{"id":5270,"date":"2012-05-01T21:08:59","date_gmt":"2012-05-02T04:08:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/?p=5270"},"modified":"2012-05-01T21:08:59","modified_gmt":"2012-05-02T04:08:59","slug":"first-day-of-the-cross-country-roadtrip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/2012\/05\/01\/first-day-of-the-cross-country-roadtrip\/","title":{"rendered":"First Day of the Cross-Country Roadtrip"},"content":{"rendered":"<h4>Packing the car was at times a panic-filled struggle.<\/h4>\n<p>No, wait. <em>Thinking<\/em> about packing the car was a panic-filled struggle. Once we actually started, we just plain freaked out for a while because it looked like so. very. much.<\/p>\n<p>We made a couple of purchases (both necessities and one or two &#8220;nice-to-haves&#8221;) during our five-months-long stay in Portland. And, because up until about the middle of March it wasn&#8217;t clear to us that we wouldn&#8217;t actually settle there, buying a few bulky things seemed harmless.<\/p>\n<p>Of course each additional cubic inch turned into a potential assassin when it came time to load the vehicle. But we did it.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, just after noon we set out.<\/p>\n<h4>Can I just say that Oregon is beautiful?<\/h4>\n<p>Our route took us slightly south and around Mount Hood, along US-26. We passed through the Mt. Hood National Forest, we glimpsed amazing valleys and shuddered at the close-up view of snow-capped mountains just behind pine forest armies. We stopped at view points with drops of several hundred feet, drove curvy highways up to elevations of 4,000+ feet, and drove curvy highways about half-way down again till we were in the Oregon high desert. We marveled at buttes barely held together by titanic geological pressure and stray grasses.\n\t\t<style>\n\t\t\t#gallery-1 {\n\t\t\t\tmargin: auto;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t#gallery-1 .gallery-item {\n\t\t\t\tfloat: left;\n\t\t\t\tmargin-top: 10px;\n\t\t\t\ttext-align: center;\n\t\t\t\twidth: 50%;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t#gallery-1 img {\n\t\t\t\tborder: 2px solid #cfcfcf;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t#gallery-1 .gallery-caption {\n\t\t\t\tmargin-left: 0;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t\/* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes\/media.php *\/\n\t\t<\/style>\n\t\t<div id='gallery-1' class='gallery galleryid-5270 gallery-columns-2 gallery-size-thumbnail'><dl class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<dt class='gallery-icon landscape'>\n\t\t\t\t<a href='https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/files\/2012\/05\/IMG_1328.jpg'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" src=\"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/files\/2012\/05\/IMG_1328-150x150.jpg\" class=\"attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail\" alt=\"\" aria-describedby=\"gallery-1-5271\" \/><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/dt>\n\t\t\t\t<dd class='wp-caption-text gallery-caption' id='gallery-1-5271'>\n\t\t\t\tThe transportation\n\t\t\t\t<\/dd><\/dl><dl class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<dt class='gallery-icon landscape'>\n\t\t\t\t<a href='https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/files\/2012\/05\/IMG_1330.jpg'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" src=\"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/files\/2012\/05\/IMG_1330-150x150.jpg\" class=\"attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail\" alt=\"\" aria-describedby=\"gallery-1-5272\" \/><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/dt>\n\t\t\t\t<dd class='wp-caption-text gallery-caption' id='gallery-1-5272'>\n\t\t\t\tSouth of Mount Hood\n\t\t\t\t<\/dd><\/dl><br style=\"clear: both\" \/><dl class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<dt class='gallery-icon landscape'>\n\t\t\t\t<a href='https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/files\/2012\/05\/IMG_1337.jpg'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" src=\"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/files\/2012\/05\/IMG_1337-150x150.jpg\" class=\"attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/dt><\/dl><dl class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<dt class='gallery-icon landscape'>\n\t\t\t\t<a href='https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/files\/2012\/05\/IMG_1338.jpg'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" src=\"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/files\/2012\/05\/IMG_1338-150x150.jpg\" class=\"attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail\" alt=\"\" aria-describedby=\"gallery-1-5274\" \/><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/dt>\n\t\t\t\t<dd class='wp-caption-text gallery-caption' id='gallery-1-5274'>\n\t\t\t\tRailway workers, Cali plates, Oregon site\n\t\t\t\t<\/dd><\/dl><br style=\"clear: both\" \/>\n\t\t<\/div>\n<\/p>\n<h4>Self-Realization Tycoons and Railway Workers<\/h4>\n<p>We didn&#8217;t drive far, only to Madras, where it&#8217;s as spring-warm as one might imagine Chennai&#8217;s to be. Madras isn&#8217;t too far from the ranch where <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Osho_%28Bhagwan_Shree_Rajneesh%29\">Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh<\/a> set up his commune <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Rajneeshpuram\">Rajneeshpuram<\/a> in the early 1980s. Bhagwan must have made serious money in the self-realization business, for out in that Oregon desert, he personally owned a fleet of forty Rolls-Royces (and a couple of airplanes, too). Sadly, we didn&#8217;t discover any orange traces of his legacy on our drive to the motel, which, it turns out, we were sharing with a small army of hardened railway workers.<\/p>\n<p>At around 5:30pm, they started arriving at the motel, brought there by the trucks that would take them away again the next morning: sun-burnt, grimy, squinting, and clearly worn out from their long day&#8217;s work. It was a mixed crew: a few of European descent, a number of Hispanics, a couple of African Americans, and several Native Americans. They&#8217;re replacing the steel on the railway, and I guess they travel as they work &#8211; hence the motel stay.<\/p>\n<p>I talked to one worker, who looked Native American. He told me that some of the gangs work on replacing the ties, but that his crew does the steel.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Tough job,&#8221; I said. &#8220;I guess you don&#8217;t need to go to a gym to work out, do you?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; he laughed. Then he added, &#8220;And I guess I&#8217;m not going to get diabetes, either,&#8221; which I took to mean that diabetes is a serious problem for his community.<\/p>\n<p>Score one for a car-centric &#8220;culture&#8221; built around junk food (even if you are a railway worker), and zero for Bhagwan&#8217;s vision of super enlightened self-realization.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe, when (or if) I get around to posting about Day Two, I&#8217;ll have a few more choice words about the often miserable culture we&#8217;ve built in contrast to the endlessly astonishing beauty of the land.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A slight account of my first day traveling by car from Portland Oregon to Boston Massachusetts. On Day One, the spouse and I passed through beautiful Oregon, traveling east on US 26 (south of Mount Hood) to Madras. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":311,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[600],"tags":[454,8112,146],"class_list":["post-5270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-yulelogstories","tag-oregon","tag-road-trip","tag-travel"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/311"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5270"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5270\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5284,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5270\/revisions\/5284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}