here one day gone the next

life on the train

On the move again! After two months of mild winter weather, mother nature dumps 9" of snow on The Woolley Mammoth the morning I am leaving, and its still coming down, hard. Jeff's car is at the bottom of the hill, and I've got a train to catch at 9:15. Frantically I grab all my bags and march out the door, unsure if I'll be able to get out. With a little push and some quick shovel work we get the car out and rolling! And just in time to miss one of the biggest storms the NW has seen in several winters.

Portlandia!

I board the train (Amtrak Cascades this time) and within 5 hrs I'm in Portland. Surprise surprise its pouring in Portland! I put my new jacket to the test as I stand at the bus stop and watch my bags get soaked. I hop on the bus (mmm ihop on the bus) and decide to go way too far in the wrong direction, why not? Eventually I get to the right stop and am kindly picked up by my very first SERVAS host, Carol! Carol and her husband Arnie take me in at their beautiful warm home and feed me a delicious dinner.  Portland is an amazing city, the next day I met an old friend for lunch and took off on foot to get to know Portland. Everywhere I went I met super friendly people who seemed to be more sincere and engaging than I think any other city I've been in thus far. It was very refreshing. After two days of exploring and chatting with the locals it was already time to leave. 

Graffiti Bunker! (look for more photos in flickr account)

On the way to the train station I get an automated call from Amtrak telling me that my train has been delayed indefinitely... After talking to a service agent I find out that the massive amounts of snow up North in Seattle had caused them to close the tracks and that they were turning the northbound train around to come back down to Portland and that would be taking me down to California. Fair enough, so I get another afternoon to explore Portland, no skin off my back! Eventually the train shows up, 7 hours late. I was probably the only person in the train station who wasn't really fazed by this, everybody else as you can imagine was pretty pissed. It actually made for a much more scenic ride, which I was stoked about. Just as the sun was coming up Friday morning we were crossing in to Northern California with stunning views of Mt Shasta and the beautiful countryside. After a long 17 hrs I arrive in Emeryville, CA, transfer to the bus, get to the Ferry building in San Fran and jump right on the ferry to Sausalito. Of course, its pouring again. My new help-x host Elizabeth comes and picks me up from the ferry and brings me back to her warm beautiful house and feeds me a delicious dinner (see a pattern here?). 

So here I am in beautiful Sausalito overlooking the bay, eating well, and sleeping like a fat drooling baby. Content, to say the least. One week until NZ!

Front Porch (insert rainbow joke)

Au Revoir Mammoth!

After an amazing 2 months its time to keep cruisin'. The Woolley Mammoth has been an incredible place to live, a graceful blend of people, personalities, ideas, music, and art! 

As I pack my bags for the next leg of my journey I weed out unnecessary items and place them in a cardboard box. By the time I'm done fitting everything I own into three bags (a small suitcase, a backpack, and a daypack) I have a full box of these "unnecessaries". This box and my old, much larger suitcase are going to live here at the Mammoth. Like so many previous residents of the Mammoth, I am following suit: leave something behind with the intention of coming back for it. Maybe its because its so hard to say goodbye to this place, or maybe its because everybody who comes through here is on some similar journey and needs to lighten their load, or maybe its because this place is so damn big that things just accumulate here. Who knows, but my intention is to come back for it, there is way too much to do here that I didn't have the ability to do without a vehicle. So maybe, after trekking around for a while, I can come back and re-open this chapter and my box full of "unnecessaries".  

Packed and ready to go!

"unnecessaries" 

Oh the places you'll go!

Or hope to anyway, I'm sure you guys have seen this app on Facebook, but I thought I'd plot out just a few of the places I'd like to go. Stuff in red = lived, blue = been, green = WANT. This could take a while......

Should Auld Acquaintance be Forgot?

I should hope not! Happy New Years to everyone back home, I miss you all dearly! (except for Nick Soles, he be forgot, jk buddy I miss your musk)

Ok, so I've been slackin a bit on keeping this blog up to date, but I'm gonna use the lame excuse of the holidays getting in the way. I've also in the mean time been weighing out several options for my trip down the coast to LA, and here's what I've come up with: Since I can't see everything I want to see, I cut the trip down to just two stops between here and LA. First being Portland and Hood River, OR, technically its two stops but they are pretty close to each other, and second being Sausalito, CA. I'll be visiting friends in Oregon and in Sausalito I've set up another help exchange for just over a week. I'll be a short ferry ride away from San Francisco, staying in a house that has a view of the bay and the bridge!



I'd be lying if I said I wasn't getting antsy about leaving. Its been a nice retreat up here at the Mammoth but I'm getting a little bit of cabin fever not having a vehicle. I bum rides as often as I can when my roommates are going into town, and some of them have been cool enough to bring me out to some excellent hiking spots. On NYE we went out and soaked out bones in a hot spring near Mt. Baker. We also did a short day hike around Baker Lake and saw some mountain goats from a distance! I would post the picture but they just look like white specs on the side of a mountain. After the romp around Mt. Baker we came back to a house full of good people, good food, good tunes, and horrible, horrible dancing (all the more fun ;). The party was a huge success and in the morning we hosted a delicious brunch for all out guests who stayed the night.  

There is so much to see out here but unfortunately most of it requires a vehicle to get to. The Cascades are incredible! Huge! I'd love to be out there climbing and exploring them but I need the independence of having my own ride. So I'm thinking it would be great to come back in the summer time when the weather is warm and the days are longer. Maybe I'll buy a car then and tour the area the proper way. A car would also give me the freedom to explore more of the West coast. We'll see.