The trip is proving very interesting so far - I've somehow wound up staying with these strange people in Oregon.

O.K., I'll start from the beginning. We managed to get the courtesy car from the body shop off the railway sleeper where I got it stuck (lucky I lived on a farm where there's a ready supply of labourers to do things like that). I threw everything into it, said a heartfelt goodbye to everyone, drove down to the body shop, found out my car wouldn't be ready for another hour and a half, and came back.

I went down again, picked it up, moved all my stuff into it (by now it was thoroughly disorganised - I'm going to go out in a minute and look through all the bags for my camera), and drove to the border. By now it was past eleven, and there was a pretty long line at the fairly quiet rural crossing between Aldergrove and Lynden. Still, once I got to the booth I had a pretty easy run - I was issued an I-94 without incident, and they didn't even search my car. I've found that the quieter border posts usually make for lower-stress crossings. Then, next thing I knew I was flying down the Guide Meridian towards Bellingham - I was in the United States.

It now being past midday, I stopped at the Subway at Lynden for lunch. I ordered the sweet onion chicken teriyaki on a footlong wheat bun - my usual order. I've now had it in three countries, and it looks and tastes identical in all of them - globalisation in action I suppose. The clerk swiped my credit card and asked for no signature or ID, though, which was my first sign that I was no longer in Australia or Canada. I phoned back to let everyone know I was across the line, began to drive out of the parking lot, realised that I was on the wrong side of the road, quickly jumped over, waited for about ten minutes to get back on the Guide, and I was off on my adventure.

As I went south, there were a few other little details. The signs in miles, which makes it feel like I'm taking ages to get anywhere. The speed signs in miles per hour - my speedo has smaller numbers in MPH inside the large KPH ones, but they're hard to read through sunglasses on the fly. Luckily I found that the regular speed limits line up pretty well - sixty miles an hour is a few ks off a hundred kilometres an hour, for example. I also noticed the signs for the 'Town [i]Center[/i]' in various towns - another little odd difference. And, of course, the gun shops ('New and second-hand! And yes, we buy ammo!').

I stopped for gas just after Bellingham, paid with my first fifty dollar greenback, and got a handful of identical-looking notes as change. Fortunately, having difficulty telling American notes apart hasn't yet cost me a hundred dollars like someone else I know (they tipped a bellboy what they thought was a dollar).

I was worried about getting caught up in peak-hour traffic in the Seattle-Olympia corridor, so I pushed on. I was now on the I-5, the massive arterial road with runs down the West Coast as far as Los Angeles, where it terminates in the world's largest highway junction. There was a carpool lane, and every now and again a sign telling people to report violators by calling a number that ended in '-HERO'. I found this highly amusing.

As we approached Seattle, the road widened from two lanes to five in each direction. And the traffic grew heavier. The Seattle CBD came into view through the haze a little after two, and the traffic eventually slowed to a crawl. I had committed to getting to Eugene by half past seven, so I was cursing the delay that the repairs to my car had caused, but I got through the city in reasonable time.

Seattle is a prosperous town, thanks in a large part to its many successful companies, which include among them Microsoft and Boeing. It's also infamous, as are a number of other American cities, for its spaghetti freeways. Lanes jumped off the I-5 left and right and joined it again with remarkable suddenness. Overpasses and underpasses shot across like streamers. Every now again several lanes would abruptly leave the main freeway and join State Route #5674 or some other major road. I'd been warned, so I kept to the middle of the road, kept my eyes on the signs, and got through OK.

I kept going until I was clear of Tacoma, and stopped for gas again near Olympia Airport. Seattle and Tacoma had struck me as a bit of a concrete jungle, but Olympia (Washington's Capital) seemed a bit greener and more pleasant. A man asked me for directions to Costco at the gas station - I was unable to assist him.

After than I had a fairly clear run, counting down the miles to the Oregon Border and Portland. The grass was brown from the weeks of uninterrupted hot summer sun - an odd look for a region infamous for its rainy weather. And the lack of wind and rain had let the haze build up, so the Cascade Mountains were hidden as well. I saw plenty of pictures of Baker and Rainier and Adams in advertising, but the real things were sadly invisible.

Portland had, if anything, even crazier freeways than Seattle. I was just congratulating myself on navigating the city successfully when I hit peak-hour traffic going south. My plans of reaching Eugene before eight were in tatters.

The I-5 has signs down it marking the number of miles to the next state border, and the exits are numbered likewise. For example, Exit 260 in Washington is 260 miles from the Oregon border. I sat in stop-start traffic, steadily counting the mile markers that I passed - mile 294, mile 293, mile 292.

Eventually the traffic cleared, I was back in open country, and I was flying along again at seventy miles an hour. I liked the look of Oregon - it had rolling hills and brown farms reminiscent of British Columbia, but yet different. A sign marked the 45th parallel, halfway between the equator and the north pole. I had covered four degrees of latitude since I left Abbotsford.

After some difficulty (due to my miswriting directions) I found my friends' house in Eugene. It was in a lovely suburban area which made a nice contrast to the severe grey towers of Seattle ad Portland. And jibes about strange people aside, I've had an extremely refreshing stay here - a good dinner, a good breakfast, and I slept like a log. Their decision to live here couldn't have been more convenient for me :D.

I'd like to add a bit more about the Pacific Northwest and the U.S. in general, but for now I need to keep moving to get to California on time. You'll probably hear from me next in San Francisco.