TransGlobal One Prelude: An American Adventure

By Jonathan Blake, Day -158 | January 20, 2009 |

Somewhere on the I-5, America

Departure (5.00 pm)
We left Vancouver somewhat later than we had anticipated at about 5:30 pm, on friday afternoon. We probably would have departed at our scheduled time, but I decided that it was of absolute paramount importance that we pick up an AUX cable from the dollar store prior to setting out on a 500km multi-state drive. Afterall, I reasoned, wouldn’t it be so much more awesome to listen to my iPod than american radio stations? Inevitably Ed conceded, and we spent about 35 minutes trying to obtain a small black cable - most of which was spent with Ed circling blocks whilst I jumped in and out of the rapidly moving car at opportune moments.

With music in hand, a bag of chocolate, peanuts, and various other snack-related food products, we drove south in our rented Toyota Camry Hybrid, towards the US-Canada border.

Border Control (6.15 pm)
The space in between countries is a particulary odd geopolitical zone, where none of the normal rules apply. The only certainty of border control (in any country), is that if you get through the other side, that can be considered success. It doesn’t so much matter what happens, as long as you make it over. The alternatives to this, currently on special at the US border can be summed up (politely) as being turned away, full possessions search, prolonged detainment, deportation, and being banned from the receiving country. Fortunately for us, with the notable exception of a rather interrogative checkpoint officer, the only setbacks involved me having to fill out documentation and pay $6 for an i-94 visa waiver, since I travel on my British passport. The conversation went roughly like so:

“Is this a rental car?”
“Yes.”
“Do you own your own vehicle?”
“Yes.”
“Then why aren’t you driving it?”
“Because it’s not really in operating condition”
“Can I see you license?”, and so on..

Everything after this was fairly straight forward, in comparison.

This man is not a gas station attendant.

Interstate-5 to Portland (6.40pm - 11.40pm)

We travelled from the US Border to Portland via the I-5. The evening was dark, the air was damp, and the roads were clear - but niether of us could have anticipated the thick, choking layer of fog that would descend upon us for hundreds upon hundreds of kilometers (or miles, since we were now in imperial measurement territory). Eventually, after hours of hard driving, several cans of redbull, and lots of snacks, we arrived in Portland.

Of course - this trip wasn’t planned with any sort of seriousness, and it was at this point we realised that we had no idea where we were, nor where Klint and Jill’s house was in relation to our present location (which was unknown).

As it turns out, people in Portland are excessively helpful, and it only took one trip into the closest gas station to find out where to go (which was explained in a cacophony of “left, then right, then right, then left, then straight, then left, then left, then right…” by the various groups of stoners buying their munchies). With some rather intuitive driving by Ed, we eventually found our way to Klint and Jill’s house, only 10 minutes later than our expected arrival time.

We arrived, finally, tired and spacey, at Jill and Klint's house in Portland.

Destination: Backpacks, Alcohol, and American Poutine
The first thing we did when we arrived, immediately after greeting our very gracious hosts, was investigate the large box we found in the living room, which undoubtedly was our backpacks that we ordered from Mystery Ranch directly (there’s a good story behind this, which Ed will tell since he had the most involvement). I hope Klint and Jill were paying attention, because if either of them ever have kids one day, this kind of box-tearing, packaging-flailing glee is exactly what they’ll experience every december. Amazingly, they managed to fit both bags inside the one box. Ed and I ignored our surroundings for about half an hour whilst we hyperfocused on the various zips, pockets, and features of our new packs, until our old friends, Nick Pell and Rose, showed up to our pleasant surprise.

The drinks and various smokable items were brought out, and we officially recognised the fact that we had arrived in Portland. Ed and I agreed that this would officially be the beginning of TransGlobal One - Prelude, the sequence of synchrotastic events that lead up to TransGlobal One, the actual expedition.

Speaking of Ones, the one major regret I have of this trip is not taking a photograph of the American Poutine we skipped out to get in the early morning. My verdict: it was acceptable, considering we’d been drinking, smoking, and we were over 500km’s away from Canada, home of real poutine. Acceptable in the same way that one does not order chinese food from a downtown take-out and expect it to be the same as real chinese food.

