I took Ben and Ryann back to Vancouver last Friday (a week ago). They were happy to get home and get ready for school.
I made an appointment to get my hair done and included Kerry and Amy. Our favorite hairdresser is Irene. She is a hair genius and also so much fun. She is a very animated Mexican lady who has lived in this country several years now, and has an 'Anglo' husband. She was expecting us for haircuts but ended up doing a little color on each of us. She really went the extra mile and stayed late into the evening to finish us all. I adore Irene.
Anyway, during our chats as we all were sitting in varying stages of..uh...beauty...Kerry told me she had to drive to Astoria at 2:00a.m. to act as a volunteer for her friend Emily's family running team. They had to have a certain number of volunteers associated with their team or forfeit their right to run. Kerry was one of them. Her shift would begin at 4:00 a.m. I was immediately concerned. First of all, she was tired having worked a very difficult week and secondly she is...well...uh...Kerry is directionally challenged. I could picture her ending up at the end of a forest road with no where else to go and no clue where she was. She was concerned also (yes, she knows herself) but was determined not to let her best friend down.
I should explain at this point that the race was the annual Hood to Coast relay race. The course runs from Mount Hood, east of Portland to the Oregon coast. The entire course measures 197 miles. Teams have about 12 runners who run legs of the race each measuring (legs vary somewhat) around 6 miles - give or take. The race is run beginning one day at Mount Hood and ending the next day at the Pacific Ocean, running through the night. I won't go into the details of the race now but I'll include Emily's link to her blog to explain it all.
http://montgomerymoments.blogspot.com/2010/09/hood-to-coast-2010.html
So it became clear that I was going to come to the rescue. I didn't have any other plans for the weekend other than cleaning the beach house, so I volunteered to drive the volunteer to her destination. Moms do those sort of things, you know.
We headed west about 10:30 that night with the vague idea of finding the place she was supposed to check in as a volunteer, then hopefully finding a motel nearby. The fall-back plan was to sleep in the car. Sadly, since I didn't know anything about the project until the last minute, the back of my car had a summer's worth of sand and junk in the back.
We used to live in Beaverton (which is west of Portland) 20 years ago, so I was somewhat familiar with the road to the coast. Oregon coastal routes are notoriously winding, dark and dangerous...especially at night. One of the hazards is animals, small and not so small. I have come up on herds (pods? gangs?) of deer in the middle of the night on highways where they just stand in the road and stare at you. Elk can also be a problem though I've never personally come across one. I was on alert.
Traffic was surprisingly sparse. About two/thirds of the way there Kerry decided to check her gps on her phone to see if we were on track. The lovely lady's voice sounded alarmed as she said "
Immediately make the next legal U-turn!!" Huh? Why would I turn back? I was clearly on the way west. I suddenly remembered stories of people lost in the Oregon wilderness when they listened to their gps instead of looking at a map. Of course we didn't have a map with us, that would have been too simple. I decided to carry on the way we were going. What's the worst that could happen...right?
We arrived in Seaside/Cannon Beach and realized our destination was on the actual race route so we would have to go a bit further. I was ok with that and we agreed to trust the gps from here. By now it was near midnight. We were able to find a McDonalds so we could use the facilities. Thank goodness for that. We settled back into the car for the 'short' trip to the check-in site. A block later, the lovely lady told us to turn right. OK. It was into a residential area, but..ok. We wound through the residential area and marveled as the landscape became more forested. After several strange turns we found ourselves on a very narrow, very twisted, barely two-lane road. We had to go very slowly to make all the curves. I didn't know that such a road existed. About then the moon rose and cast a ghostly light on the forest, making strange and scary shadows. We came to another very dark intersection lite only by a very large, very red...cross. Here in the middle of nowhere. a cross. Was it a symbol of someones devotion or warning of things to come?
Kerry switched into her 'hick' voice and said 'yanno...turn riiight at the red cross..." as if she were giving directions to another hick. We laughed but I was getting concerned. It seemed the gps was taking us on a wild goose chase into the wilderness. We continued on the winding roads nearing a creek. As we traveled near the creek, fog formed and made ghostly images in the moonlight. Wow. Where in the heck were we? We had gone about 20 miles when the road suddenly ended and became gravel. Huh? This can't be good...again the news stories of hapless travelers popped into my head.
I stopped the car and tried to peer ahead into the darkness. Couldn't see anything. Ok. We decided to move on a short distance and see what we could see. Several hundred feet ahead we saw a motorcycle coming towards us. It passed, so we felt secure that the was SOMETHING ahead. We soldiered on. Finally the pavement began again and we saw a truck with lots of lights. What were they doing? They were off-loading some porta-potties. AHAH! We must be nearing the race course. We went on another 10 miles, occasionally seeing a person here or there on the road, so we were beginning to feel more secure about finding our destination. Suddenly, out of the darkness...blazing lights ahead! People! Yeahhhhhhhhh
We drove up and asked if this was the right place (we had a number) and they said no, we wanted the NEXT one up the road. "how far?" we asked..."about six miles" they answered. (deep sigh here) As we continued up the road the hazards became greater because of the walkers on the road. They had on lights and reflective tape, but with all the turns and bends in the road, you could be upon one without knowing it. So we drove slowwwwwwwwwwwwwww. Very, very, slow. (The walkers were part of the pre-race group who walk the course instead of running. They start much earlier than the runners.)
Finally, we saw lights ahead. We found someone to ask and this was indeed our destination. We were told to park down the road. Since we didn't have to report until 4:00a.m. we decided to try to sleep in the car. Kerry was exhausted and fell asleep pretty quickly. I was exhausted, too, but sleep wouldn't come. There were people and cars all over the place by then. I think I nodded off once...just before the fire truck went by and sounded its siren. (big sigh) I mostly watched the runners and support teams coming in. At 3:45 I woke Kerry and told her it was time. Since I was there, I offered to volunteer and they were glad to have me. We ended up as parking guides for the next four very long hours. It was ok work until we ran out of parking spaces and the people kept on coming. They became angry and I got crankier. We put Kerry as the first line of defense because she doesn't take any guff from people...just tells them 'it is what it is". It was frustrating for everyone concerned, but there wasn't anything we could do about it. The race has become too large for the venue.
We gratefully turned our jobs over to new recruits at 8:00 a.m. and headed home to Vancouver. We didn't arrive for many hours. Kerry went to her room to sleep and I lay on Ryann's bed. There was no one else home at the time. The doorbell rang many times with the kids friends wanting them to come out to play. I gave up and drove back to Salem, another hour and a half drive. I was exhausted having not slept all night. I was being extra careful because I knew I wasn't on top of my game. I noticed a pickup with a trailer in front of me. It had a really cute little shed in the trailer - more like a playhouse. It was pink and had a cute rounded roof. It was very cute. It was also very tall. Hmmmmmm...I wonder....
Then it shifted and I realized it was going to fall out of the trailer going 65 miles an hour! I managed to switch lanes honking my horn like crazy. It caught the wind and flew out of the trailer crashing in the middle of the freeway just missing me. All the cars behind me on the freeway had to stop, but I kept on going. There was nothing I could do for the playhouse. It was splinters.
I made it to Salem alive and sleepy, but ok. It was a long, long day.
