There is a small group of us who
meet at the local coffee shop once a month as we wait anxiously await for the
pool to open for the summer so that we can get in our water aerobic
workout. This morning someone had made a
comparison of rounded mountains compared to jagged mountains (I personally
refer to the rounded as hills and the jagged as mountains) and how different
the landscape appears from inside of a helicopter.
Michaela had come out to clear the
dishes as we were taking and casually joined in our conversation. 17 years ago she had been living in the bay
area and got to be pretty good at driving around Oakland and San
Francisco. She delivered documents and
had earned quite a reputation for her ability to have her deliveries made on
time. But over the years she realized
that she was bothered by the amount of time it took to get from point A to
point B.
Here, in Myrtle Creek (actually all
of Douglas County) they talk in minutes. Point A to point B is 5 minutes, not 5
miles. But in San Francisco, Salt Lake,
and Portland, I would imagine, they talk in miles. Because even though common sense tells you it
should only take a certain amount of time, the time is actually not consistent
from day to day or even hour to hour.
Jenna's school was two miles south
of where we lived. Some days it would
take me 20 minutes to get there. For the
most part it took longer coming home.
Same distance. Not same time.
Michaela decided she had had
enough. Three hours for under 30
miles. That's not right. One day she said she had had enough. She and a girlfriends decided to pack their
bags and head north - though they didn't really have a destination. She said she obviously wasn't taking the
"time" into consideration as they had left at 5:00 p.m. on a
Friday. Perhaps just the reinforcement
she needed to "escape".
I can't remember what town she said
they were at when she got off the exit and pulled over to the first vacant
lot. It was after 2:00 in the morning and
she had to close her eyes - even if it was just a few minutes. It was longer than that. She had fallen asleep. When she woke up, she looked around - not
fully knowing where she was but believed she was somewhere in Oregon. She wanted to continue a little further
north.
When they had passed Seven Feathers casino
in Canyonville, she made a mental note of it.
She had worked at the casinos in Tahoe so she had the experience. They kept on driving until she saw a bridge
(I'm guessing the one that leads to the 108 ramp to/from I5. She said that was the place, and they crossed
the bridge and found a place.
She ended up not working at Seven
Feathers because they felt she was overqualified (From what I understand Seven
Feathers is not a great place to work for;
almost everyone that I've talked to has labeled them as "too cheap
to pay much more than minimum and lay off workers left and right so that they
don't have to deal with pay raises" so I believe that's why they told her
she was overqualified; they didn't want to pay her what she was worth)
She landed a job as a bartender for
six months, but when she refused to serve an underage drinker who threatened
her job, she got let go and so was hired by another who had been watching her
and knew that she had been let go unjustly.
She said she's been working at the coffee shop ever since.
It is gorgeous here. Clean.
No traffic. Awesome!
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