The I-5 Chronicles
(or, three fools travel from Vancouver, BC to Oregon by Public Transit)… the end part deux
I left Bellingham on the first bus going to Blaine ($0.75), Blaine turned out to be just as sunny, which was nice , the downer is that the was a detour to the border… a nice 30-40 minutes walk under the scorching sun, hungry, tired and willing to get back to drinking land.
Make a stop at the duty free shop, buy some liquor, sure will come handy later.
Walk to the border, no signs whatsoever or where to go, so just follow the sidewalk, that seemed logical and it actually was, so if ever in doubt and walking in the middle of nowhere, follow the sidewalk, it usually leads to somewhere.
Get to the border, the guard ask me 3-4 questions, the usual where were you, how long you’ve been gone, what are you bringing back… and wishes me a good day
I keep walking with my bottle of liquor, follow the road for another 30-40 minutes going god knows where, hoping to get back the the bus stop that is somewhere out there.
When I’m finally see it, I’m about 5 minutes away, I see a bus fly by, not making any stops… FML
Get to it, sit down and wait, wait, wait, about 30 minutes later a bus comes by, finally, takes me down to Surrey and I get off a a random stop thinking there’s must be buses that go to a Sky Train station here, luckily enough there is.
Wait another 20 minutes, has I am sorting a few things out with my bag as bus rushes by, not paying any attention to me, I have to wait another 20 minutes or so until another one comes by.
At this point I’ve been awake for 18 hours straight, getting real tired and just wants to be in a bed and sleep, I only get in Vancouver by 9 PM. Stop at a restaurant for a late night meal, walk around town, try to find a couch, no ones home, or already asleep, end up sleeping at an hostel, fall asleep by 12:30, did not drink, tires like never before, but had a good day, that I wish will never have to happen again.
Trip is over, really, really happy to be «home», Vancouver is happy to see me, all sunny and stuff, ready to take on the summer and anything that will come with it.
An end to [STUPID] Soberness
As I am happily sitting in Bellingham Public Library with another 3-4 jours to wait for a jolly bus down to Blaine to finally be in the land of maple syrup, reasonable drinking age, gay marriage and bunch of other cool stuff, I decided I shall write one last post, relating my adventures as I made my way back like a MAN, mostly following the same path we took going down.
I left Corvallis, bright an early [not so early for what’s coming but we’ll get to that later on], at that point I cheated a bit, but don’t tell anyone [ They can read it like you are], took the Greyhound down to Salem ($10.25), the Greyhound tend to be more on the raping side than any other valley connector, retriever, whatever we took [though the one from Longview was high on the same list, rape list that is].
Anecdote #1 : was the only going to Salem.
Anecdote #2: bus driver did not intend on stopping in Salem, to which she replied : “Oh ! I did not plan on going to Salem… guess I going now, ah… ah]
Anecdote #3 : the pre-boarding comment was not enough, SHE had to make an announcement to the entire bus, letting them know that : ” Change of plans guys, sorry, we have someone that wants to go to Salem, not to put anyone up…]
Lucky enough the ride was only 50 minutes or so.
Get to Salem, wait for the bus to Wilsonville ($2.50), turns out the commuter rail runs only during morning and afternoon rush hours, think I’m stuck there for 5-6 hours, SHIT.
Lucky enough there’s a bus going down to Barbur Transit Center($1.25) then one that takes you down to Portland City Center ($2.30).
Stop in Portland for the night, the girls I’m staying with take me down to Monmouth, their friend is having a little exhibit, I’m stocked and they few pieces is presenting are real nice. Go back home try to figure out the buses I need to take in order to get to Seattle, can’t find nothing, text Mike desperate [I was trying to figure it out on my own, the only time Mike was called in to help]. Figure it all out, send a few request to surf couches in Seattle, got to bed.
END OF DAY 1
Wake up at 5:30 AM in order to catch an early bus($3.00) to Salmon Creek, and back to the RAPE bus down to Longview ( $1.00), this time there is no raping involved, 7 people on the bus, 3 students, 2 older kinda sketchy dudes and me. Arrive in Longview [lucky I don’t have to pee AH AH], bus down to Tumwater ($1.00), same situation, bunch of students and a few sketchy people.
