It’s been a lovely, brilliantly sunny weekend in Portland, welcoming us in from our weary travels. We mostly hunkered down in a green, warmly lit, antique house just off the bars and restaurants district of Division Street.
Saturday
EG had the first departure, flying back to Austin on Saturday afternoon, so he and I snuck in a quick driving lesson, trip to Powell’s City of Books — the largest independent bookstore in the country, where I bought yet another book for my pile of post-Trail reads — and a short hike he found on the edge of town to a Witch’s Castle before making the run to PDX.
These old stone ruins in the Oregon wilderness were once bathrooms and are steeped in legends of murder.
Atlas Obscura.
There is just no good way to summarize that glorious article, but the man who originally owned the land which would later become this section of Macleay Park shot the man he’d hired to help clear it because he eloped with his daughter. The landowner was then executed for that crime — Oregon’s first legal execution. The land then fell into the city’s hands, it became a park, and in the 1930’s the stone building was constructed to house a ranger station and public restrooms. It was damaged by a flood in the 60s and lay dormant and graffitied until the 80s when some local students decided it would be a spooky place for parties, naming it “the Witch’s Castle,” since such time it has stood as a waypoint for people on the woodland trail through the park awaiting our arrival.
After our little hike, we made a brief stop back by the house before I took him up to the airport. I spent the rest of the afternoon pounding digital pavement trying to offload my wagon — which I had assumed would be a simple matter of intentionally allowing someone low-ball me. That’s how both the Celica and the 4Runner found their new lives rather quickly! Not so this time, apparently.
I retreated to my room in the cabin and finally finished The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey. I’d put it down about half-way through the trip as Rinker and his brother crossed the border into Oregon. [Spoiler alert] Turns out, they ended their trip in Baker City for a number of reasons: the approaching winter, needing to secure a safe future for the mule team, and they found — as we did, too — that the remaining trail to The Dalles was frequently interrupted with Interstate 84 and the Barlow Route after that was impassible. But Rinker accomplished his mission and found himself on the trail: he drove a mule team across the country to Oregon, the first team in over a century. They sold off their mules and the wagon they drove to a local rancher with property across Oregon and Idaho, much of which sits on the trail itself.
Sunday
Evan M was the second to leave. From the start, he had planned on the Piazza Nero becoming his latest project car. So he planned a mostly-highways return to Tulsa which began with a retracing of I-84 back to southeastern Oregon and down into Idaho. With a duct-taped window and no one to spot his right-hand-drive passing, that sounds like a tough ride. The three of us cleaned out the AirBnB and then he took off in his fully loaded wagon.
That left me and George. We stopped off at to a UPS stagecoach depot — each of us had things to ship home rather than try to check onto a plane. And as we walked back to our cars in the parking lot… I was listing my ad in yet another Facebook group and some idiot walked up to George and started talking to him about his For Sale Fiero.
He came up, asked what I wanted for it, and my heart just sank. I was so disappointed.
That’s a familiar story. George has been waffling about whether to sell or keep the Fiero since we left Independence. He did find a vehicle storage facility this morning in Portland, too — keeping or selling, he didn’t want to immediately start a new un-air-conditioned roadtrip. But as this local yokel started asking questions, George solidified his decision: the Fiero will be returning to Tulsa.
:grumbling intensifies:
I tweaked my ad and once more lowered my asking price, then George and I met up with two local friends for lunch after we stopped through two more neighboring small bookstores and a book-pub on my quest to find either of EG’s books along the trail.
After lunch, George set out for his hotel on Hayden Island and I started north for my hotel by the airport. But suddenly:
The Test Drives
My phone rang! Two men had me on speaker phone and they were specifically concerned about the date of the last timing belt replacement — a question everyone on Facebook and Craigslist has asked me, too. Unfortunately, my San Antonio dealer almost certainly didn’t do that because he would have advertised it if he had… meaning that the wagon is due for a new one, and it’s not an easy job. But it’s a cheap car! I had hoped the math would work out on that…
Ultimately, Roger and Richard asked to meet me in the parking lot of a grocery a few miles away. I envisioned what success might look like here… they drive off leaving me and all my luggage in the produce aisle for a while… but it’d be hard to kill me and get away with it in such a busy parking lot, right? But I was getting ahead of myself: they quickly objected to the rust and that it was a standard (both of which were called out in the ad). They also assumed a timing belt service was due and grabbed hold of the PCV return line and noted that because it was hard, that implied the PCV valve or breather box was clogged (which we suspected back in Keystone). They were going to “run home and have a call with a Volvo mechanic friend and would call me back in an hour.” No, no they weren’t. We shook hands and parted.
Then I got a call from a woman named Ria who needed a cheap car to cover a short-term gap. I drove down to the the south Portland bowling alley she asked to meet at while listening to a little “last drive in the wagon” playlist… But I was getting ahead of myself again. She and her 6-year-old quickly hopped in for a test drive and after an initial misstep with the clutch, we hoped on the freeway and made a big circle. She said she liked driving it and that it felt good. But once we were back in the parking lot, she said she didn’t like the exhaust smell and would have to pass. The vehicle has always smelled of exhaust, but it improved dramatically after the plug wire fix stopped the misfires. But there’s definitely still a minor exhaust leak somewhere.
Finally, I headed north to my hotel by the airport but on the way, someone asked to see the car. I suggested the Target near my hotel so I could stop driving all over town. I withheld optimism this time. He said he’d hop in the car, “38 minutes away.” So I sat in another Target Starbucks and read my new book over an iced tea.
I lied. Still in Beaverton just wanted to let you know, in case you’re antsy. Feel free to propose an alternate meeting place anywhere between here and there, otherwise see u in about half an hour.
Fuck this dude, but also I’m out of options, so I said I could stick around if he’d actually be there. He cancelled on me 5 minutes later.
The Least Hotel
So I checked into my hotel by the airport. After three weeks of consistently interesting places to stay, wandering into the lobby of a generic airport hotel was disappointing. It’s fine, and if I didn’t have to work in this hovel for the next two days, it may even be serviceable. But I am in the armpit of this otherwise amazing city in a room that offers a “wobbly cart on uneven wheels” instead of an actual table — positioned directly on top of the air conditioner with a view of the hotel next door. Meanwhile, George announced in the group chat that he’d gotten an upgrade to a two-room suite with a living room and balcony.
But if I look out the window just right, I can see the mountains past the trees. Bend my focus back to what’s most important. We made it. We had our grand adventure, our crazy story. And all four of us learned a great deal — about cars, about history, about the small towns stitched together by this string of highways that still follows a migration pattern nearly two hundred years old. And tomorrow, I will start a new job with a new team and entirely new concepts. I will figure out what to do with my Wagon, but I’m not going to let that — or my shitty hotel decision — prevent me from a little victory nightcap. So I met George downtown at a small bar for one last round before we return to the real world in the morning.
