Dad, that's so random

7/2 en route to Seattle:

Salem, Oregon: While driving, I ask the kids what is the capital of Oregon. The kids do not answer, perhaps because they are listening to their Ipods at high volume and have ear buds in their ears, and cannot not hear my question. Therefore, I take them to Salem, Oregon, which is not a big detour off the interstate. We visit the State Capitol building, which is really cool. Hopefully they will remember the capital now. Oregon is one of the tricky ones (as is Maryland).

Portland, Oregon: The 205 is totally shut down, so we have to take the 5 through the city. Bad traffic jam. It takes two hours. The Columbia River has about a hundred bridges crossing it every three blocks. There are smokestacks and railroads all over the place. It looks just like Pittsburgh. Portland should have an NFL team, based on appearances. Put them in the AFC North with my Ravens, Cleveland, and Cincinnati. Put the Steelers in another division- I don't care which. I am sick and tired of them.

Centralis, Washington: We are hungry as a result of delays in Portland. We decide to eat in Centralis. I get off the interstate and the best looking restaurant is Casa Ramos. I don't know what that is but I am not in the mood for it. You can't find good restaurants at interchanges anyway. I drive several miles away from the interstate. The restaurants look worse and there are a lot of supply houses. Suddenly we find a main street and a classic old steak house (Gibson House Grill). It is a Godsend. Terrazzo floors, old wood furniture, white tablecloths and a koi pond in the middle of the restaurant. The owner invites Fiona to feed the fish. This is a much needed diversion for her. We spend two hours there because the waitress drops our fully loaded tray in the kitchen, and they have to start over. We don't care.

7/3: Bellevue and Seattle:

We are staying in Bellevue, across from Seattle, because our friend Stan, who lived in the area when he played for the Seahawks, said we don't want to be in downtown Seattle. I like to be center ice, but I defer to his local area knowledge.

We are staying in the Hyatt Regency Bellevue. It is mostly filled up with wealthy Asian-Americans. They are very sophisticated and nice and the only problem is vehicle maneuvering in the porte cochere, where East meets West.

The restaurant is called 0/8. I never find out how to pronounce it. Is it zero divided by eight, oh for eight, oh slash eight, zero slash eight, or, if the slash is an italicized "I", then "Oh, I ate." Maybe the Asians know what it is because eight is their lucky number.

We go into Seattle for the day. We do Pike Place Market, where they throw the fish; we have lunch at a great little oyster house, then take the monorail to Seattle Center, where the Space Needle is. I observe the length of the line for the Needle, watch the movement for a short time, and calculate the length of the wait at about an hour and a half. I don't care if you can see Beijing from up there, I am not waiting that long. Plus it's $14 bucks a head for the elevator ride and one of my life philosophies is, I will not wait to get ripped off. If you want to rip me off, make it convenient, and fast. Fiona wants to do the amusement park rides and the older kids want to go to the Music Experience and make a CD. Connie takes the music project, I take Fiona. I get her a $23 unlimited ride pass and she never stops riding. She makes a lot of friends and introduces me to their parents, a few of which are local. The Needle looms straight over our heads. I ask the local adults if I should do it, if it is worth the wait. They all say no. Fly in here sometime and look out the plane window, they advise.

7/4: Bellevue and Seattle:

We go back to Seattle. For the second day in a row, I understand Stan's advice to stay in Bellevue. Although the city is beautiful and the weather is spectacular, there are more bums here per square inch than anywhere I have ever been. Like Key West, Maine, Alaska, and the southwest desert near Kingman, AZ, Seattle is a "corner" of the country, and the corners in my observation attract and keep the unusual among us. In Alaska and Maine, the harsh conditions select out the incompetent unusuals, leaving productive unusuals. You don't go to Fairbanks to sleep on a steam grate. In this temperate clime, though, it is a veritable bum museum. There are many music bums, all genres, all ages, every corner. There are burned out hippies from the 60's, who probably emigrated from San Francisco due to costs. Ditto for gay and transgender bums. Also there are white and black Anti-Globalization and America- hating bums, who team up with certain Native American anti- American bums for some tribal ritual all- inclusive anti- capitalist anarchist anti- American bumfests.

The most populous bums are the grunges. They are everywhere, sitting on fountains, on the sidewalk, stairways, anywhere. They are very young for the most part; probably runaways. They all smoke cigarettes. They have pasty white skin, and wear very weird clothes and hats. Although mostly inert, they make occasional weird gestures to one another. They remind me of Marcel Marceau, except once in a while they speak. I wonder how they support themselves. I speculate either prostitution or drug dealing, but they don't look like they have the energy for it.

We watch the fireworks from our hotel rooms back in Bellevue, which have a great view of Mt. Rainier and the Bellevue display 4 blocks away. It doesn't start until after 10 pm due to the late northern sunset. Like our fellow hotel guests, we have the Nikons whining away taking pictures of the display. Many of our fellow guests are fairly new to America. They get it.

7/5: Enroute to Missoula, Montana

Tried to stop for lunch just after Couer d' Alene, Idaho. Connie has a guidebook and wants to go to the Wolf Lodge Inn, which has dead animal heads, exotic wild meats and other good stuff, according to the book. She said go south on 97, at exit 22- it is right off the exit, according to the guide. I did, but no lodge immediately in view. After a handful of pleasant miles skirting the lake, Connie says um, it is north, not south. Everything here is named Wolf Lodge and she was looking at an RV Park reference. I swerve the van north. We cross the interstate again and proceed down a dirt road a few more miles . No sign of the lodge here either. We finally find it but it doesn't open until 5 pm, according to the empty parking lot, and the less visible sign on the door.

I take this with great aplomb, whatever that means, and Connie looks up another restaurant a handful of exits down the interstate. We proceed with all haste. But when we get off the interstate and find it, it is closed also.

Humans are funny, in that they are quite adaptable and can put up with great hardship. However, once a human firmly expects that satisfaction of its basic needs is imminent, but is then denied, it creates great emotional distress in the human. This phenomenon is the basis for many forms of psychological torture. What needs are examples of this, you ask? Well, food, water, going to the bathroom, or maybe getting to sleep with one's wife in privacy once in a while on a long road trip after we gave the kids $300 in quarters and told them to go down the hotel hall together to the game room and don't come back until the money is spent, or unless someone is bleeding, which was stupid because Fiona gets nosebleeds.

Anyway, after the second closed restaurant, I express to Connie that the guidebook she had bought, while most useful in the overall analysis, seemed to have a data glitch when it came to restaurants in the panhandle of Idaho, and that perhaps I should select a restaurant by alternative means, without the well-intentioned but nevertheless flawed help of her tome, meaning that the guidebook should be, for the time being at least, retired, due to the urgency of nourishing our children, and our travel schedule. Due to fatigue and hunger I need to be economical with my language, so I communicate this sentiment in four words, ending with "that guide book".

Several miles down the road, I see an obscure roadside sign for the Enaville Resort Snake Pit, Established 1860. This has the sound of a good dive to it. I take the exit, and proceed up a dirt and gravel road several miles, not unlike our previous two attempts to be fed lunch. We arrive in Kingston Idaho, which town consists of a single building called the Enaville Resort Snake Pit. It is an old building on the north fork of the Coeur d' Alene River. The lot is filled with Harleys and big pickup trucks. It looks just perfect. And it is.

More tomorrrow. It is 12:45 am and we have to tour the Badlands in a few hours.