Tumwater to Olympia ($2.00 – DAYPASS)
Olympia to Tacoma (DAYPASS + $1.25) Arrive in Tacoma to find out that the rail runs on rush hours only too, start look for a bus.
Tacome to Downtown Seattle ($4.75)[ I made the stupid mistake, which turned out okay of purchasing a ticket before looking at the schedule, good idea to do things the other way around, it saves you money most of the time]. Get a call from Chris who lives in Federal Way, got a bed for the night !!.
Kind of get lost in Seattle transit, who would have expected it… get this Chris’s house, he’s making spaghetti for dinner [SCORE !!], Figure out where I need to be tomorrow, buses and such, the 5 AM starts to kick in, got to bed.
END OF DAY 2
Wake up at 4:30 AM !! Walk down to the bus stop that is 15 minutes from Chris’s place, only have a $20 bill, ask the couple waiting at the stop for change, they turn out to be broke and intend on ridding the bus for free, in fact the lady told she does it all the time… YAY Seattle !!
Get lost in the Transit system, obviously, start to panic need to be on the bus by 7:15 otherwise I miss the other, confusion, confusion, confusion, have a butter croissant, drop my tea on the side walk and after a good 15 minutes of looking around for my bus number, I find it. 510 Express to Everett ($2.50).
A lot of people get on the bus, it being in the free ride area of downtown Seattle, they all get off before we actually leave the city.
Arrive in Everett on time, bus down to Mount Vernon ($2.00). Go back to the Lunch Box, have a coffee and write in my log book.
80 X to Bellingham ($2.00) not the same driver that we had two weeks ago, sad, sad.
Hang out in Bellingham until 4-5 ish, using the free internet at the library !! The sun is out, I’m almost back to homeland.
the bitterness of minority is almost gone, will be getting drunk tonight, legally that is.
in san francisco.
after over 24 hours on a train (for real), i’m finally in san francisco.
i’m not sure what this neighbourhood is called, but it seems pretty neat. there’s some serious gentrification going on here; thankfully, it’s not the vicious kind, but the more gentle, gradual kind. not that this is necessarily a good thing, but the kinds of change that we saw in seattle’s belltown (bellweather? bellcurve? bellbottom?) district is way more intrusive.
it’s been seven years since i’ve been here. maybe i’m just feeling bummed that i’ve been in transit for so long, maybe it’s just my nerves shot from too much cheap caffeine and not enough good food today, but the city by the bay seems somewhat sadder than i remember.
i’m sure it will turn around. more updates to come when i’m maybe not so verklempt.
i-5 Chronicles : the end (almost)
The trip as come to an end for all three of us, well almost.
Mike is gone to San Francisco, Aaron went to Portland to take a train going back to Vancouver, and I’m hanging out in Corvallis waiting for Monday to come in order to transit my way back up north.
Although I could be on my way now, the fantastic Salem Area Mass Transit does not run on weekends. NO BUSES ON WEEKENDS, which is ridiculous but I guess that’s how they do things down there, huh.
So I will make my way back taking the same buses, this time by myself, YAY 3 rape buses for me, and will hopefully be able to make it in 3 days, that is my goal.
So I’ll keep you posted on the way back as a solo backpacker and all the wonderful and not so wonderful adventures I might find myself in.
First week gone, many encounters the more “fascinating”they get as southern as we go.
Traveling so far has been relatively top-notch, most cities had a lot to offer including some interesting experiences.
Although transit in small town can be known to be sketchy at some point, we’ve been lucky so far, maybe the fact that there is three of us makes it that much “safer”, but the “weirdoes” don’t seem to be invading transit as much.
The single experience that left me suspicious about this whole experience was the second leg of “THE RAPE BUS”. Thanks to Mike, I was suspicious boarding the van that was leading us to who knows where, but the first leg from Olympia to Longview was actually alright, a few people, not too bad, not so sketchy, just a tad bit strange and claustrophobic, nothing compared to what was coming…
With a few minutes ( 30-40 min.) layover in Longview, things were getting from not to bad to GET ME OUT OF HERE NOW !
Longview turned out to be this strange town where you don’t want to be stuck for too long, well you don’t really want to be there AT ALL. Green Day actually wrote a song about Longview, stating how much it sucks.
