Push Me, Pullman

Since we have dental insurance now I decided to make an appointment. I hadn’t been to the dentist in over 8 years and I knew I needed some work done. A year ago I was chewing some gum when I noticed something hard and gritty in the middle. It was the filling and corner portion of my first lower left molar. It was never sore or sensitive so I started chewing on the right side of my mouth and life continued as usual. Dr. Fred was amazed at the resiliance of the tooth repeatedly gouging it with his metal scraper and asking, “You’re sure this doesn’t hurt? ”. Besides the gaping hole in my tooth he found five small cavities and that my lower right wisdom tooth had grown past my upper roll of teeth, which wasn’t a problem since it was the only one that came in. He mumbled something about going ahead and removing it, but then neglected to list it on the estimate so I didn’t bother bringing it up.

After Amanda’s hair appointment and eye exam on Friday we left for Portland. I drove and she drank a pumpkin beer to help her sleep since she was just coming off overnights. The drive from Pullman to Oregon was fun. It was a curving, hilly, two lane road littered with farm equipment. The van doesn’t have the best acceleration so passing required precise timing. I would slow down to leave a few car lengths between myself and the slow moving road blocks and wait for oncoming traffic to reach a certain proximity before flooring it to allow the van enough time to reach 60 mph so that I could swoop around before reaching the next double yellow line. The road in Oregon was less hazardous but nonetheless thrilling. To the immediate south was the towering moss covered southern wall of the Columbia Gorge and to the north the Columbia River. Along the way were dams, forests, and waterfalls and in the distance Mount St. Helens.

Portland reminded me a lot of Seattle. A colleague of Amanda’s had told her, “it’s Seattle without the traffic”. During the day we went shopping at the downtown businesses and Portland Marketplace, which we likened to Columbia’s Art in the Park only bigger and much, much better. During the evening we enjoyed forays of the local ethnic eateries followed by drinks. Friday night I had possibly the best Tom Collins I had ever had at an über trendy bar who’s name escapes me at the moment. Our last night I had possibly the worse Tom Collins at the Portland Bar & Grill, but the view more than made up for it. The bar/restaurant was on the 30th floor of the tallest building in the city and offered an amazing view of Portland.

I was feeling a bit ill when we left so Amanda drove until we stopped at Taco Bell. You would think this would be terribly disappointing after the Greek and Indian cuisine we had been dining on the past few days, but even this was a bit of a treat since there are no Taco Bells where we live. I quickly woofed down a baha beef chalupa and hard shell beef taco and took over the wheel. A short distance down the road break lights began to shine as traffic slowly filed into the right lane. Once we reached the top of the hill we could see what was causing the delay. Three cars dented and scraped were strewn about the left side of the road. It must have been recent because as we passed the first vehicle we saw a paramedic performing CPR on a male in his twenties with two distraught looking males standing beside them. Further in the median was a body that had no attendee and was covered by a white sheet. At the end of all this in the middle of the left lane was a girl with a paramedic kneeled over her. They were surrounded by shards of glass and preceded by a trail off blood where it appeared she was thrown through the windshield of the SUV a few yards before her then struck the pavement and skidded to her current resting place. Amanda mentioned feeling like she was going to vomit. I was surprised to feel nothing at all.

It was already dark and didn’t take Amanda long to fall asleep leaving me with the accompaniment of static filled talk radio which would waver in and out with every peak and valley of the road. After an hour of anticipating my exit at road 385 I woke Amanda up to have her look at the atlas. The actual road, 395, I had passed about a half an hour earlier. We decided to be adventurous and take a straighter route through, according to the Krusty Clown College one of three funniest city names, Walla Walla. It may have been shorter, but definitely not faster. The road was winding with pitch black night on either side so I took it slow, but apparently not slow enough. After coming around turn 98 of the 500 or so curves of the road I saw four racoons. One raccoon had safely made it to the shoulder of the road. Two smaller raccoons were still running across the left side of the road. The forth was staring at me from the center of my lane. There was no time to break and not enough room to swerve so I tried to center the raccoon between the axels of the van for the slight chance I might clear it. No such luck. I heard and felt the ther-thump ther-thump as the raccoon bashed against the lowered floor of the van. “I just hope I killed it.”, I said. I had avoided birds, squirrels, possums, dogs, and cats. It was the first animal I’d ever hit. My stomach began to ache as I wondered which I had hit, the mother or the father and if it even mattered.