elliot winard

We woke early and drove up the California coast - through redwood forests and over the state border into Oregon. The Oregon coast is so nice! We stopped at the beach where Myers Creek Rd. meets highway 101 and dropped shells that J. had collected in both Westhampton and San Francisco. We went to an awesome lunch spot in Orford, OR - The Crazy Norewegian’s Fish and Chips. The fish was delicious, the tartar sauce was sweet and dilly and the chips were crispy. Check it out if you ever find yourself driving along the Southern Oregon coast.

We left the coast when we were parallel with Eugene, OR. The road was very scenic as we drive East - more farms, forests and train tracks. After we hit Eugene we headed due North on the Interstate to Portland and pulled into our friend P.’s house at around 7:30 pm - after a nice dinner at a new restauraunt in the Fremont area of NE Portland I fell as P.S. and J. talked.

Then this morning we met R. for a nice breakfast at the Cup and Saucer - really good blueberry pancakes and a tasty ‘garden sausage’, egg and cheese sandwich on grilled saurdough bread. After breakfast/lunch we met up with P., browsed through the books at the little Powells Books and bought the latest Haruki MWe walurikami to read while driving. We stopped at Trader Joe’s to buy food before taking I-84, the innerstate highway that follows the Columbia River, east - with Oregon under our wheels and Washington state over the river to our left. We passed three or four dams, a concrete plant, neat looking abandoned factories, lots of cows grazing on large pastures.

We drove throught the Blue Mountains. Visibility was low - It was a little scary! I was very relieved to get out of the clouds, even if the flat part of central Oregon was a bit dismal - cloudy, flat, barren of trees. Two more mountain ranges broke the monotony and the snow-capped mountains to the left *and* right were beautiful.

We passed into Idaho at 8:45 PST - our first time-zone change. 45 minutes later we checked into the Boise Airport Best Western and ate a dinner of avacado, cheese and fresh bread. Then bedtime!

It’s 8:30am on Tuesday now. We slept late - tired from sitting all day, I guess.

7-plus years is a long time.

I just saw the first DHL vehicle with my stuff in it off for New York. Due to a miscalculation they sent a van that wasn’t large enough to fit my first round of boxes. I’m waiting for the second DHL truck of the night to pick up boxes with my dining room table, chairs, stereo in ‘em.

Moving is a reflective time. A time to look back at the things that one’s done while one was living in San Francisco (in rough chronological order) - having roommate mishaps and misunderstandings, working at the world’s best video store, getting involved with a nice lady, moving into the Mission, doing robot research stuff and then crappy contract work during the Internet bubble, riding bikes, writing and testing computer on the release of - ummm - a bunch of commercial software releases, getting hit by a car while on bike, falling in love, reviewing records, re-starting my blog, starting my own sourdough starter, baking a lot of bread, making tofu and cheese and mock-chicken from scratch, getting bored, playing a lot of guitar, quitting my reliable (but ultimately not challenging and therefore unfulfilling) job to go work at a cool startup, getting doored while riding bikes, writing and recording a full album, playing a rock show where mostly my friends showed up, playing music with a bunch of rad people, playing a rock show where people other than my friends showed up, getting ready to move to New York City, some rain, some sunshine. A lot of good times. Not so many bad.

Now I’m sitting in a half-furnished apartment, surrounded by half-filled boxes, rolls of bubble-wrap, three piles of stuff - SHIP, SELL OR GIVE AWAY, NOT SURE. Items move from pile to pile - music and most music instruments are in the SHIP pile. Same thing with art that I haven’t looked at in a few years but is too personal to give away. Books mostly go in the SELL OR GIVE AWAY pile. While they’re full of information and may be linked to memories, they’re relatively replacable.

It feels good to look through this stuff, even better to get rid of most of it.

Now if anybody wants to buy some furniture…