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Day 1739 – Goodbye Decade

I am extremely happy to say goodbye to 2009. And the past year expires on the occasion of the second full moon of the month: a blue moon as it were.

For anybody not up on “jeremy & annette trivia” for us this decade began outside Astoria, Or. at Fort Stevens State Park in a yurt. We had booked two yurts well in advance with two friends we knew from our time in Columbus Oh. The four of us sat in one of the yurts drinking an assortment of beer and wine and speculated on how the coming decade might unfold. The beer ran out and i volunteered to venture forth and buy some more. Only a short drive outside of the park on my way back toward the town of Warrenton i spotted “Corky’s Corner” store and pulled into the muddy parking lot. I sat for a moment and watched the suspended four-way flasher that marked the intersection. I was on the Southeast corner. In front of me, only a short drive North was the Columbia river. I got out of the car and stood completely still. The rain was light, but endless…. the kind of rain where you’d be soaked in ten minutes, but you’d feel like a wuss if you put on a coat to cross a parking lot. The night was inky black. The few streetlights seemed like floating orbs with their light not reaching the ground; the night swallowed it. The wet breeze smelled of salt and seaweed. It was a warm night… maybe 45 degrees.

Corky’s was a rundown place without much to recommend it beyond the fact it was there, and had overpriced bad beer in the cooler. I was the only customer. At the counter with the beer, an assortment of brands all made by the same company, i noticed a small black and white television tuned to Dick Clark’s Rockin’ Eve. It was two minutes to midnight in New York City.

“Could you turn the sound up?” i asked the man behind the counter who i later learned was Corky himself. We both stood and watched the little screen… watched the ball drop. It seemed cold in New York. It seemed horribly crowded.

“Man,” said Corky, “I’m really happy i’m not there.”

I felt my reflex to defend NYC twinge, but it passed. I paid for the beer and headed back out to the car.

I thought about how this trip had gone so far, the first evening seeing Umpqua Lighthouse, seeing the now destroyed cooling tower of the former Trojan nuclear plant, the christmas lights the park host had strung on the yurt where we stayed…. the ocean, the dunes, the salt air, the wateriness of it all.

I was glad to not be in Times Square, too.

A few days after flying back to New York from PDX we were on the road from New York City to Minneapolis, Minnesota. It was a wonderful trip that took four days and didn’t cause weather-worries until we made it to Green Bay after coming “over the top” of  Georgian Bay in Ontario. We had stopped at the home of Annette’s parents in Barker, NY and from there it was shorter (and way nicer) to head North into Canada. Even in January.

We stopped at some towns in Canada along the way:  Sudbury (home of the positively unbelievable INCO nickel smelter), Espanola, Blind River, Thessalon, crossing back into Michigan’s UP at Sault St. Marie – “The Soo.” The snow began south of the pretty little town of Marinette, Wisconsin and kept going more or less until nightfall as we neared Green Bay. Driving the 1989 Volvo wagon became a largely random event on the snow-covered streets. I remember thinking “how could the Swedes possibly build a car this bad in snow given their climate?”

But we found a motel and slid into the parking lot none the worse for wear. The next day most of the snow, which had been wet and heavy, was cleared from the major roads and we toured the industrial city for about an hour. Yes, we drove by Lambeau field.

Later that day we arrived in Minneapolis and began our new lives in a 500 sq ft apartment that would be home for about half the decade. That’s the above photo… it’s part of the living room… on the day we departed Minnesota for Idaho.

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