S A B A S M E A, part 5

PART V

8/24/2010 Monday:

Slept well, up about 7:00… Pig ‘n’ Pancake (again), Steve got the Western Omelet (again), I opted for a healthy breakfast of buckwheat pancakes… well perhaps it would have been a healthy breakfast had I not ate all fourteen dozen of them… Rolled out of the restaurant and had to put an extender on the seatbelt of Magda… should we had gotten into a collision that morning, my airbag probably wouldn’t even be able to deploy… We headed out to Hug Point, our absolutely favorite beach on the Oregon coast… there’s this nifty little waterfall there which we discovered on our honeymoon 10 years ago… wait a second, there’s no waterfall here… WTF?!?! Could we have gone to the wrong beach? Impossible! Well, maybe, we are the same two people who despite cramming our SUV with so many incidental items it became impossible to fit purloined Fire Sauce from Taco Bell in the glove compartment, forgot necessities such as maps… On to the next beach, nope, not there either… we did go to Oregon for our honeymoon, right? I mean, I have a picture of us standing in front of the fricking thing… Hmmmm… Curious indeed! Drove to Steve’s “pondering spot,” which is an overlook with a stunning view… either he didn’t have a lot to ponder, or it was too warm as we didn’t tarry long. Back to town meandering in & out of shops with my wallet meandering & out of my purse. I bought Steve a silver charm of Haystack Rock which he liked so well, he put it on his chain right away. Bon! How generous you are! How thoughtful! How sweet! How full of shit! I’m no dummy – this helped soften the blow of the many receipts for my little trinkets…

8/25/2010 Tuesday:

Woke ‘bout 7:00 again, P ‘n’ P again, Western Omelet again (I told Mr. F that we should suggest they change the name of the Western Omelet to “The Steve”), daredevil that I am, I ordered the veggie omelet that came with the most delicious muffin I’ve ever tasted in my life… next stop: Mt. Saint Helens (no apostrophe, I checked)… Nice drive, I fell asleep for about 40 minutes… when I awoke Steve entertained me with the story of the psycho in the white SUV “who needs to get his ass kicked”… now, understand most of the road is one lane 55 mph, with the occasional passing lane; these are twisty, windy mountain roads so ya really need to be alert, courageous, and justthismuch nuts to pass anyway… so there’s this guy in a white SUV that is going like 35 mph and when they’d come to one of the places where Steve (and any number of cars behind him) could pass, white SUV guy speeds up to like 90… after several minutes of this and knowing we were miles from a hospital should he actually suffer that stroke he felt on the verge of, Steve pushed Magda to her maximum velocity and finally passed the guy… next time you see him, ask Steve for the oral version of this story, I just can’t do it justice. We met a nice couple from Portland at the St. Helens Visitor’s Center who had a darling cocker spaniel named Betty. They informed us that dogs are not allowed at the St. Helens sight… Bummer! Sarah would have to stay in the car, no big deal to her as she’s not all that into history and we were counting on the temperature dropping as we got to higher elevations… 45 minutes and about 45 hundred feet later it was still close to 90 outside… no shade in the ginormous parking lot either. Oh well! I dropped Steve off as he is our official photographer (there’s not one photo of him in the 16 thousand pictures of our vacation, not even one) while Miss Bean and I drove around… from what I could see, it is pretty cool, volcano smoking and all. I drove back and stopped at the Dairy Queen in Astoria for Blizzards… Steve asked me if I’d be able to eat my Blizzard and drive at the same time, imagine! I’m the gal who used to operate a 5 speed with 3 dogs on my lap while simultaneously smoking a cigarette and drinking a cup of coffee… Blizzard & driving? Bush league! Took a walk up to Haystack to give poor Sarah some freedom after being cooped up in the car all day and to walk off that Blizzard, but judging by the size of my thighs in the vacation photos, I clearly should have kept walking…