A few weeks ago, we embarked on a journey to a faraway magical land near the north pole called "Spokane". We left Redding, California as summer was trying to secure it's gentle choke hold on the area by producing days in the mid 70's with a lot of sunshine. the magical land of Spokane, on the other hand, has been trying, mostly unsuccessfully, to fight off winter's icy grip. Yesterday, wonderful little white flakes of snow fell like small bundles of white cotton candy from the circus in the clouds above us. Almost May? Yes, it is almost May, yet the weather here has lately made us think of trading in our front wheel drive car for a dogsled. But the weather hasn't been the only shock...
Our move to this glorious wonderland has brought back some of my youthful fantasies of being race car driver. It's just something about the roads here. My blood begins to pump faster, my sense seem to grow more sensitive, even the hum of the engine seems like music lifting me into the sky! The cars near me swerve and I react with ninja-like quickness to gently guide my racing machine on the safest route. But then...reality hits. Oh wait, we don't call that "reality" we call it really big potholes! As the cars in front of me disappear into the crater of another gigantic pothole, I find myself swerving to avoid the same imminent destruction, yet my car resists me. I grab the steering wheel more firmly and fight with it as if it had a mind of it's own. Is my car possessed? No, that is just the deep grooves worn into the asphalt from months and years of studded tires traveling the same path. It is as if the tire grooves and the potholes are scheming against all cars as the grooves slowly suck you in and direct you straight towards the bone jarring jolt of a pothole. Now for many people this experience may not be that significant, but when you drive a racing machine like mine, you must avoid these potholes at all costs. When I do hit them inadvertently, my driver side door jolts and partially opens, the muffler rattles, the front end of the car feels as if it will disintegrate, and on the rare occasion - my seat belt pops out leaving me completely vulnerable to the onslaught of crash inducing potholes. I guess that's why people around here say that there are only two seasons here - winter and road construction. Speaking of traffic...
The condition of the roads aside, traffic here flows in a rhythm like a great beautiful dance. It is an ebb and flow like the ocean's tide as one wave of cars surges while another recedes. It is a splendorous myriad of colors as dirt covered red and green cars intermingle with the grays, blacks, and dirty-supposed-to-be-whites. An ever changing rainbow that seems to follow some unwritten rule for left turns. But then you realize that there is a piece of the puzzle that is missing...yes, a piece that is common in many other places but only seems to pop up here about as often as a local sighting of Bigfoot/Sasquatch. That missing piece is the green left turn arrow. Jamie kindly pointed out to me that it actually isn't all that normal to have to sit in the middle of the intersection waiting for the oncoming traffic to break for a brief moment so that you can accelerate hard into the left turn to reach your destination. Maybe we have been spoiled in Redding, but there just doesn't seem to be many left turn arrows here. Instead, each stoplight is accompanied by a sign reading "Left turn yield on green".
I realize that I was a bit dramatic in this email, but I just felt like recording a few of the changes we have noticed since moving here a few weeks ago. But now I must go and chase down that elf I just spotted darting through the trees in the candy cane forest across the street...
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