I've just recently returned from an awesome 8 day road trip down thru the Pacific Northwest states of the USA. The main cities I cruised thru were Seattle, Olympia - Washington, Portland, Eugene and Bend - Oregon.
The purpose and objective of the trip was a mini outdoor music festival called Summer Camp at the Les Schwab Amphitheatre in Bend - a small town of 65000 people in central Oregon state. There were 5 bands, all local to the PacNW - Viva Voce, Pedro The Lion, The Decemberists (Portland), Built To Spill (Boise, Idaho) and headliners Death Cab For Cutie (Bellingham/Seattle).
The secondary purpose of the trip was to road test the ideas of hitch-hiking and couch-surfing - kinda researching the feasibility of it in preparation for my big 5 week adventure to California/Nevada/Arizona in September.
Yeah, hitch-hiking! I wanted to do something different, see the States from a different viewpoint other than the window of a bus, meet new and interesting people, the local, real people of the country (every ride had their own story), and without having to adhere to anyone else's schedule. I only had only one fixed date and place in mind - August 6th in Bend. How I got there and in what time frame would be dictated entirely by the whims of friendly strangers. I know some of you may think its dangerous and risky, but I successfully thumbed it practically the whole 8 days.
Now, couch-surfing - what the hell is that, I hear you ask??? Well, it is this great traveller friendly set-up I recently was told about - kind of like an exchange program, where you can visit like-minded people in various towns and cities, and stay at their place for free!!
There are at least three websites (that I'm aware of) that you can sign up to (for free) and register your interest.
http://www.couchsurfing.com/
http://www.globalfreeloaders.com/
http://www.hospitalityclub.org/
It's basically like a massive database. You do a search for a particular location (say, Seattle) and date/s you plan to visit, and a list of profiles of people offering free accommodation pops up on your screen. You then send an email to as many of these people as you like with your plans and a mini-profile of your own...and wait for the replies! Some say No, Some don't reply at all, and some say "Come on Down!!". I sent out emails to folk in about 25 different cities in 5-6 states, and had 32 replies from 16 cities! The system works!!
Oh, and then there's this awesome hitch-hiking website http://www.digihitch.com/. Set up and run by hitch-hikers with advice, stories and forums for hitch-hikers. This turned out to be very, very useful in my planning. And, in fact, the guy who'd set up the site is also a 'globalfreeloader' and offered me accommodation in Phoenix, Arizona, later this year.
So, anyways, Sunday July 31st was D-Day. Bright and early I was up with my rucksack - 12Kg with just the essentials, my CD walkman, and a cuppla books, and my camera bag. Oh, and US$300 - my budget for 8 days, US$30 per day, plus US$60 emergency cash. I opted to at least get across the border before I embarked on the hitching lark, and so caught a Greyhound bus to Bellingham, the first big town in Washington.
I didn't spend much time here-about as long as it took to walk from the bus station to the I-5 Highway on-ramp (30 minutes). What I did see tho, was very pretty - the suburb of Fairhaven, the toursity area, kinda set up like an early 20th century colonial town.
Now for the first attempt at serious hitch-hiking. In Washington it is illegal to hitch on the Interstate highways, but the on-ramps to the highways are fair game. I had my big piece of cardboard, and scrawled "SOUTH - SEATTLE" and a big smiley face on it, set my rucksack down at a visible spot, took a photo of myself for posterity, and, at just after 11am, stuck out my thumb.
Amazingly, I had someone stop for me after only 15minutes. Two guys, Luke and Jeremy, in their 20's returning from a wedding in Bellingham to the outlying Seattle suburb of Bothall. En route they got a phone call which resulted in "Hey Tony, I can take you all the way to Downtown Seattle dude, I just gotta stop in at home and pick up my sister - we're going shopping at Pike Place Market - do you mind?" "Um, no man, sounds perfect". This was more than perfect in fact!...
In a very nice looking residential neighbourhood in Bothall, I got invited into their home, met lake's sister Michi - a cute as hell 21 year old, mmmm, who made me a tuna salad lunch, complete with local microbrewery beer, and then we were on our way again, down the I-5.
Ride Distance - 90 miles
My first couch-surfing contact was in Seattle, a guy named Sean and his buddy Danny who lived in the University District of town - a sweet spot just minutes from Seattle's famed student-boho-hippy hotspot "The Avenue".
I had arranged for Luke to drop me at an intersection nearby, said my goodbyes and thank-you's, and 5 minutes later was in Sean's car heading back to their place. As it turns out, Sean and Danny don't actually officially live in their house - they are just long-term dossing themselves!! So it was kind of cheeky of them to offer me a bed, but 2 housemates were moving out that weekend so they figured there was room. Who am I to complain.
My time in Seattle would be brief, just overnight, and it was already pushing 3pm, so allowing just enough time for the boys to put back a coupla cones of Seattle's finest green (I abstained - honestly!!) we headed out, in blazing 30+ degree heat, down to Green Lake Park, where an amazing freestyle frisbee competition was in action.
