Day "-4": Lessons

… but weakness, folly, failure...yes, failure most of all. The greatest teacher, failure.
       - Yoda (as a Force ghost), The Last Skywalker.

Ok, figured that I would kick this off with my travel day. While travel days can be boring my experiences from last year's trip out here proved to be very interesting and sit in stark contrast to this year's travel. Last year's travel could probably be used as an example of what happens when you do not do enough research on all of the aspects of travel.

One would think that in the third decade of the 21st century that moving from one place to another within the US would be universally trivial...that we can readily go anywhere we want to with minimal effort. As I found in 2021 that was not the case and my oversight on this matter led to a night sleeping on a park bench, several hours of riding back and forth on the local light rail, and ultimately a nearly 200.00 Uber ride to Astoria.

   Place where I slept in 2021...website said there       would be a bus but there was no bus.  

It wasn't that I didn't do any research on travel options, etc. it was that I didn't do enough research. Between the pandemic and the "great resignation", the effects that both of those events had on the Pacific Northwest led to unexpected issues when it came to moving around. Some light rail lines were down, a ticket counter (for a bus ride) didn't open until 2 hours after the bus left, etc. resulted in me walking around Portland with dwindling options for how to get to Astoria. Even rental car companies weren't doing one-way rentals, leaving ride-sharing as my best option.

By contrast, this year's travel, while still more steps than you might be normally used to, went smoothly...from plane ride to light rail trip to bus ride from Portland to Astoria. Learning from last year, I spent more time planning and bought all of the tickets well in advance. I also built in hours of padding to my schedule so that travel would go without a hitch. Well, mostly without a hitch; the almost 2 mile "bag drag" from where the bus dropped me off to my hotel was unexpected. The fact that the bus came rolling right by me (as I'm dragging my bags down the road) was a little irritating but oh well, I got here and I have all of my stuff - part 1 complete.

    Made it to the light rail

  Just waiting on a friend...well actually waiting          for the bus 🤪

  Don't know what happened to dude's bike but         damn...

    Astoria sunset

   You know you're in Oregon when...

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