Philomath is Where I Go

I am making my first trip to Oregon this week, and I have been approaching it with some trepidation…I’m not sure why. For some reason, I really haven’t been looking forward to this week. The point of my travel is to attend a week-long workshop on temperature sensing using fiber-optic cables. While that likely sounds incredibly boring to everybody else reading this, it’s interesting to me (not the actual physics, mind, just the application), and hopefully I will use it in my research.

This workshop I’m attending (at the HJ Andrews Experimental Forest in central Oregon, east of Eugene) starts on Monday, but I’ve come up a couple of days early (with a colleague; for the next week, when I say “we” I will be referring to the two of us, unless noted otherwise) in order to meet with on of the gurus in hillslope hydrology, a professor at Oregon State University in Corvallis. My plan was to meet with him, then spend a couple days exploring the coast of Oregon before heading down to the workshop.

My day today began at 3am (Pacific Time), when I got out of bed before my alarm went off to get ready to go to the airport. My wonderful wife got up to drive me to the airport. (Speaking of my marriage, lately I’ve been a very bad husband in a lot of ways. Alison is truly patient to continue to tolerate me. I’ve came to a realization today that, in spite of earlier protestations to the contrary, I really am Michael Scott. The difference between myself and him is that at least he was the one bringing home the money in his relationship. Oh, and I actually graduated from college. And when I tell my jokes, I know they’re not funny. I have made a little poster for myself that says: “Think: WWMSD? (What Would Michael Scott Do?) Do the Opposite.” I hope that motivates me. I have become less and less responsible since I met Alison, and I think it’s because she is so responsible that it’s easy for me to totally rely on her for everything. My faculties in a lot of areas have slipped because of this. I don’t know, maybe it’s something else, but this seems to fit.)

My flight left around 6am to quickly head over to Phoenix. As those of you who read my wife’s blog know, we went to Pittsburgh recently, and I reflected that Phoenix is about the ugliest city to fly into. There is no green anywhere, except on the golf courses. Some little kid who was kicking my chair the whole way knew another kid who was talking about all the dirt. Yeah. Most other places you go (Tucson and Las Vegas being obvious exceptions) at least look somewhat alive when you head toward them. And this is one of the fastest growing cities (and therefore one of the fastest growing water demands) in the country.

No time to do anything in Phoenix, and the food in the airport was terribly overpriced, so I just did crosswords for awhile. The next flight was to Portland, and shockingly this flight was not full. It has been a very long time since I have been on an airplane that was not chock-a-block full of people. And not just a few seats were empty; my row only had two people, and I had traded seats with somebody else, and my original row also only had two people. The row in front of me only had two. It was actually very nice. A pleasant flight, and I got like two and a half articles read, which for me is quite outstanding. We arrived ahead of schedule, but then we had to go to baggage claim, then to the rental car place, then we had to wait for the shuttle, and the rental car lots are actually not really at the Portland airport, so we had to drive awhile. And they “upgraded” me from an economy car to a small SUV (a Hyundai Santa Fe) which I’m sure gets only about 2/3 the mileage. While in the airport restroom, I had the pleasure of getting to listen to somebody’s phone conversation, which they held while sitting on the toilet. At some point the guy’s reception cut out, which made him quite upset. I say, the cell phone companies should have no obligation to provide you with reception inside of a restroom. Phone calls are not so urgent that you have to make everybody around you uncomfortable by considering that you might be blasting a dookie while talking to a fellow businessman.

The drive to Corvallis took about two hours, and it was pretty pleasant. We grabbed Subway on the way, and today was Free Cookie Friday, so that automatically was a spirit lifter. In Corvallis we parked on the campus of Oregon State University and walked for awhile so I could meet this hydro guru. I think it was a productive meeting, but who knows. Afterward we went to a local book store where I picked up a guide to hiking along the coast. We went to dinner at Block 15, a local brewpub, because I am obsessed with the idea that I am a beer snob, even though my palette is not at all refined enough to really identify flavors, or what is actually a good beer, and my memory is so poor that I don’t remember what tastes like what anyway. In fact, if I didn’t take notes I would have no idea what I actually liked. I will not have this problem with the beers at Block 15, however, which I universally disliked. I tried a 5-beer sampler, with their Brown Porter, Trubbled Monk Belgian, Aboriginale, American Wheat, and Golden Glo. The last two were very light, and really had absolutely no flavor. It was almost as if I was drinking tonic. The Aboriginale was extremely hoppy (to the point that it was difficult to finish and made me feel a little nauseated), the Belgian was very strong (in a not-so-good way), and the Porter was so-so. I actually drank the Porter first because I thought it had the least chance of being a beer I would like, and I thought it was only OK…but it turned out to be the best of the bunch. I did admire the fact that the brewery uses wind power, they purchase carbon offsets, and they feed their spent grains to local livestock. So at least they are low-impact.

We grabbed groceries before heading out of town (I asked a lady on the street to direct me toward a grocery store, and she told me how to get to the Safeway…then also told me about the local grocery store (which was unfortunately too far out of the way)…then also told me about the farmer’s market (which was unfortunately not until tomorrow)…what a town! And I bought cherries at the Safeway; one of my life’s goals is to live somewhere where I can grow cherries) and driving toward the coast. We first passed through the town of Philomath, from which this post takes its title (the title is actually a quote from an old R.E.M. song, so I’m sure it was meaningless to 99.9% of the world population). This took awhile, but the road was just beautiful. I like the whole coastal range area…lots of tall forests, although there are also numerous clear-cut scars everywhere. We drove into Newport, then headed north toward Lincoln City. We camped at Beverly Beach State Park, which was quite nice (if a little noisy, since I chose a campsite that was right next to the highway, and also very close to the beach access). After arriving we took a little hike up the beach to Devil’s Punchbowl (a collapsed sea cave) and back, about 2.8 miles total according to the guidebook. It was beautiful, although the wind was quite cold. There were very few people around. The goal was to see the sunset, but the western horizon was unfortunately cloudy. The hike back, we decided to try our luck with hiking above the beach, and ended up walking down a highway the whole way. This was somewhat harrowing, but it was still pretty light out (this being about 9:00 P.M.) so nothing bad happened. Once back to the campsite, we set up tents and I brushed teeth and went to sleep. It feels great to be out camping, even if you can hear the traffic noise all night. Connecting with nature, at least to the degree one can by backing one’s SUV into a campsite and unloading the tent from the back.