Who knew you could do soooo many tricks with a spinning frisbee!!! Sean and Danny (who, incidentally has the biggest white-boy afro hairdo I have ever seen!!) were avid Football (Soccer) fans and players, and so a quick kickabout was had, long enough to work up an appetite for some Thai food at The Avenue's finest Thai eatery, Thai Tom's - a small but very, very busy little cafe. Yum!!
A little guided tour of the city took in the very photograph friendly Gasworks Park overlooking Lake Washington and a drive over the bridges giving an awesome viewpoint of the city skyline, then it was back to The Ave for ice-cream. What a treat!
Next morning I said my goodbyes and thank-you's again, and headed into town. As you know, I am a huge fan of Seattle, it's music scene, and of course KEXP FM. I simply could not pass up the opportunity to check the place out while I was in town, and perhaps meet some of the DJ's that made my working day so much easier.
While there, I was given a tour of the studio, checked out the DJ booth, and had my pic taken with Midday Show DJ Cheryl Waters. I was also telling them why I was there, and about my road trip, and the station manager gave me a free KEXP T-Shirt, on the proviso that I wore it down the I-5 and at the gig. Awesome! I kept my promise on that one too.
So, then it was back on the road. My hoped for end destination was Olympia, the capital of Washington state, and my next couchsurfing host. The I-5 runs right thru the centre of Seattle, but one piece of advice from digihitch was to get to the outer suburbs before trying to thumb a ride, as it would be much easier than in Downtown. Not knowing exactly how to get out of Seattle, I followed a whole bunch of locals' advice, some good, some bad, and ended up taking 3 different local buses ($3), and about 2 hours, to progressively get further South.
At 1.30pm, I ended up at an I-5 on-ramp midway between SeaTac Airport and Renton, at the SouthCentre Shopping Centre.
Not more than 15minutes of waiting here and I got a ride from Roger, who turned out to be quite the religious fanatic. Not that he was preaching or anything, but all conversation somehow related to God, Jesus or The Church. He was headed to Tacoma, about 1/2 way there.
Ride Distance - 40 miles.
Sat at an on-ramp just southside of Tacoma next. 10 minutes is all it took to get the next ride. Just a short one, mind, as far as Lakewood, with Ned and his 2 small dogs Sam and Koa, who spent the whole 15minute journey facing away from me so their arses were practically in my face the whole time.
Ride Distance - 10 miles.
I was on a roll here. It was not more than 20 minutes before I got picked up by Tony. This guy was interesting. He was a medical first aid instructor, and had a prosthetic limb from the elbow down, with a hook for a hand - in his previous job he was an electricity lineman, and in his words 'I touched the wrong wire'. And when he saw my camera, he also mentioned he used to do professional photography when he had both hands. Tony was able to take me all the way into Olympia, and dropped me off at the local bus station, just shortly before 4pm.
Ride Distance - 25 miles.
Here in Olympia, I called my new host Eli, a computer IT techie guy, who was still at work when I arrived. I got directions to his house, and was told "Someone should be home, but if not, the front door should be unlocked. Go inside and make yourself at home". This is unheard of these days usually, but not in Olympia.Despite it being the state's capital, it's really only a small town of 42000 people, and the area that Eli lived in totally felt like it was in an old-school country town. It has a reputation for hippie-dom and a chilled, relaxed vibe.
It's also Courtney Love's home town, she of Hole fame, and perhaps more famously for being Kurt Cobain's wife. So Olympia had to be another of my stops on my Rock'n'Roll Grunge pilgrimage tour of the United States, after earlier in the year checking out Seattle's finest venues and Jimi Hendrix's memorial.
Once again, I didn't have a whole lotta time to spend in town, and killed 2 hours nicely by walking about the city centre, and visiting the imposing and outstanding dome-topped Capitol Building. It is set upon the top of a bluff overlooking the southern tip of Puget Sound, and has a grand majestic look about it, typical I suppose of all American political buildings built in the early 1900's. I walked in just before closing and the place was practically deserted. So deserted in fact, that when I was done checking it all out and wanted to leave 30minutes later, it was all locked up!! I couldn't get out! Seriously, there was NO ONE around. All the other tourists had gone, and no staff to be seen, not even a janitor.
This was wierd. Here I was, locked up inside among Washington's corridors of power, all on my lonesome. I shouted out "HELLO's" and whistled. I walked up and down the 3 flights of stairs looking around. I even went behind the reception desk to use the phone, but when i hit the 'Security' speed dial, it went to voicemail!! Finally, i checked the enormously large wooden oak doors again, but they wouldn't budge. At last, I noticed a small latch about 8 feet high, and another a ground level, snapped them open, and was able to let myself out...leaving the doors to the states most important and powerful building wide open!!
I walked back to Eli's place still in wonderment at what I had just experienced, and we then arranged to have dinner with two of his housemates, Danner and Eliza, at 'Le Velour', a nice, cheap funky cafe-bar on the hipster 4th Avenue. Then, back at his house, a nice little treat awaited - a hot tub in the backyard, perfect for a unisex skinny dip!
more to come....
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