Day 1: Portland to Redding

In addition to all the other reasons we decided to go on this trip, there was one more, which is that I love to travel, but Dan and I also have been discussing having a baby, and society has told me those two things do not go hand in hand. 

Unable to accept such stupid restrictions, I told Dan years ago that I was excited to have his baby, because that would mean I was also moving to Latin America for three years. When he asked why, I said because America is some insane mishmash of people who love babies but never agree that you are raising them correctly, and people who think you are the devil for deciding to procreate while the world is burning.

Naturally, to those people I always say the same thing, which is if the world is devolving into a post-apocalyptic hellscape of roaming tribes of killers, it is in my best interest to breed some new tribe members before things get too rowdy, and of course such an answer pleases neither the people who love babies and can't imagine them growing up to be war criminals, or people who don't love babies, and can't imagine them growing up into people like them. 

In Latin America, though, people are happy that you have decided to have a family in kind of a general way. 

And cheese is half-price!

Instead of impregnating me and leaving Dan vulnerable to what are sure to be more excellent ideas fueled by shifting hormones, we compromised on going on an extended trip before I got pregnant, but with the idea that we would investigate if there were any American places that we liked better for raising a family. 

Things that will influence our decision:

1. Proximity to friends and family

2. General coolness

3. Attitudes toward having a baby

4. Attitudes toward people owning a moody dog made of garbage who is basically a teenager that will punish you for forgetting to cuddle her the appropriate amount in the morning and will take her revenge by barking at things she previously never barked at because she knows it upsets you and then will act like she has no idea what you're talking about later when you try to talk it out and slams the door to her room shut and says she hates you and you say you hate her but cry into your whiskey glass anyway cuz you don't really hate her and also a nice dash of salinity really brings out the flavors

5. Price of cheese

With that in mind, we take off from Oregon, in search of greener, cheesier pastures.

And my trusty road pony.

Nothing happens on our drive in Oregon because nothing ever happens in Oregon. We drive down I-5 and it is sunny and looks like summer, and we consider perhaps we have made a mistake in leaving because this is clearly not December. But when I roll the window down to feel the warm sun, I am buffeted by cold air and the scent of dead dreams, so I know it is not summer and also we have made the right choice.

We settle in to the open road, snug inside our car where the pandemic can't catch us. 

I think.

I am distracted by trying to decide which place I like less, Oregon or California, and so I completely miss the Welcome to California sign. Because of this, I am not convinced that there is a Welcome to California, and probably they have a sign that says Ugh I Guess You Can Come to California. With no evidence to the contrary, I sit back and enjoy the countryside, which is all California has going for it.

Also the raisins.

Our first destination is Redding, a place I have never been. I see a mountain and ask Dan if it is Mount Shasta, and he is driving so he says probably. I am now in the distressing situation where there is An Important Thing that has not been properly identified in my immediate vicinity, so I consult multiple maps to find out if it is Mount Shasta.

My lack of ability to read maps quickly becomes an issue. I do what any good explorer would do and point to the mountain and say, "That is Mount Shasta."

And now it is.

We arrive in Redding after eight hours. I had heard that Redding was a cute little town in Northern California, and was interested in seeing it because it was a potential place we could live.

I immediately reject Redding because it is clearly full of insane people, or people who can't read, or both. In the face of every news and science report ever, they are operating like those men in WWII who were fighting in small places and never heard the war was over, but the exact opposite of that, because they are going about their lives as if there is not a major global event happening, and sitting in restaurants like actual psychopaths. I tell Dan we are not safe because everyone in Redding is a murderer, and not in the cool way.

We hole up in our hotel room for the evening. I decide a good plan is to drink and watch Bob's Burgers and forget that we are in California. My plan is complicated by the fact that I have a very judgmental dog who will side-eye you if you drink because she was an alcoholic as a puppy and now thinks she's better than everyone else because she doesn't drink. 

"Soda?"

"I hate you."

Dan leaves only once to get some terrible and overpriced food, which of course it is terrible and overpriced, because this is California, and the whole state is basically an entitled hot chick who shows up to a date and thinks that is all she needs to do and you are so lucky that she's there and she is not required to provide any personality or worth because look how pretty.

I do not enjoy California.

Redding Livability:

Proximity to friends and family: 3/5 

It's kind of close, but not so close that I'm willing to overlook the entire population being illiterate.

General coolness: 0/5 
NOT COOL GUYS

Attitudes toward having a baby: 0/5 
Probably very bad because they are happy to murder adults so babies are probably also on the murder list

Attitudes toward people owning a moody dog made of garbage: 5/5 
They seem to be happy to tolerate garbage behavior so I think Likely would be quite at home

Price of cheese: N/A 
I did not purchase any cheese in this cesspool

Final score: 8/25 

That is a very bad score. We are not living in Redding.

Choosing Austin

People are always asking me, Roxanne, why did you decide to move to Austin for six weeks, and I am glad they are always asking that, because I have an answer.

For everything.

