When the cheeks are asleep

Before a trip it's easy to get caught up in preparatory activities and not expect the unexpected. Enter Colby. His unexpected surprise for Sarah and I this morning was a wet mess that originated from a large colbalt-blue vase with flowers from the nearby farmers market. Gavin beat us out of bed (got up earlier than us) and had already kindly sopped up the liquidy evidence and Sarah hurried a chair pad and table cover into the washing machine. After a stern talking-to we left Colby and Gavin for a weekend camping at Harris Beach State Park on the southern Oregon coast.

Our route followed Interstate 5 to the Portland area where we stopped off at Aaron's house to pick up Ann. We didn't spend any time in town and headed further south to a lunch at a Taco Bell in Wilsonville. Conversation flowed freely as did some music and the AC from my car. We turned off I-5 at Eugene to get gas at a Costco station and headed out to the coast to Florence. Time lagged on and my left butt-cheek grew weak without a pinch driver to take my place. The distance between Florence and Harris Beach is not a constant — of this point I am convinced. Past trips to and from the area seemed to slide by without a tick of fatugue. Today, this particular leg of our journey was at least twice the distance that is was in the past. This, we realized, was the truth when we saw a mileage marker leading us to believe we had a mere 150 miles to go when we actually (after taking into account some fluctions in space and time) drove about 300 miles. We stopped only once in the parking lot of a restaurant to ease the stress on my derrier but I cleverly played the stop off as an impromptu driving lesson for Sarah (a.k.a. Can't Drive Stick Girl). She handled my new Subaru with ease but lacked the confidence she felt necessary to take it for a spin in "traffic". I'm sure the 20 cars we saw on 101 that night thanked her and we continued onward to Harris Beach where we met up with our friends Andrea, Mandy and Jason.

Since the day was pretty much driven into nothingness night had already fallen and we gathered around the campfire and attempted to remain conscious — anxiously awaiting the even later arrival of Aaron and girlfriend Robyn. Sarah and I didn't make it and we headed for our make-shift shelter strategically positioned over a root.

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