Southwest Clean-Up

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Last Monday I contemplated doing a 4-day road trip to get to the last 21 post offices along the southern coast. Tonight I’m in Coos Bay. I broke it down into 9 on Saturday and 12 on Sunday. Once again Google Maps led me astray, and I could only find eight of the nine; the Allegany post office was nowhere near where they said it would be. I couldn’t research where it might be because I was deep into the forest away from US-101, so I had zero service.

After finding those eight, it was only 1:00 pm, so it was way too early for the hotel check-in. I decided to head down the coast some more and shrink Sunday’s quota of twelve. The next town south on US-101 was Bandon, about 30 miles away. That round trip would only kill an hour, so once in Bandon, I headed inland on OR-42 to grab four more post offices that were deep into the woods like Allegany. Thankfully, all four were where Google Maps said they should be.

At the hotel I researched the Allegany post office further. I tried searching for the address given for the place on Apple Maps, and it pinpointed the town’s community center, a couple miles further down the road from where Google said it was. So tomorrow that’ll be the first place I head.

Of the last 7 I need to find, 6 are in towns right on US-101. The seventh town of Agness is a ways inland along the Rogue River, and the road to get there is on the south side of the river, and Agness is on the north side. I have to drive 3-1/2 miles past it to get to a bridge and go back those 3-1/2 miles, take a picture, and then reverse the route.

Old-School

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“Old-school selfie: me holding up a point & shoot film camera sometime between 2003 and 2005.”

That was the caption I put on this photo when I uploaded it several months ago. I was going to lean in and tell you how I could tell it happened to be in that date range. But now looking at it, I can see this is positively prior to November 2003. I know that because that is when we bought the Emperor, a 2003 NB in Garnet Red, and this car is blue, and those seats are cloth NA seats. I owned two blue Miatas, a 1990 and a 1995, and because of the limited amount of blue you can see in the photo, there is no way to tell which car it is. It has to be prior to 2000 because I put leather seats in the 1995 that year.

Another clue was on the hat: the word “Word” is clear there, but what follows it? My first thought was WordPress, but that didn’t come into being until 2003. The only other thing I can think of is WordPerfect. That has been around since the late 70s, and according to Wikipedia, “the height of its popularity was in the 1980s and early 1990s.” I started work in Aiken in 1989, and the first computers came in the early 90s, so I think the best I can narrow it down to just somewhere between 1993-1999.

Ten Little Post Offices

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Knocked off another 10 post offices yesterday. Now there are just 21 more to capture along the coast, and I’m thinking that it is time for a 4-day trip to get all that are left out there. I either do it this weekend or wait until the first weekend in April to avoid Oregon school’s spring breaks. But if I wait until April, the rates for staying on the coast will probably cost a bunch more because it’ll be the beginning of their season. I’ll make that a game-time decision on, say, Thursday morning.

Very Losty

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While trolling Netflix for something to watch, I came upon Yellowjackets and I remember there was good buzz about the show when it first came out in 2021. It had a 7.7 IMDb ranking, so I started watching it late Thursday night; I stopped after two episodes. On Friday I did my morning grocery shopping and watched the other 8 episodes of season one. Saturday passed in a blur of all 9 episodes of season 2.

When I say, “Very Losty, I mean like the show LOST. I’m talking about a plane crash, scenes of the past, of being in the wilderness, followed by scenes of the same characters in the future, plus lots of questions about what is going on, and whose answers pose more questions. None of that mattered; I was sucked right in and buzzed through the show in two hazy days on the couch.

Now there is already a third season done, and the fourth series has just started shooting. The show is a Showtime feature, so #3 is available on Paramount+. Should I wait on watching season three until the 4th (and final) season?

Tax And Accounting Day

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I used to file income taxes as soon as possible, like the first week of February, and in the early days, middle of January. I’m slipping, as it is early March and I’m just now filing for 2025. Looking back at last year, I was even later; it was the middle of this month. The way I have the taxes taken out, I can usually keep my refund in the two-figure range, but this year it is a huge $110. 🙂

I also did a little accounting. I have separate maps (by having separate Gmail addresses), and the post offices I have to find are associated with brian.the.red and the ones found are linked to mr.miata. After this past weekend’s 13 finds, I am down to needing just 63 post offices. That figure is coming from the Excel spreadsheet I have to keep track of my progress. The trouble came when I updated the Google Maps for each category; they were saying I needed to find 62, and I had already found 326. So I was one short in finds and one too many in founds. Should be easy.

The web will tell you that you can download your Google Maps Lists, but I couldn’t get that feature to work. I ended up opening the list and copy-and-pasting the list into a text editor. I picked the need-to-find list first because it was the smallest. I opened the modified .txt file in Excel and compared it to my master spreadsheet. I was missing the town of Ophir. I then attacked the much larger need-to-find list. First I looked to see if Ophir was on there; it wasn’t, darn. Fortunately, I found the extra item within the first couple dozen towns I sorted through.

The Gordon House

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The Gordon House

I knew of this house as I had seen signs mentioning it on my previous passes through this part of the Willamette Valley looking for post offices. And I’ve always been interested in Frank Lloyd Wright, as I kind of wanted to be an architect in high school. When one of the Moss Motoring Challenge points was a famous piece of architecture, I wanted to go to Fallingwater in Pennsylvania to get that. And we did; I took several from the parking lot, but unfortunately, I couldn’t get the car, flyer, and house in the same shot.

And today, after seeing the second sign for the Frank Lloyd Wright House, I decided to follow them to its conclusion. Cool house, and had I wanted to, I could have toured the inside of the home for twenty bucks if I had only been there on a weekend afternoon and had made a reservation a long time ago. Basically the same scenario as Fallingwater back in 2015.

Before I got to Silverton to see the Gordon House I did grab these two small post offices along OR-34

Eleven Equals Thirteen

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Yaquina Head Lighthouse

I took eleven post office photos today, and eliminated two more because there were two post offices that have been shuttered since I made the jumbo spreadsheet back in 2019. They were the one called South Beach that is just south of Newport and the one further down US101 for Seal Rock that have been decommissioned. Thus the total number of post offices for the state now stands at 388 instead of 390. This is not to say that once I have finished the rest of them, there might be 2 new ones added that I don’t know about. Once I get the two tomorrow on the way home, I will be down to just 63 left.