The decision to live in Austin for six weeks hinged on the amazing house we found while daydreaming of living in sunnier places. See, Dan and I both have a quality where we like the sunshine and feel deprived of vitamin D when it is gone, a unique quality, and one I am sure is shared by no one else. We deliberated on what we would do when there was an inevitable resurgence Winter COVID, which we knew would somehow be worse than its more whimsical cousin, Summer COVID, even though Summer COVID is the more murdery of the pair. Worse because at least with Summer COVID, the sun is out, and you can go outside, and for about ten minutes a day you can imagine that the world isn't burning, and worse because even in the best of times, I succumb hard to the winter blues, doing absolutely nothing to prevent them and in fact inviting in the dearth of vitamin D which then manifests as intense anxiety and depression, welcoming it into my home every year like a shitty parent who comes to stay for the holidays and makes terrible suggestions about how you should run your life, like maybe you should just give up doing anything forever because you're bad at all things, and look how pale you are, garbage child, have you considered no one ever seeing your face again, because it would be preferable to having to see your face.

And Dan likes the sun because in the winter he gets kind of tired sometimes. 

So we figured living in a sunny place during winter might be an equally good idea for both of us, but we were yet to be sold on it. We looked on a map of sunny places, and pointed to all the people who we knew who lived in those sunny places, and Austin is home to two of my very good friends from high school and their very good partners, so it seemed like a good place to start daydreaming. 

We then looked at AirBnB, and almost immediately found an incredible house in the neighborhood we wanted to live in. Better yet, all in it would be less than our rent and monthly expenses on a home, so we would actually be saving money, a concept foreign to me (why would I save money when we are all going to die, most likely every winter?) but Dan has pointed out that I have spent many winters not dying and it is starting to sink in. We think about what a beautiful world it would be to not think we are going to die this winter, and we click the shiny red Reserve button on the house, which belongs to a musician/tech guy named Blaine.

Probably this guy.

Since at this point our rental was six months away, Blaine called us personally to discuss our stay. He first of all wanted to make sure we were "cool," because it was actually just his house that he lived in all the time, and all of his stuff was there, and we would be touching it. I was concerned about passing the "cool" check, because I usually do not pass the cool check, but Dan usually does, and that is why you get married, so one of you can pass the cool check.

We asked Blaine if he thought COVID would interrupt our winter plans to stay in his house, and he assured us we would have no trouble with our rental because he not only lived in his house, he also lived in a van and had no problems taking his van-house to a small swath of land in the desert he also owned and camping on it for the duration of our stay. 

I was not sure I was comfortable staying in the house of such a lavish person who owned two homes while we were about to have zero, but Dan pointed out that a van is not a home, so Blaine really only had one home. I countered that home is where the heart is, so if his heart is in the van then it is his home and also that is why trucks transporting organs are temporarily homes. Dan patted me on the head and left the room, which I have determined in our relationship means I have won the argument and is not in any way a method he's devised of comforting himself about his marriage choices.

I celebrated our very fine decision to stay in Blaine's very nice home probably by getting drunk, and we went about our lives, which involved alternately being concerned about catching COVID and who would be the last president elected before the Republic fell and America turned into a wasteland made of disparate roving bands of killers, which will be an approved career choice in the New America, or in Dan's case, who the new president would be. 

But as we neared our departure, we started saying things like, "There's no way he would cancel, right?" and "He made it like very obvious that we would have no problems staying there, didn't he?" and "Roxanne, if you are worried about the AirBnB you should talk to Blaine and stop following me around asking me about it." So I decided totally on my own to reach out to Blaine and just make sure everything was fine, which it probably was, because this is something you learn in therapy when you're an anxious person, that things are probably fine, and you're probably stressing out for no reason.

That therapy account on Instagram would never lie to me.

I quickly realized that Instagram lied to me and that things are not fine and that I was absolutely right to be afraid of things going wrong, because they very much did. COVID Problems, or CPs as I shall refer to them once and then never again, struck Blaine in a medium fashion that did not ruin his life, but did prevent him from renting his home to us. Dan ended up winning the argument about how many homes Blaine had, because Blaine did not want to live in his second home (aka his van) while his fiancee found a new job, which was understandable, and also the opposite of what he had said before.

But we live in unprecedented times, and Dan says that calls for unprecedented not-calling-people-assholes-when-they're-just-trying-to-get-by, and also Blaine seemed like a really nice guy who was doing his best, so I forgave Blaine. But now we are three weeks away from leaving and have nowhere to live. This is fine though because our lives encompass having nowhere to live as a rule, so I can't be mad that we continue to have nowhere to live. Even so, I returned to the fertile grounds of AirBnB, where nice Austin homes are surely still a dime a dozen as they were six months ago.

I learn quickly that Austin seems to use AirBnB in the way it was meant to be used (they are notorious originalists) in that people actually just rent their whole house to you and then go away while you're using it. So much of the inventory is just a person's house, and there are few houses that are straight rentals, unless you are a fabulously wealthy person who is willing to spend $12,000 a night on an artist's compound, which I assume is a misnomer because any artists I know are spending that $12,000 on paying back student loans, or acid. 

So if you have $12,000 a night, you can live in a compound, and if you don't have $12,000 a night, you can live in someone else's house, but that is a more difficult proposition than six months ago because there is some sort of global pandemic, and slowly people have begun realizing that it is not going away quickly and therefore they need to live in their homes themselves.

