When our friend Kate announced that she was getting married during the time we were planning to be in the States anyway, we decided to make the trip to Coos Bay, Oregon for the wedding. Kate had, after all, come to our wedding in the Twin Cities, and even to Dizzy's wedding in Hamburg two years ago. She was Brian's first year floormate at Macalester and I met her in my first couple of months at Mac. Even so, I was a little resentful at first. Maybe that's the wrong word, but we had so many people to see and several actually wanted to make the trip to Powers Lake to visit us. The wedding trip took a whole week out of the schedule and all of a sudden our dates were booked up. So if you are one of those people we missed, I apologize, but the trip out west was great.
We flew into San Francisco and met up with Dizzy who had flown back to Germany from Nigeria, spent a few hours at home, and got on the plane to SFO. He has a superhuman tolerance for jet lag. Dizzy's friend Allison has a house in Oakland, so we stayed with her for two nights and did something that a lot of people wouldn't - a day-night baseball double header. We went to the Oakland A's game in the afternoon, followed by the Giants game in the evening. It was a great day. I realize that this is an abnormal amount of baseball. But the guys I went with are abnormally into baseball, and I kind of like it too.
The next day we spent driving north to Coos Bay. It is not an easy place to get to. If we'd flown into Portland, it still would have taken 5 hours to drive there. From San Francisco, it's a little over 9 hours. Of course, it's a beautiful drive and we had to stop to drive your car through a redwood tree, check out the herd of elk on the beach, and have a slow lunch at a main street diner. So it took us more like 11.
I went to Portland once, and even had a side trip to Salem. And I envisioned Oregon as this enlightened, liberal, latte-drinking, granola-crunching enclave of the northwest. I had not been to the southern Oregon coast. What we found there were some trailer parks, plenty of Harley riders, some wealthy lumber baron estates, and a lot of greasy spoon restaurants. Somebody at the wedding explained that on the coast you can't always tell who is a fisherman and who is a bum. They are all pretty scruffy. Even though few chain stores had penetrated the Coos Bay area, there were drive through espresso huts every few miles. I guess I was right about the latte-drinking part.
The day before the wedding we hiked along the foggy coast and ate clams, tuna, and crabs that the bride and her family had caught during the week. Dizzy somehow got drafted into scooping out raw clam guts with his hands. The wedding was beautiful, out in a field, and the first karaoke wedding I had ever attended. Kate's family had enough singing talent to pull that off. Kate was genuinely happy we were there, even if we didn't sing, and I certainly can't resent that.
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| At the Giants game |
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| Redwoods |
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| Kate and Brian on our hike |
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| The main event |
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