Manifest Destiny

Well, we've finally made it to the Pacific. Despite having arrived on the West Coast some three weeks ago, we hadn't seen the sea.
Our first glimpse came at Florence, Oregon.
Long overshadowed by its neighbor to the south, Oregonians are understated people who are quietly proud of where they live.
That way, the state's citizens - who we were told number fewer than the inhabitants of Brooklyn - get the whole place to themselves.
We drove the length of the state twice - one and a half times on Interstate 5, and then the final half down US Highway 101 along the coast.
The latter is by far the superior option, allowing drivers to gasp at the spectacular seashore.
And at the adjoining sparkling freshwater lakes, towering primordial forests, Sahara like dunes and rivers teaming with life.
Plus, the food and drink are fantastic! Nice cheddar (yey, finally!), good microbrews, amazing coffee, plentiful seafood and tons of orchard fruit.
We loved it, despite the daily - and nightly - torrential downpours. We would have stayed, but we were worried about ourselves and the Airstream becoming waterlogged.
We all need more Gore-tex.

Beauty parlor, for men

Our car is moody, and that's at the best of times. Its favorite trick is not to start when you turn the ignition. But now we know that you have to try three or four times, sometimes hitting the accelerator instead of the brake to get things going. We think it objects to wet weather and also nighttime, maybe.

That said, it's gotten us across the country and up and down half of the West Coast.

We get it looked at every couple of thousand miles, to check that everything's working all right and to see whether anyone can figure out the ignition thing.

No one can.

Not even Oil Can Henry's, the best car-fixing place ever.

An Oregon-based business, Oil Can Henry's is staffed by men in bow ties who look like butlers and call you 'sir'. All that's missing is a fake British accent.

We had no idea.

When we pulled up to the company's Florence, Oregon branch, a rather rotund butler greeted us, handing us a newspaper ("for your enjoyment, sir") and a menu of treatments, including some combo deals.

"It's like a nail salon, for men!", exclaimed Daniel.

When it was our turn, we pulled into an immaculate garage and parked next to a video screen split in four showing a commercial for Oil Can Henry's (there seems to be a company academy, where butlers take classes and then graduate, all standing in a row!), the company logo, the chief butler next to our car and the junior butler working underneath our car - from a sort of basement level.

I read the paper, while Daniel looked over the menu, helpfully guided by our businesslike butler. They went through the list of oils - from basic to premium - performed tests on various fluids, the results of which were reflected in color marks indicating how badly they needed replacements, opened up everything that can be opened up on cars and tested the lights. We were offered two kinds of new windscreen wipers.

Meanwhile, the butlers sang observations and orders to each other, all communicating from their different levels, behind and in front of the car, and next to computers.

I asked Daniel if he thought they would break into a chorus and dance when it came time for us to leave. "Oh no, it's too masculine for that", he responded.

It was a dizzying experience. We all felt more beautiful afterwards.

We spent $240. We are kicking ourselves for not taking a photo. Because then it would have been 100% worth it. Even though the car's still not starting that well.

Coffee, tattoos and computers

We spent an evening and part of the next day in Seattle, so we didn’t see that much of the city.
We met two locals: my friend Laura’s mom Roberta, who lives in neighboring Kirkland, met us for coffee; and a really nice waitress at the fun, 24-hour Hurricane Café. She gave us the lowdown on Seattle: its music heyday is over, but the city is still thriving – and Belltown, the neighborhood where we were staying: the main going-out area, and also lots of prostitutes.
It seems like a really clean, outdoorsy city that enjoys views of water, islands and mountains. Kind of like Vancouver.
The people look city-ish, like they’re rushing around and doing important things. Well, compared to us, everyone is generally doing important things, like work.
Lots of girls have tattoos, everyone is really into coffee (in one place, I was refused a plain drip coffee: “we don’t serve dirt”) and Bill Gates sponsors stuff.
Like the amphitheatre at Seattle’s Olympic Sculpture Park, which is basically a free, landscaped outdoor museum overlooking stunning Puget Sound and centering around a huge, ship-like Richard Serra piece called 'Wake'.
Here's a link showing all the pieces.
http://www.seattleartmuseum.org/SAMcollection/code/emuseum.asp?style=browse¤trecord=19&page=collection&profile=objects&searchdesc=WEB.Olympic%20Sculpture%20Park&newvalues=1&newcurrentrecord=1

Best Western, movin’ on up

With our Airstream still in Eugene, Oregon, we still had about 400 miles to enjoy a couple of guilt-free motel nights. Seattle was en route, so we thought it would be fun to try out a mini-break, downtown instead of in the outskirts.

I remembered my parents mentioning www.hotwire.com as a cheap way of finding hotels – the rates are advertised, but not the hotel names. This way, hotels can offer cheaper rates on the sly.
Stopping at the public library in the first town over the US border in Washington state, we went on to the site and selected the cheapest option - $57 plus tax for a two star hotel in downtown Seattle.

Once we booked, we found out that we’d be staying at the Best Western Loyal Inn on Eighth Avenue.

We were really excited, and sped down to Seattle as fast as we could.
Feeling like royalty, we glided into the hotel, took the lift (a lift, not stairs!) up to the second floor and admired room 212. Big beds! Fancy sheets! Bolsters! An armchair! A bathtub!
We sat down across the two beds, turned on the TV and decided to make coffee. Only the coffee machine didn’t work.