"Looks real nice in there."

Pickings are therefore slim, much slimmer than six months prior. We find mostly houses far out of our price range, or with no yard, and having promised Likely a yard, I am unwilling to disappoint her and suffer whatever revenge she devises, because she is a spiteful animal. 

We find a house that says it has five bedrooms and two bathrooms, which seems impossible and highly suspicious, because I have never seen a house with five bedrooms and two bathrooms before. But it looks nice, so we go to the reviews. Our process for booking AirBnBs has always been to rely heavily on reviews, where I make sure to comb them for someone who has written 'The beds changed my life' and then I book that place. This process has never steered us wrong. 

However, this place had only three reviews to illuminate our future by, and they said:

Great location and nice space -boy who describes himself as a Student, Adventurist, and Friend

Great place, close to Lamar and South Congress -man who describes himself as a world changing father of 2

Nice place -woman who doesn't describe herself at all, I assume because all the good tag-lines have already been taken by the first two guys

The suspicion deepened. And with no reviews about the quality of beds to go by, we were...concerned. But we threw caution to the wind and booked it, because we may be excited about being homeless, but we were much less excited about living inside of our car like some sort of tauntaun-sheltering-us-from-the-elements scenario.

"That'll be $12,000."

Our only hope was that everything went right this time. With my Instagram quote firmly plastered on my brain, I was sure it would.

Interlude: Thoughts about Reindeer

Dan and I are in Pagosa Springs, CO, and it is covered in snow and Christmas lights, because apparently Colorado is the only place that observes Christmas as it is meant to be observed, which is to say all the way until January 6th.

As I have recently learned, the 12 Days of Christmas (a concept made popular by a song where a woman terrorizes her one true love by sending him increasingly horrifying gifts including geese which are the national bird of hell and then finally culminates her break with sanity by sending twelve men to leap into her one true love's home after twelve days of him trying to figure out if he has to pay taxes on the five golden rings) actually start ON Christmas. Then they go all the way to January 6th, the Epiphany, where the three kings showed up and showered Jesus with gifts.

Catholics know what I'm talking about.

So Pagosa Springs is still in the Christmas spirit, which means I am still thinking Christmas thoughts, and such thoughts are as follows:

Santa's reindeer were female. Male reindeer shed their antlers in the winter, and female reindeer do not. Also, there are too many feminine names for them to not be female. Dancer, Prancer, and Vixen are about as feminine as you get, and no one will convince me that back when they were coming up with Santa stories that they were comfortable with the idea of males and females working industriously alongside one another.

Which means that Rudolph wasn't an outcast because he was bad at stuff, he was an outcast because he was the only male reindeer. Which follows that his 'red nose' was probably actually his raging reindeer erection, and none of the other reindeer wanted to play with him because he didn't have a waistband to tuck it into so he could pretend it wasn't there.

Breaking Up With Portland...Again.

Anyone who has met me for longer than five minutes knows that I do not like Portland. But it's not Portland's fault. It is mine. I cannot seem to be able to enjoy living in a city that is a literal garbage can, run by garbage people.

A personal failing, but one that I own.

Portland's saving grace has always been that once winter hits and the small cache of vitamin D we have hoarded so preciously over the five sunny days of summer starts to drain from our body turning into what I have termed The Dark Abyss of Despair From Which I Will Probably Never Return, at least there are bars to go to so you can drink until it is springtime and the crocuses show their little purple faces in the sun and you can remember that there are things worth living for. It is the natural order of things, like bears hibernating, if the bears were hibernating together in close quarters and also drunk.

Every year I look forward to the winter drinking season, which is different from the summer drinking season, because I am wearing a sweater now. 

BUT NOT THIS YEAR.

I would like to say if anyone hasn't noticed, we are in a global pandemic, but it does seem quite likely that Florida and Idaho and South Dakota et. al. have really not. 

Our lease expired in December. Our main hobby of taking in the rich culture of the bar scene and exploring new gastronomical heights (i.e. getting drunk and eating food) is gone. Life is bad.

It is at times like these I look to my ancestors for answers. Now that I am married to Dan, I look to his ancestors too. And our ancestors both agree, when the going gets tough, leave all your belongings behind and go find a new place to live.

Unlike our ancestors, we are doing it by choice. Social progress!

Experienced and excellent explorers that we are, we know the value of an early start, and I capture the final sunrise in Portland before we set out.

So majestic.

I breathe in the air, which smells like air and not like street people camps on fire for once. I tell Dan I am ready to go.

He points to our entirely trashed apartment that is still not clean, our bags that are not loaded in the car, and the 23498 things that we have yet to do before we are ready to actually leave.

Two hours later, we are ready to depart. 

"BUT I LIKE LIVING IN GARBAGE."

I tell Likely to say her goodbyes to her natural habitat and she gives me a baleful glare. I ignore her feelings as per usual. We pile up in the car, and hit the road. 

Homeless, happy, slightly unhinged, laden with hand sanitizer, masks, and a healthy disdain for people, we head straight into the heart of COVID country.