Back to the bus stop I could tell the second bus trip was going to be nothing sort of nerve racking, the rape bus was full on. First of all it was a lot smaller than the first one, lot more people on it, some had to sit on the ground, no racks for luggage what so ever, the feeling of something isn’t wright here and had a confused bus driver that two passengers, probably regulars on the bus made a duty to point out. I was basically freaking out, and this within five minutes on the road. This was going to be a long trip down to Vancouver, WA.
Luckily enough after a few stops the woman next to me got off the bus, giving some needed space to breathe and relax, bad idea I was falling asleep…
Made it through without to many problems, none at all really, but I felt violated and am not looking forward to Rape Bus the 3rd…
We’ll see how that goes, Portland so far is treating us very well, people are very nice, the weather is sort of on and off, couple drops, sun shining through, cloudy but all is good.
surprises in olympia.
if you think of victoria, bc, the first thing that comes to mind is the calm, quiet, casual attitude of the british-inspired decor the city has adopted. indeed, in some ways, victoria is more english than england. shocking, really, when that region was, for a very long time, the point furthest from the centre of the universe (assuming london, not toronto, occupied that niche). but i digress. what i mean to say is that it is a pleasant place, perhaps meant to inspire a degree of prestige from being the provincial capital.
if that is genteel BC, then washington state has nothing to share its northern neighbour. olympia is a bit dirty, a bit gritty, heavily anti-establishment and somewhat rough-and-tumble. all in all, a grand place.
this is probably what you get when you put a state legislature and one of the most unabashedly left-wing college campuses into the same city of 45,000: a clash between establishment and alter-globalization (although one in which you can easily get chocolate made from the most exquisite cocoa beans from kenya blended with pure cane sugar from the caribbean and organic chinese ginger in the co-op store).
this is a very politically-green area. if this were BC, olympia would undoubtably elect a green MLA under first-past-the-post. yet it remains a very established kind of place. people have gone to live their quiet lives there – that is the attraction to this place. maybe that’s why people here are very concerned about their property values the environment. change is scary, and a wal-mart would sure as hell ruin the place. maybe not environmentally so much, but socially.
that’s probably what this town symbolizes: olympia shows that the green movement is inherently humanistic. environmentalism is hardly about the environment; it’s about us. we’re the reason why we want to protect the environment. we want to make sure that our children have access to the same clean water that we have access to. for all the individuals trying to make a difference in living carbon free for the good of the forest, it’s not about that forest. it’s about our experiences with that forest. nature doesn’t need humanity to be good stewards. if nature had her way, she would do away with us and lick her own wounds.
so what’s the point of this cultural stream? it’s obviously not to make people change their ways. it’s a very selfish thing: a way to live in an ideal. the big challenges of the city don’t exist here. people don’t have to balance labour against the environment. the dichotomy is allowed to stand.
which, of course, is what makes olympia so great. it taps into those base instincts of right versus wrong and has you feel that, just by being there and being in communion with these people, you’re making a difference in the world. this is probably not the case – urban sprawl and global warming in atlanta and houston is affecting washington more than it might seem at first. however, there are fewer and fewer places that one can feel comfortable doing what they like. vancouver lost that ages ago. seattle became cynical after the WTO conference in 1999.
i hope olympia can stay gold. i really do.
the tacoma dome…
one of those funny things that you get on television in vancouver growing up is a slew of commercials for american goods and services that exist in western washington but not quite in BC. some of these have developed a kind of legendary status in the lower mainland, such as vern fonk insurance or the jewelry exchange, off the i-5 in renton.
of these shibboleths, however, there’s nothing quite like the tacoma dome. home to many a monster truck rally, the voice of an over-enthusiastic announcer on television has impregnated vancouver’s collective psyche with a working-class seed of excitement and wonder. indeed, it is a spectacle of the bizarre…albeit one that is inaccessible due to distance and invisible lines.
thus, the legend.
tacoma is not a suburb of seattle. it is certainly within its influence – a commuter rail line links the two cities – but it’s clear that the city retains its own influence. after talking to one of our hosts here in olympia, this was confirmed. tacoma has a rich heritage and urban past – it is not a non-place like many edge cities.
in tacoma, for the first time, i started to truly understand jane jacobs and her theories on 20th century urban development. much like new westminster back in BC, the highways are draining every last dollar out of the city core. it is clean and orderly, but utterly dead. this is her death, brought on by a highway’s half-life. my guess is that tacoma and cities like it will be alright come 20 years from now, but based on what i know of the economic and social histories of the united states, tacoma’s fate is understandable, expected and utterly sad.
on seattle transit.
the rain is falling so hard right now, i am actually frightened to leave this coffeeshop.
