhaps as my travels continue something metaphorical or allegorical will unfold. Right now it is just a lot of sloggy driving.
You are all no doubt curious about Cooper. Yesterday I gave him a dose of Benadryl since I knew we would be in the car for a while. It didn't seem to phase him until about 4 hours after the dose when he finally calmed down in the car. Then the effects of the drug seemed to last for another 6 hours after that, as he lay almost motionless on the bed in our motel, obviously in a drug-induced stupor. Today I gave him nothing and he did the heavy panting the entire time we were in the car but at least right now he responds to me as I walk around the room. But true to form, he loves hotels and motels. The long corridors are perfect for running and playing with his toy and we have had rooms with king beds, so much bigger than the double bed he is use to at home. (Well, when we had a home, that is.) Other than his hatred of the car, he is a good traveler. (Motel review: this Comfort Inn just outside Bend, going a bit north, is very nice, good pillows, quiet, off the road and cheap. And they take dogs!)
There is much to be said about the above mention of not having a home right now, but that will wait until the metaphor moment, or at least until a little later in the journey. Part of me wonders why I am driving around, why I just don't go somewhere, get a hotel room for a week and stop driving. What is the driving accomplishing? Do I think I will find a city that I love and a job will magically fall from the heavens? Am I running away, or driving away, from something other than myself and my lack of a job? Am I simply in denial and trying to run from that? I have no idea right now. Like Scarlett, I will think about it tomorrow.
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