Mini Mileage

430,000 Acres of Scorched Earth

The country’s biggest wildfire (so far) this year has burned nearly 430,000 acres of eastern Oregon. Fortunately for us it started about 40 miles north and east of us and because of the prevailing winds that generally blow in those same cardinal ordinates, we were never in any danger from the fire.

Our air has been smoke filled, mostly not from the Bootleg fire, but from others in northern California. Last summer I took a picture of the smoke filled skies in the direction of Mt. Shasta (25 miles south and west of us) and commented that the mountain was invisible because of the smoke. I thought that it was unusual, but apparently it is an every summer occurrence during our 5th season here in Oregon, Fire Season.

This morning on the way to our weekly shopping trip to Fred Meyer the Ladybug turned over 1/10 the number of those scorched acres…43,000 miles.

42,000 Grains of Salt on 7,000 French Fires

This morning we drove the Mini over the Cascades to Medford to have our leaky water pump fixed and a few miles from home the Lady Bug passed 42,000 miles on the odometer. The 75 mile drive was pleasant and didn’t take as long as the Google maps estimate, but that was because even though the speed limit is posted as 55 MPH I cruised along without an issue at 65 most of the way. I wasn’t worried about a speeding ticket because I was passed by several cars and pickups along the route like I was standing still.

I told the car place I’d be there a little after 10 and had the rental car reserved for noon. We pulled into John’s Auto Care Center right at 9 AM. Instead of our planned leisurely 1 mile walk over to the airport to pick up the car, the folks at John’s said they’d give us a ride over there, as crossing the street to get to the airport was kind of tricky/busy1, so we excepted. This put us at the rental counter by 9:15, way earlier than expected. The lady manning the desk said, “No worries, we’ll fix you right up.” and true to her word, by 9:30 we were exiting the airport in a 2020 Audi Q5.

So far, our being early had not been an issue, but because we planned to eat lunch in Medford, we needed to waste a couple of hours. We didn’t want to head right back because we wanted to eat at a fast food spot that we missed from Aiken and didn’t have in Klamath Falls. At first I drove around aimlessly, then we said lets drive into downtown and see if there was anything to see, Somehow I didn’t really make it. Then we thought, let’s find a donut place. We found a place, but you could only use the drive up and because we like to look before making a choice we got back on the move again. We then reconnoitered where our lunch choices were, but it was still too early to eat or for them to even be open. To kill some time I said let’s go check out the town of Jacksonville. It is a little town east of Medford that has a lot of historic buildings. We drove over, circled the center of town, went hmmm, and drove back to Medford and had our lunch.

There was a Chick-Fil-A and a Five Guys in the same little strip shopping center and these were two of the places we wanted to get food from. A plan was devised that I would go to Chick-Fil-A and get the sandwich portion of the meal and Donna would go to Five Guys and get an order of fries and we would have the best of both restaurants. But you could only get the chicken by going through the drive-up, so we said forget it. We’ll do Five Guys now and save Chick-Fil-A for the return trip when we get the Mini back. While we certainly enjoyed the salty abundant fries we so missed, but it turns out they just didn’t measure up to what our memories made them out to be. Certainly not a 150 mile round trip for.

A few miles out of Medford on the way home the Q5’s odometer changed from 6,999 to 7,000.

41,000 Less Brain Cells

Where is my mind?

Thursday morning when I got into the Mini to do our weekly grocery trip, no correct that, on the way home from Ed Meyers, I noticed that the odometer read 41,065. Huh? When did that happen?

Mostly the poor Ladybug only just gets taken out of the garage for those weekly trips to the grocery store, so it takes a while to get the odometer really moving up at 3 miles a week. This past two weeks it has got a bit more exercise as we have had it out a couple times at night hunting Christmas lights in the local neighborhoods.

Although on Monday the Mini went in for some maintenance and they did take it for post service shakedown drive, but I can’t imagine they went for 65 miles. This means the change to over 41k miles must have happened on my watch. Where is my mind?

40,000 Raindrops

Friday after lunch we went on a walk around our end of town, mostly on road, but with some double-track dirt road thrown in. It was chilly (upper 40s), but the sun was shining, so when we got home I suggested taking the Miata out for a spin. It had been since last Friday we last drove it. Then it was sluggish to start, but this time it wouldn’t turn over at all. Had to pull the Mini around to give it a jump. We then took a nice little 20 mile spin (stopping once to take the new blog header image) and parked it in the garage. This time I remembered to put the battery tender on it, so next Friday it should fire right up. A new battery is planned for later when we can actually go on a trip or something.

Yesterday the Ladybug ticked over the 40,000 mile mark while dodging raindrops on the way home from a Jimmy Johns pickup lunch.

39,000 Planks of Plastic

We have had a hectic week, (and for the last couple months, they have all seemed hectic) we have moved all our stuff, which includes what we brought with us and what we shipped to us and what we have bought since being here, out of the AirBnB and into our new home. I must have taken a dozen 5 mile round trips. Two of which were ferrying one mountain bike at a time with the front wheel off and the Mini’s hatch bungeed partially closed. Somewhere on one of these trips the Ladybug crossed the 39,000 mile mark.

