the left coast, in first-person.

Well, I’ve arrived in the beautiful PNW. I’ve spent a little more than a week here, and I have to say, the atmosphere is simply amazing. My arrival was sweet, and bitter. I hope to explore both aspects here, for your introspection, Dear Reader.

I’ll begin with documenting the trip. Money was always an issue, as I had only a few hundred dollars to survive on, and feed the Snarfler on the way. I didn’t rush, to conserve fuel. I didn’t eat fast food. I pre-purchased a case of bottled water at a tent sale. Partly because of laziness, partly out of a need for efficiency, I made the decision that it would be okay to smoke in the car (as long as the windows are open, as long as I’m by myself) for the duration of the trip. My voyage across the western U.S. (and my first into the Pacific Northwest) was wonderful. The drive across South Dakota gave me a chance to say goodbye to the familiar vast farmlands of my youth. The Black Hills were beautiful, as always. Instead of heading south into the hills, as was my usual voyage, I elected to head north into Spearfish, and leave I-90 behind as I headed into Montana.

With the exception of Alaska and Texas, there isn’t a state that’s longer from east to west. And I drove through every inch of it. Eastern Montana’s Indian reservations were bleak and saddening to drive through. Gasoline came at a premium, and burned quickly. After the jump on the two-lane, it was back to the highway, where I would spend the rest of the voyage. Coming through the mountains at night really was an experience to remember. Seeing a glittering city in the bowl of a huge valley was really awe-inspiring. The air, crystal-clear, only added to the gorgeous visage.

The first night was spent at the top of the Rockies, at a beautiful rest stop outside of Missoula, Montana. The next morning was a long trip down the Rockies. Coeur D’Alene is stunningly beautiful. Fires were prevalent in the Rocky Mountain range, and firefighting helicopters were a common sight. All of my butts went into a water bottle! Through the bottleneck of Idaho and into Washington, traversing Oregon along the majestic Columbia River, and then south on busy I-5 to the destination: Eugene. Checking into the local hotel that the station had set up for me was a wonderful relief. The hotel offered nice suites, and after some much needed sleep, I drove in concentric circles around the neighborhood, familiarizing myself with the area immediately surrounding the station. Good local restaurants. The people are friendly. Driving rules and patterns are new and confusing to the newcomer. Gas is pumped for you. I haven’t quite figured out if one is supposed to tip for this service.

I made multiple trips into Corvallis during my decompress time, making friends with the local community service office person and plotting potential rentals on a map of the area with sticky notes and addresses. The magic coffee shop Sunnyside Up made a perfect base from which to plan. It’s going to be a lot of work to find the perfect place for us, but The Fabulous Girlfriend insists that it’s the place that is going to find us, not the other way around. She’s awfully intelligent and has an awful lot of Faith, so again, I find myself trusting her inherently with our lives. The city is small, quaint, beautifully situated in a lovely valley, and relatively easy to navigate. Free downtown parking makes me smile. The giant John Deere traveling down 4^th street at noon brought me comfort.

On Friday morning I called and checked in with the Chief Engineer, and after a quick introduction, we were off to the station for a tour and orientation. The station is a technological marvel, with no Production Assistants in the house to edit video, run the cameras and audio board, advance graphics sequences, and the like. Here, all is run by non-linear video editing, computer sequencing and robotics-controlled cameras. There are no tapes to be rolled during the show, as all digital video is stored in a sequence on an in-house set of servers. Microphone queues are automatic. High tech, yo!

During this breaking in period, I’m working in Master Control, which is something new for me. I’m now being paid to watch and baby-sit the Saturday morning cartoons that I lamented missing out on while I was helping Dad clear the grove of deadfall for our family’s winter heating. Lots of learning is happening. Photoshop is a new ally and enemy, rolled into one. Graphics requests are fulfilled quickly, in an extensively pre-planned workflow. I find myself wishing I could bypass this learning portion and simply pass Go, collect $200, and inherently understand everything. It’s annoying to suck at one’s job at the beginning. I’m confident enough in my abilities, but everything is so very new.

Through all of this, I’m finding that flip side of my treasured isolation time: feeling terribly lonely. Although I have my new co-workers and TFG’s extensive network of friends to coax me through this incredible period of transition, I still find myself uncomfortably alone sometimes. Bear in mind, I’ve received nothing but support (free housing, emotional support, food, anything essential that I need) from TFG’s friends. Thank you to the amazing Jon, Mary, their beautiful kids and happy-go-lucky dog. Thank you to the wonderfully cerebral Donna, for hosting a stranger. Thank you to the entire state of Oregon, for allowing a outlander to wander unmolested through your fair clime.

Currently, the Beautiful Boy and The Fabulous Girlfriend have departed the Unschooling conference in North Carolina. And on their return trip, they will have picked up my family’s monster van (circa 1978?) in which to load our lives’ worth of stuff and lug it out to Corvallis. I miss them. I also miss my friends and my band and my music. I understand fully that this is a choice that I’ve made, and that to enable this new reality, sacrifices have had to be made. Although I was willing to make them, I now am faced with the daily sadness of leaving loved ones behind, and the comfortable familiarity of my former daily life. This feeling-sorry-for-myself funk leaves as quickly as it arrives, when I breathe the non-meatpacking-plant air here, flavored by fir, pine, and oak.

Roger Waters once exhorted to anyone who would listen that ‘kicking around on a piece of ground in your hometown, waiting for someone or something to show you the way’ is a wonderful, comfortable way of wasting one’s greatest gift: Time. Showing more maturity than a man his age should have shown in 1972, he continues: “And then, one day you find- ten years have got behind you, no one told you when to run. You missed the starting gun.”

It took a lot of faith (my own, private ‘f-word) in the unknown to overcome twenty years of convincing myself that “I’ll never be able to make it elsewhere”. And this is from someone who proudly declares to this day to be a Doubting Thomas. I’m still one who needs to see, to have tactile contact with something to believe in it, or the inherent truth contained therein. I’m starting to understand that Belief, and Faith, are learned skills.

The night Hannah died, a hospital chaplain handed out ‘worry stones’ to those in attendance. Some months ago, TFG gave me one, decorated simply with a painted dragonfly, and it’s been with me ever since. It helps me, knowing that I’m able to conjure strength, possibly from her, when I find it in my hand (which happens multiple times throughout the day). This stone gives me the contact that I need, the physical, tactile contact that I want when I think about a Daughter and her Father. I keep a photo of Mitch and Hannah in my wallet, and when I’m missing The Beautiful Boy and The Fabulous Girlfriend, I pull out the photo, study it, and confirm why I’m here. It’s for them, and me. It’s for us.

I talk to both of them now and again, explaining that I really want to build the best life I’m able to with your wife, mother, son, and brother. I guess I’m not really alone out here after all. Thanks, Hannah-Bear. Thanks, Mitch. You’ve both been of great assistance to me throughout this entire life-altering and affirming series of events. I owe you big. I pledge to take the very best care of your beautiful Brother, Son, inspiring Mom and Wife that I know how to. I really think we’re going to be okay. I’m actually bordering on believing that it will be so.

Now if I can only figure out how to hard-time these commercial breaks during the upcoming round of the PGA Fed-Ex tournament. Oh wait, I can’t hard-time them. It’s a live event.