The Days When Your Phone Dies
"Driftwood's first road trip report - a review of the pacific northwest and my best friend, Will Hathaway's, strongly held travelling opinions"
08.07.24 12:21pm
For readers that don't know me that well, the headline of the last month of my life has been that three friends and I chose to leave our lives in Boston and get a house in San Francisco, with very little plan or resources. Since we started in June, it's gone tremendously well - we've won funding for our living expenses several times over (thank you to Felicis), we've got jobs and worked on side projects, we've hosted events (join our Discord to find out more about those) and we're excited to continue all that this week.
However, before all that was set in stone, we knew that we'd go to this Odesza concert on July 6th, in George, Washington's Gorge Amphitheatre.
If all else fails, was the argument, then at least we would've had a good rave.
When the actual week of the 6th rolled around, there were a few other errands we had to check off - a pair of driving tests in North California for Tara and I, visiting friends at the Canadian border, that could excuse a road trip up the Pacific Northwest. I'd never been there before, and I wanted to see my friend Will's hometown of Portland, OR.
Up
Sadly, only one of the two of us passed the California driving test that day, at the tiny DMV in Mount Shasta, CA, and it wasn't me. We picked up some hitchhikers and hiked ourselves around the mountain, and continued undeterred to Crater Lake National Park.
It was gorgeous. Like, drop dead beautiful - deep, blue and clear. We drove around to the access point, these ridiculously long staircases, and Will says we should get in the lake. I push back for all the obvious reasons - we didn't bring a towel, I didn't have a change of clothes, there were so many mosquitoes. Anyway, he just went and jumped in, and I was having a pretty shit day anyway, so I jumped in too.
And holy shit, was it a great idea. You can be very in your head about some cerebral crap like work or whatever, and as soon as you jump into a cold body of water all that washes right out of your mind and is replaced with a visceral “COLD”. When you get out, you are remade anew and can refocus completely. It was worth the 4-hour-whatever detour from the route to get to it.
This was when I learned Will's first rule of road trips: find a place along the way to jump in water, and never refuse an opportunity to do it. Honestly, I'm a convert - it definitely punctuates long driving stretches really well.
Once we got to Portland, it was mostly as I expected. An idyllic, liberal utopia full of easygoing people and an unusually high number of strip clubs. I can see exactly how it made Will - definitely check out his blog post about the Willamette for a little more context. We found a bunch of random weirdos on bikes, and followed them around the city until we ended up on a bridge for the Fourth of July fireworks. I had a burger. Real America shit.
Will jumped in the Willamette river.
Across
We drove to the Canadian border, and quickly got bored of trying to find entertainment on the US side so decided to cross into Canada for a day trip to Vancouver. We had poutine (despite knowing it's not the right place to find it), and walked around the city with a local friend. Crossing back into the US, we drove to the San Juan islands in Washington and found a perfect dilapidated motel to wear tank tops and scowl around.
By this point, my phone had died. I really try not to have days where my phone dies. It's vaguely unsafe if you can't take calls or be found, and it's vaguely annoying to have to dig through/carry your wallet. Honestly, we'd compressed so much travel and laughter in the past 24 hours that I was surprised it made it that far. I was miffed because I couldn't take photos, but otherwise it felt pretty good. That, I think, is the core of the Will Hathaway Water Jump Rule Philosophy - if you're on a road trip, if you're going to spend hours on end driving, you must find a way to throw in enough stuff to tire you (and your phone) out, enough that it feels like you did something new that day alone.
Under this philosophy, every day of what amounted to 6 days of ~6 hours average driving a day felt interesting, felt unique, and didn't feel like just a day of passing through.
Just before sunset, Will got everyone in the car and wanted to go “check out the sunset” on the west side of the island.
He jumped in the Pacific Ocean.
Down
As I write this, it's 4am the night of the concert, and we're driving back down to Portland, and then further back to SF tomorrow. The rave was beautiful, in a profoundly gorgeous place with friends I love. The concert actually ended ten minutes early, since (we suspect) a defective firework set the ground across from the stage on fire. I guess it's fire season in Washington. In any case, I actually didn't mind that much - I had already got what I came for and more, and met some nice people on the way.
I can't say what will happen on our drive down tomorrow, but I'd put good money on Will's head emerging breathless from a lake or ocean somewhere on the way, and then I'll jump in right beside him. If not, then we'll just find something else interesting to do.
UPDATE 6:02AM: We jumped in the Columbia River