Sunday, August 10th began with the Summer of 2003 Super Happy Fun Beach Trip of Love. This is a summer tradition around here. It consists of three or four carloads of people zooming over to the Oregon coast and spending the day on the beach. Thus the descriptive name. Suffice to say it was tons of fun and I came away with only minor injuries.

After driving home from the beach, Brunslo and I tossed a metric assload of gadgets and a few items of clothing into my car and headed south. Actually, first we headed to Brunslo’s house, where we encountered—get this—a completely undefended Safeway peach pie. There was a short debate regarding whether or not the pie trip had actually officially started yet, and whether it was in fitting with the spirit of the trip to eat pie that had been bought within walking distance of Brunslo’s home, but we quickly came to a consensus that the pie should be sampled.

Unfortunately, it was the worst pie I’ve ever tasted, and I had never tasted a pie I didn’t like before then. Brunslo shares my sentiments. The pie trip had gotten off to a pretty lousy start.

Attempting to cut our losses, we jumped in the car and started on our journey. I had already been driving all day to and from and around the beach, so I was a little tired, but we managed to make it to Grant’s Pass, Oregon, which is near the Oregon-California border. By the time we had reached Grant’s Pass, it was after 3 AM and I was having trouble keeping the car on the road. We drove up and down the main drag several times trying to find a hotel, inn, or motel that didn’t look totally sketchy. We eventually decided on the Motel 6, since it had the prettiest sign, but they were full up. Comfort Inn was next, but they were full as well. However, they pointed us to the one place in town that wasn’t full – the Budget Inn.

Here’s a tip: never stay at an inn with “Budget” in its name. There’s a reason it’s cheap. While we didn’t see any disgusting bodily fluids on the beds or cockroaches on the walls, there’s a distinct air of sketchiness to the place. The bedsheets are fuzzy and porous and immediately stick to your skin, seeing as how your skin is covered with sweat (because the thermostat on the wall is really just for show and doesn’t actually operate any kind of air cooling apparatus). And the shower nozzle was located at approximately nipple height. So I guess we now have clean nipples.

A night of fitful sleep ensued, and we awoke the next morning at 10 AM to continue our journey…