The Deepsea Diver is Always under pressure

We just got back from Portland. Good trip. Some rain both ways. Two sad-looking eagles, feathers askew, each perched on the high point of his own snag, waiting out the cloudburst.

The doc visit was good. Lab numbers are great: I’m a poster boy for good lab numbers. Doc sez she’s getting ready to PCS to some other cycle in her career. It happens to all these guys at the teaching hospital linked to this VA. They get funds, and their docs are first-rate. Next time I go to Portland, in two months, the new doc will probably be there. Ah. Well, Dr. Moore has been a pretty good doc, just like Dr. Lyecette before her. I’m running through docs at the rate of one doc every two years. I hope to see several more of them. The hospital grunts are all permanent party, though, so I always have more or less the same crew of nurses to kick around.

On the way home we stopped for lunch at the IHOP just off the metacloverleaf multiramp bridgeplex at Springfield. It was fun finding the IHOP after running through this disorientation course. I especially liked navigating the ramp exchange's construction zone during the heavy cloudburst. I truly hope that impatient trucker who was following me gets his bowels back in order soon. No person should have to live with that kind of rage. And that was the good part of the IHOP visit. The bad part was the fillycheese steak sando. I don't know what I was thinking. Ah well. The IHOP menu bragged about being the home of the bottomless coffee pot. They serve more or less typical restaurant coffee. Next trip, I'm gonna hold out for the Casa del Pueblo, down the road a couple hours in Trail.

Anyhow, the rest of I-5 was great. The scenery is pumped green stuff and/or with blossoms. The huge valley between Roseburg and Portland is filled with neat stuff. One stretch is miles and miles of commercial flower and tree farms, thousand-acre plots of seed grasses, and maybe a few thousand-acre sod farms as well. Not a lot of animal pastures here, but a few dozen low-acreage lots with a horse pen nearby, houses scattered around riparian tree lines. One or two small herds of goats, a couple small herds of sheep. Goofy llamas, a couple pairs, a few solitary ones. Some folks have had luck using llamas as herd guards for the goats. Llamas are hard on coyotes, they say. I say they should wonder about how a mountain lion fits into the concept.

No wrecks, no near misses, and except for me trying to get off the Freeway in Springfield, no assholes on the road.

Nice tunes on the radio, and a dry run on realty from NPR. Some guy gave a sort of brisk narrative about how the local Kallapooya folks used the camas plants that grow in the interior wetlands of Oregon...turns out that the interior wetlands have been drained, so the camas doesn't grow in such profusion as it used to. Nowadays, sez the commentator, central Oregonians grow flowers and sod where the wild camas, and the Kallapooya, used to thrive.

Anyhow, no drama, just a nice trip with my honey. She makes me try to do her goddam crossword for her. I guess words into imagined squares at 70 miles per hour. It takes a hundred miles to do a puzzle, because we are not working very hard at it. I don't know who the first chancellor of Germany was. Four letters. I think it's a bogus clue.

After Roseburg we drive through the mountains, negotiate long grades with big trucks, hotshot gofasters, oldfarts, and some guy who was drunk or on good meds. The Umpquah rivers converge at Roseburg, and we follow the South Umpquah for about forty miles before we begin to cross the several transverse ranges that take us to the Rogue drainage. We pass through stretches of clear weather, but some of the winds are hard gusts. Some of the showers are outright downpours. Traffic itself is moving scenery. Big trucks wobble before my eyes, water spray from the wet road makes huge fogs around the big trucks’ wheels feel like running through a car wash as we pass them.

The RV Boys pull manifold toytrailers from one-tons or motor homes. Their combinations are limitless...pickups pulling an open trailer carrying four quads and some gear, enclosed box trailers large enough to hold a pair of racing cars; all kinds of motor homes that pull huge things or cars behind them, campers of all sizes like guppies weaving in and out among the big stuff. We were in a little car, RedBud's Trailblazer.

RedBud sez, a deep-sea diver is always under a lot of pressure.

I say what?

She sez, that’s the quip. A DEEPSEA DIVER IS ALWAYS UNDER A LOT OF PRESSURE. What about KURZ? She sez.

I dunno, I tell her.

The last few of the mountain passes have good vistas, then we are in Grants Pass, and descend into the Rogue River Valley. It seems a lot like the final approach pattern of a long flight when I dive off the freeway at a rural off-ramp, then slide into surface traffic once again when I get to the main road near our house. I almost want to put my landing gear down. Have to sit a minute in my driveway to get the damned hips awake. Takes a while to stand fully upright in the driveway.

You get the idea.