Holiday travel fun

After standing in line at the San Jose airport for more than an hour yesterday morning and not seeing the front of the line, I said fuck the heck and took a cab home. I canceled my reservation (it turns out they canceled my flight anyhow) and drove up to Portland. I spent last night at a Motel 6 in Gold Beach, OR. I took 101 up and drove through a lot of Redwoods National Park. Pretty good scenery. I had lunch in the pot capital of Humboldt County - Garberville. I don't know anything about anything, but there were a lot of hydroponics shops, hemp stores and crunchy looking folk. Last night I grubbed down on fried scallops by the ocean at a local diner. Not too shabby. I like the cheap motels because you know what to expect - a clean room, a big bed, lots of cable channels and free internet. I stayed at the Hilton for IEDM in 2007 in DC and paid six times as much for one-sixth the enjoyment. Plus there aren't fools at Motel 6 with their hands out because they opened the door for you. Damn I hate the concept of tipping.

The drive up this morning went alright until I hit Salem. It was like someone threw the switch since there was snow and ice all over the road. People were chaining up, but I didn't because the pavement was mostly dry. It took more than two hours to go the remaining 50 miles, but I finally made it.

Happy holidays.