Travelling Smurph: August 2009

My two week visit with Donna and Tom in Portland was fantastic; pretty much like “going out to play with my friends.” We hung out together, laughed, toured around, laughed, did silly things and laughed some more.

Throughout my life’s travels – which have always involved the comforts of modern transportation - I’ve had a fascination about the stamina of pioneers who piled their often meager earthly possessions into covered wagons and endured a 2,000 mile trek – mostly walking - across North America. While visiting Portland, where the temperatures were in the range of 100+ I wondered if any pioneers could possibly have imagined the air-conditioned comfort of the Oregon Trail Museum within which I leisurely examined their artifacts and listened to their stories.

Built in the shape of three giant covered wagons, the museum informs the curious about the excitement, difficulties, pestilence, disease, extreme heat, extreme cold, and boredom faced by some 200,000 pioneers whose overland voyages took four to seven months to complete. Historians estimate that one in ten died along the way. Three out of four women were at some stage of pregnancy during the journey and many died delivering babies in the back of wagons that often did not stop bumping and grinding long enough for the birthing event.

Not all pioneers travelled as far as the west coast. Those who did must have been overwhelmed by the sight of the Pacific Ocean where, I happily discovered, the temperatures can be some 30 degrees cooler than in Portland. My friend Donna, her daughter Sarah and I had a blast during a three-day girlfriends’ trip to Lincoln City; one of an endless string of small towns along the Oregon Coast. We checked into a touristy motel, explored the local shopping and restaurants, played cards, talked, laughed, watched movies and walked on the beach. The only thing missing was the sight of the Pacific Ocean which, throughout our stay in Lincoln City, was blanketed with a thick and lingering fog.

While in Portland, I also learned more about the ups and downs of owning and maintaining an RV. And the more I learned the more convinced I became that, despite the fun of it, the RV lifestyle – much like travelling by wagon-train - is considerably more than I am inclined to, or capable of, undertaking. Lucky for me, Donna and Tom have already invited me to visit them in Texas where they will spend the winter and again next summer in Portland.

The best part of my train trip from Vancouver to Portland was meeting a new and incredibly interesting friend. A retired teacher heading to Florida on vacation, Almas was, like me, wandering uncertainly outside the Vancouver train station hoping to find the right spot to catch the Amtrak bus.

Although the Amtrak train does come to the Vancouver station, you can’t take it to Portland. (Don’t ask why, it’s just one of those incomprehensible quirks of travel.) Instead, it’s a four hour bus ride to Seattle and then a three hour train trip to Portland. Almas and I scored the front seats on the bus, had lunch on the patio of a Seattle restaurant, and then rode the train together; interrupting our chatter about everything-on-earth only long enough to snap a few photos of Mount Baker which, oddly, doesn’t look any bigger close up than it does from my apartment in Victoria.

In May, I had travelled on Canada’s Via Rail; a sentimental choice of transportation reminiscent of many childhood summer trips between Winnipeg and my grandparents' house in Halifax. Via’s passenger cars have been marginally upgraded from their 1950s origins; hence it was easy to recall/relive the transition between cars as including wrestling with heavy doors and struggling to hang on for dear life when stepping between the rickety connecting platforms. With very few exceptions, Via train stations are beat-up, boarded-up, paint-peeling embarrassments to the small towns through which they pass, drawing surprised, negative comments from international travelers who clearly expected more from a trans-Canada rail service; as did I.

To my surprise and delight, and in sharp contrast to Via, Amtrak coddles its passengers in modern cars with comfy brown leather seats complimented by carpeting in muted tones of beige. Glass sliding doors that open automatically in response to a mere touch allow a view through adjoining cars. Train stations in small towns are smart looking, well-kept brick buildings of which, I am certain, their towns are very proud.

Portland’s average day/night temperatures during July are 78/56, slightly warmer than Victoria’s 71/51 averages. These numbers are, of course, farenheit and, if you’re Canadian (eh?), those temps are 25/13 and 21/10. This July, however, record high temperatures were exceeded almost daily. By the time I boarded the northbound Amtrak, Portland’s temperature had hit 110 (or 43), probably the hottest temperature I’ve ever experienced in my life and enough to cause “sun kinks” - the spontaneous buckling of railroad tracks that can, and has, caused major train derailments.

In a continuation of my travel legacy which seems to be “what can go wrong, will go wrong”, the train had barely cleared the Portland station before the announcement that the lead engine would not be able to pull the load so the rear engine would take over. Off we went into the rail yards and the engineer walked alongside the train to change ends. Although the train started moving in a direction I would have described as backward, it turned out to be the new forward since the passenger seats continued to face “the wrong direction” all the way to Seattle.

Upon hearing the next announcement that some passengers would be re-seated due to a breakdown in the air conditioning, I headed for the snack car and bought all the water I could carry.

Thanks to the heat and threat of sun kinks, the three hour trip from Portland to Seattle took over five hours and, needless to say, the connecting bus to Canada had long since departed. At 10 p.m., my scheduled arrival time in Vancouver, I was just boarding the bus in Seattle. At just after midnight, the Canadian border was much busier than I, and apparently the staff scheduling officer, had anticipated. They rounded up three officers and with remarkable dispatch all bus passengers were processed in about 9 minutes.

Thankfully the bus driver called ahead to order taxis to meet the bus’s 1:30 a.m. arrival at the Vancouver station. My daughter Robyn sleepily welcomed me to her home and I fell, exhausted, into a bed she had thoughtfully positioned directly in front of the air-conditioner.

The next day, July 30^th, was Vancouver’s “hottest day ever” peaking 33.8. I spent the sweltering afternoon squirreled away in the local White Spot restaurant swilling iced tea. Later in the evening, my other daughter, Jodi, drove me to the ferry and by midnight, I was lugging my suitcase along the street toward home.

Travelling Smurph