sacramento-ho!

today i traveled way too far way too fast. round about 500 miles maybe? i am in the bed so i cant look at my mileage figures just now. and i am keeping mileage figures, the amount i travel per day, when i get gas (how much and HOW MUCH), my miles per gallon...and let me tell you, my mpg is way better than expected. doing this highway travel i am getting 27 mpg which is spectacular for this old pickup truck.

so, i am trying to be upbeat in my writing, but a terrible cloud has descended upon me that i want to get out of the way but it takes my day out of order.

so, here goes: i am going back to portland...tomorrow. because i just cant handle life on the road? no. because i have to go to some jobs seminar in order to continue getting unemployment? yes.

SHITTY! what a bomb when emily sent me an email saying i got this letter in the mail demanded my attendance. i thought about just blowing it off and seeing if they really did cancel my benefits. then i thought if they did and i got screwed, then this trip would take a whole new perspective or be over. so i called the number they gave me and talked to a lady, i can do my training on monday instead of on thursday. so i am going to hop a bus and be in portland for about 10 hours on monday.

...

i just spent a great deal of time trying to purchase tickets, i will have to go in there tomorrow.

in other news. i had a pretty good first half of my day! everything went by so fast, i am getting so far faster than i wanted to. i stopped in weed which wasnt all that, then i realized that if i wanted to end in redding i would have to do something in between becasue of my rate of travel. so along the way was a national park that boasting spelunking!

i would love to get to go into caves and exlore, so it seemed like a great diversion. after i traveled on the side road for awhile, i finally got to shasta lake caverns. there were a ton of kids there, a ton of people period. so i parked far away from the crowd and when i got out a deer was right behind me. so i snapped some photos thinking everything would work out. then i went toward the entrane and it turns out you have to cross shasta lake in a boat to get to the caves and you have to pay for the tour. i wasnt into that.

so i meandered down by the boat launch and there was nothing going on. i hung out down there and took some pictures, then started back up the trail when the loudspeaker announced that the next tour would be leaving in 10 minutes, the boat is coming back now. so i decided to wait and see what kind of ticket taking they did, since i was already in a ticket only area. once more people made their way down and the boat pulled up i watched a few of them get on the boat and not show any kind of ticket, so i went on down and boarded the boat.

the boat left dock and i thought it was pretty sweet. the boat driver then said that we were going to cross the lake and then take a bus to the caves. so i thought they would take the tickets at the bus and i would just be turned around. at least it was fun on the boat.

we get to the other side and we all file on the bus, no tickets taken. the bus driver says when we get to the top we will meet our tour guide and get a briefing before we enter the caves, and i thought now they are going to take the tickets and i would be turned around at the top of the mountain.

no such thing. they never took tickets and after we got to the top we started a guided tour of the caves. it was pretty interesting, but i would hav loved going off on my own. about 17 times better than the portland underground tour...and free!

here are some pictures:





in reverse order: the first deer i saw. the boat. the lake expanse (what i could capture). the best picture from inside the caves. i forgot that on our way back across the lake we saw two more deer on the shore.

after that i hopped on over to redding to be disappointed again. thats where i got mail about my unemployment. i looked at the map and decided to just go to sacramento. it was a straight shot down i-5 and took about an hour and a half. when i got here i started thinking more about my situation and realized that i should just fly back to portland for the thing.

too late for flights, amtrack doesnt have great service, greyhound it is. i decided to do that instead of driving back simply because it should work out to be cheaper. and secondarily becasue i dont want to put the truck through so much constant driving.

and so here i am. sweating my ass off in the back of my truck and typing my blog. tomorrow i will go to the greyhound station first thing and buy some tickets, then i will recount my history in sacramento and write a story about the origins of the name "bht."