Tuesday we had the cable company come in and install two cable boxes and the modem for the internet. One in the bonus room downstairs and one in the living room. The living room is hooked up to our new 43″ Samsung UHD Smart TV (that just fit inside the Mini’s hatch) that will eventually get mounted above the fireplace. The downstairs hookup will be for our old 50″ Samsung Regular HD Smart TV, when it gets here.

Also on Tuesday we visited a local flooring place and picked out the new “hardwood flooring” to replace the carpet in the 3 bedrooms. Thursday they dropped off the materials to let them acclimate themselves to their new home and 2 nice young fellows spent the day ripping out the old carpet and padding. Today they were back to actually lay the new laminate planks in the three bedrooms. It is all finished except for the 1/4 round molding in one room that will be finished on Monday next.

This morning while those two guys were sawing and banging we ducked off to do the closing on the house. Here in Oregon it was done at a title company’s offices, not a lawyers office like in South Carolina. Maybe because of this it seemed very low key. No real estate agents, no seller, just us, a banker and some sort of clerk. We went home for lunch and then this afternoon went out to Walmart and bought a small folding table and two folding chairs because we were tired of eating, sitting on the floor. We were also tired of sleeping on an inflatable mattress, so on the way back from Wally World we stopped at a local bedroom store and bought a nice new queen sized Serta memory foam bed and a new bed frame. We knew we needed a mattress because we tossed the old one away before we left Aiken. We didn’t need a new bed frame because we did bring one, but Donna feel in love with one while mattress shopping (and I did really like it too.) It will be delivered tomorrow.

We have also had an estimate for a new roof sometime this week, which we knew the place needed it after the home inspection (we offered $8k on the house less than asking knowing this), and will get get done sometime in January. We have also arranged to have someone come over and measure for some nice new vertical blinds to replace the old wood slat ones in the living and dining rooms. And I have also not detailed the tens of trips to Home Depot, Walmart and Fred Meyers buying other odds and ends.

38,000 Pieces of Hair Trimmed

Today was a much needed day off from House Hunting. We decided to take a trip east to visit Ashland, Oregon. Population-wise it is about the same size as Klamath Falls, but the two cities are as different as can be.

Ashland is home to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival which brings in people from all around world to its three major stages for around 800 performances over 7 months. Because of this it has a big city feel, with a vibrant downtown full of shopping and dining.

Klamath Falls is a city with has the heart of a small town and has a unique blend of roughneck and sophistication. Its downtown is the poorer cousin to Ashland, the businesses here are fewer and not as ritzy. But like Ashland you can find just about everything you with its large arrays of national chains in the surround area.

In Ashland you will be surrounded by Prii and BMWs while in Klamath Falls you are more likely to be surrounded by Subarus and jacked-up Pickups (some of them unfortunately spouting clouds of black diesel exhaust.) In Ashland a nice 3 bedroom/two bath house with a two car garage will set you back around $350K, while in K Falls it will be more like $250. All in all we still prefer Klamath Falls, even with its occasional redneck rolling coal, and we’ll leave Ashland for a dose of “culture” when we need it.

Last Wednesday was the day we would have gotten our haircut back in Aiken and one of the things we still have to do here is find a spot for us both to get our haircut. The human head has approximately 100,000 hair follicles, while Donna’s are probably all going strong, only about 38k are operating as designed. When we got to Ashland this morning it was about 8:30 and a lot of the stores were not open yet. So we stopped into a Starbucks for a snack. Afterwards while exploring more of the downtown we stumbled on a place that was open, called Hair City. They had just opened and there was no one in the joint. There were 2 stylists there and only one had a couple of standing appointments, so the other one took us in.

After the fresh haircut we headed over to Lithia Park, a 90 some odd acres of forested canyonland around Ashland Creek for a walk. It was in full fall color mode and it was crowded full of costumed runners participating in the annual Monster Dash. When I say crowded, it really wasn’t, the park swallowed all 250 participants and we hardly knew it was until we stumbled on the finish line while walking the tree filled trails on both sides of the creek.

We also managed to spend about $15 at the last farmers market of the year and spend nothing at the nearby artists market. Before we left town we had lunch of wood fired pizza at Pie + Vine and a few edibles to go at Breeze Botanicals.

Somewhere on Clover Creek Road west of the town of Keno the Ladybug zipped past the 38,000 mile mark.

On The Oregon Trail – Day #8

Boulder City, NV to Carson City, NV. Started in the very southeastern Nevada and end in the middle western Nevada. And it was a whole lot, about 450 miles, of barren desert landscape interupted by small dinky towns and even smaller clusters of abandoned buildings the state map named, but called ‘(sites)’.

The Lady Bug flew through the 37,000 mile mark on I-515 in Sin City, AKA, Vegas Baby!