The Great Oregon Road Trip Part Deux

Day 1 in the books. SF is one of those cities that you love to visit but will eventually hate if you live there. The amazing variety of neighborhoods, terrain, climates, people, food, weather  and iconic views is simply amazing. Sydney is the only other city that can rival SF in those categories. As a visitor it's all amazing, you walk out of CVS and you spy Alcatraz across the bay, walk out of Safeway and the Transamerica Building looms over you, grab a coffee and take in a view of the bay and the Bay Bridge , or simply walking you come across the humming of the cables along the cable car tracks. As a visitor it's simply stunning and the stuff of memories. But when you live here all of the becomes routine and simply background noise. But after living in the city a while you notice the bums, the trash, the crazy traffic complete with crazy drivers, the insane wait times at good restaurants, the impossibility of parking without paying a king's ransom. At first you learn to...

It was September of 2009. I had just closed down the small company a friend of mine and I had been running so I could return to Sony and work on some movie about an inventor and giant food falling from the sky. But I had two months to fill, two months of freedom. I couldn't spend it in the pool---even though GOD I wanted to. I couldn't spend it in Vegas, I tried, it was just too hot. So one night I dialed up two other unemployed friends and did the Animal House thing... And so the plan for the Great Oregon Road trip was hatched. Two weeks of going where the wind took us. Further north than I'd ever been before, to redwoods, doug firs, friends, volcanoes, salmon and (hopefully) Bigfoot. I checked my trusty steed Barney (a Ford Edge) into Galpin Motors for an oil change. And Eric, Tom and myself adjourned to the Denny's across the street to plan the adventure. In the end we did not find Bigfoot or catch a salmon---but oh so close!! But we experienced redwoods...