An hour later, thanks to the efforts of both receptionists, the repair guy and a housekeeper, we had a new coffee machine. The housekeeper, Amina, who had delivered and unveiled the machine, then stayed for another half hour or so, playing with Sophia and Lulu. She left only to bring us a baby cot, complete with a selection of clean, ironed blankets. And then refused a tip.

We later wished we had asked her to babysit.

Flagpole-ing

When we arrived at the Canadian border, Daniel explained candidly to the guard that we were spending the weekend in Vancouver so that he could get his US holiday visa stamped for another six months.
She didn’t really like that, and explained that this was because both the US and Canada frown upon “flagpole-ing”, the practice of visiting one country for a short time to regain access to the other one.
The reason she was worried, she said, was that Canada didn’t want to have to look after Daniel in the event that the US refused him re-entry.

But she let us in anyway.

And we kind of worried about it all weekend. Well, not that much: if you are forced to emigrate, Vancouver’s probably as good as it gets: family friendly, best climate in Canada, a market mostly unaffected by the global economic crisis, good food, yummy local beers, etc.

To facilitate a possible return to the US, we printed out as many things as we could to demonstrate that we were indeed going back to London at the start of April: a letter from my father, correspondence with our tenants, a letter from my company confirming that I was due back at work on April 23 and a copy of our travel insurance documents.

When we arrived back at the border on a rainy Monday morning, the officer in the window thought getting a stamp would be all right, as long as we paid $6. He sent us into the office with a pink slip of paper, telling us to park the car next to a guard.
Inside, another official told us that according to the law, a visa holder must take a “meaningful” trip out of the country in order to renew his or her six months. A weekend in Canada was not meaningful, but a trip to the UK was, he stated (helpfully?).

I could see Daniel spinning sums in his head: one round-trip plane ticket to London, room and board somewhere in the northwest Pacific for the girls and me, a brand new travel insurance policy (ours terminates if we go back to the UK).

We pointed out that Daniel had applied for a nine-month holiday visa – this had been approved at the US embassy in London - but was sent a ten-year visa that we later found out was valid in six-month increments.
After letting us sweat a teensy bit more, the official stamped Daniel’s passport and sent us on our way.

Phew.

4:1

Staying in Vancouver, we achieved a new personal best for imposing ourselves on a host.
Four of us rocked up at the swish condo in the sky of Harald, a cousin of Daniel on his father’s side. A cousin he hadn’t seen in twenty years – they live 6,000 miles apart, after all.
We outnumbered our host by a lot, four of us to one of him. We have been welcomed by whole families, and couples, but never just one person. What’s more, Harald had just said goodbye to his in-laws, who had been in town for ten days before flying back to Japan with his wife and two-year old son the day before we arrived.
Harald met us outside the building, directed us into the guest parking spot he had reserved and then took us up in the elevator to his well appointed, two-bedroom apartment on the 24th floor.
Once we were safely installed with the few bags we needed for the weekend, Harald suggested we take our valuables out of the car, just in case. Hearing that we already had brought the laptop, he mentioned that his car had been broken into – twice, the second time to steal his son’s car seat.
So Daniel went down to the parking lot with him. After about ten round-trips, the two men had brought the entire contents of our car up to the apartment. I tried as best I could to store all the items as unobtrusively as possible.
Remember, we are on a six-month road trip. Across innumerable climates and three seasons. With two kids. Who are both constantly outgrowing clothes. Who need lots of toys to stay occupied as we drive hundreds of miles at a time.
It was kind of embarrassing to have someone I’ve just met see our whole life in all of its messy detail.
Harald said he didn’t mind, he knows what it’s like to have kids.
And it was true, he didn’t mind. He was an extremely gracious host who genuinely enjoyed having his life and home overrun by a gypsy family. He showed us all of Vancouver, a city that consistently wins polls on best places to live, happiest populations, etc. And with good reason, too: it’s a clean, pretty place, surrounded by water and overlooked by mountains, enjoying a temperate climate and healthy economy, and attracting outdoors-loving, intelligent people from across Canada and many other countries as well.
Pictured here are Horseshoe Bay and the path towards Stanley Park.
Good stuff, eh?

Halloween in Vancouver

Trick-or-treat
One of Harald’s coups was arranging a Halloween Experience for Sophia (and Lulu). Sophia loves dressing-up nearly as much as her mother does, and had been excited about Halloween for at least a month. Americans get way more excited about Halloween than people of other nations, so we had to take advantage on this trip.
It turns out Canadians are pro-Halloween as well.
When Daniel enquired about Halloween activities by phone the week before we arrived, Harald said there was a place in town where shops offered trick-or-treating for kids.
So down to Yaletown we went, the afternoon of the 31st. It’s a pretty trendy neighborhood, which must have one of the highest hair salons per capita in the world.
The kids were out in droves, accompanied by their parents and even some grandparents. The best costume we saw was a young Michael Jackson, complete with jheri-curl, single white glove and boom-box.
Sophia went as a friendly witch (costume hasily bought from a supermarket in Washington state the day before, I’m ashamed to say. Lulu was a very unscary dragon, in an outfit given to us by Daniel’s sister Emma a few years ago.
Daniel and I, pathetically, went only as enthusiastic parents. Harald, amazingly again, was just as into it – even though his own son was away – and took Sophia into several of the participating stores.
It was a huge success. Sophia collected unimaginable amounts of candy, and best of all, she was allowed to eat it. Well, some of it.