—
one of the things of seattle and of the pacific northwest that is often quoted is its affinity toward public transit. indeed, we are doing this trip to prove that this region has it pretty good. however, i have something to say about seattle transit.
namely, it sucks.
now, don’t get me wrong. there’s a LOT of transit in seattle. and guess what? it’s clean, reasonably fast and convenient. there are so many trolley lines – sometimes it would appear moreso than in vancouver, even. they’re building the link light rail system, they have two commuter rail lines and many buses are articulated. so what’s the problem?
simply put, the system is downright incomprehensible. there appears to be no unifying theme to any kind of, well, anything here. the buses are this ragtag collection of different operators, paint schemes, numbers, transfers, fares, routes and maps that conspire to make a system that would otherwise be world-class instead contribute to seattle’s infamous gridlock by passively discouraging public transit use.
in my eyes, the chief goal of public transit is to be accessible. to all. hence the term “bus” – it is derived from the latin word “omnibus,” which means “for everybody.” subway and rail should obviously be universally accessible too, of course. but perhaps the bus itself represents the idea of public transit for all because of its ubiquitous presence in the city and due to the fact that it will go places that many of the other four main modes of public transport (streetcar, subway, railway, ferry) – for various reasons – cannot.
as previously stated, there is no shortage of buses, much like there is no shortage of food on the planet. the problem here in seattle is that it is absolutely impossible to figure out where each bus runs, which bus stops where, why certain buses stop on certain corners and not others, why the downtown transit tunnel (a largely useless contraption) is not used by all buses and why some buses accept some transfers and others do not.
part of the problem is a lack of an overarching regional planning body. sound transit attempts to do this, but it appears to be failing at doing so, as it is not seeing the trees for the forest.
seattle has avoided light rail for a very long time. indeed, it is only opening its first line this summer. however, as fancy as light rail can be, sometimes the best systems are the ones that work because of their simplicity, not because of their slick trains.
example: the seattle streetcar. sometimes known as the south lake union trolley, it goes from downtown to…nowhere. this is meant to revitalize a certain area, i would assume. of course, it does this by disturbing the urban fabric in its construction, pushing some business out (like on cambie street) and attracting new, capital-intensive developments. however, in the meantime, this trolley line is pretty much useless. when me and matt took it, we were two of maybe five passengers. each stop was sponsored by a local corporation or group – a very annoying thing when announced over the speakers. in addition, the fare is $1.75. much like the trolley’s eerily-accurate four-letter acronym, the ride is expensive, too short and leaves one feeling unfulfilled.
there is a LOT of potential here, but only when there is a unified plan to get things in order so that a system will make sense. if an able bodied (and minded) person like me can’t figure something out that is transit related, something is wrong. seriously wrong.
i’ll leave this entry with a concrete suggestion to metro transit: improve your maps. for serious. they’re worse than translink’s maps. and THAT’s impressive.
Thoughts on day 3
1. Rain sucks
2. No computer is a lot more fun
3. I had more tea in the last 3 days than I did in the last 3 months
4. The fro’s gotta go
5. You do not stick out as much without a backpack and so don’t ran into the same kind of people you would if you had one, which is sad
6. I listen, I don’t talk, therefore I am a man of few words
7. People are overwhelmingly nice, it is unbelievable
8. I need rain boots
9. Food is good, when you know how to “pick” it. [haven’t been to any fast food so far, lots and lots of cafés and small delis but no junk food for us]
10. Transit, though it can be very slow at times, is somewhat convenient when you know how to work it, and work it well
Check out http://www.flickr.com/photos/matgoup/, for the visuals of the trip
The I-5 Chronicles 