Eventually I fell asleep, or passed out from general exhaustion, on the floor.

Jill and Klint next to the Chaos Cafe mural

The Chaos Cafe
We got up reasonably early on Saturday morning, perhaps 9 am. There was movement in the house long before I emerged from my sleep-sack, rather more unshaven, haggard, and headachey than I am used to. Whilst I was busy being vaguely hungover, and generally useless, Ed was busy researching our next destination: REI Portland. Jill was a fantastic host - coffee was waiting for me when I woke up.

The first order of business was to get some breakfast, and we did this at the Chaos Cafe in portland, which is a cute little vegan and dietary-issue friendly cafe-restaurant-breakfast house, with heapings of extra character. A great opportunity to eat a burrito, something I haven’t had the pleasure of eating for over a year (due to my fructose related dietary issues).

This is just a paragraph to space out the image above and the one below. Here’s my favourite joke of all time: there are two fish in a tank, one turns the other and says, how the fuck do you drive this thing?

Ed researching the location of REI portland. The map on the wall wasn't overly useful for this.

REI Portland
We decided that we were more than hardcore enough to walk across the city to REI, and that it would be a good opportunity to test our new backpacks. We drifted over bridges, roads and sketchy parts of town until we eventually came upon the big shiny REI building.

The Portland REI store is can be most accurately described as an outdoor recreation extravaganza. So much so, that we not only lost each other no less than twice whilst in there, but also spent just over 4 hours and a good deal more money than we had originally anticipated spending. Never a bad thing, however, as we were able to obtain a good deal of gear we had previously not considered (such as interior pouches for compartmentalizing our gear inside our packs. In the next few days I will update our backpacking gear list to accurately represent these changes.

Eventually we managed to escape, and headed back to the house, whereupon we went on a mini-excursion to eat gluten-free pizza (another luxury I’m usually unaccustomed to). The rest of the evening was much like the one prior, only this time I didn’t fall asleep on the floor.

Seattle, hell of roads
During our time in the Portland REI store, we attempted to find ourselves some Pacsafe Exo-mesh security webs for our bags. In the end, this turned out to be a big mistake, but for the mean time we had planned to visit REI’s largest store, in Seattle, in order to acquire them. This meant breaking off the I-5 in seattle, which also may or may not have been a mistake in retrospect.

If the Portland REI store can be described as an extravaganza, the Seattle REI store can only be described as a mecca for backpacking and outdoor adventure gear - a store so large, it even has it’s own park trails for testing bikes. Once again, we spent considerably more money than we had expected (it’s so easy to pick stuff up on the way to the checkout).

Returning to the I-5 was nothing short of a logistical nightmare, and I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.

Me testing the self-portrait abilities of my camera on the way home.

Home again
We made it back to Vancouver at about 2:10pm, allowing us to only pay for two days of car rental as opposed to three. This happened to be quite a blessing, as it turned out that the underside of the car had sustained some non-trivial damage to the plastic chassis protector. I am expecting the rental depot to contact me in the next few days and reliably extort me for repairs, despite the hefty insurance fees we paid for when acquiring the car (I’m fairly certain that this damage was affected before we even picked up the car, but that’s irrelevent apparently).

We spent the rest of the evening having celebratory drinks and packing, unpacking, and repacking our backpacks to test out the features and to get a grasp on the process of actually using them on a day to day basis. I also walked about 10km in it with full load, and I’m pleased to say that overall it was a rather comfortable experience.

Expect reviews of our new gear and backpacks to be up in the next few days, once we sort out our on-return errands and few remaining life responsibilities.

All in all, I’m exceptionally pleased with the way the first TransGlobal Prelude adventure transpired (and conspired), and I’m looking forward to the actual expedition now more than ever. Afterall, we have everything we need to take off and leave the continent - except the money.

You can see all of the pictures from this adventure on the transglobal flickr gallery!

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