040813.1522 El Sombrero, Coos Bay

I find that if I go too long without food, as I tend to do on the road, I get a little dopey. I took the grand tour of Coos Bay without finding a single restaurant that sounded good to me, finally ending up back here. The place I went with Bill and Felicia was Lupe’s Casa (or Casa de Lupe) in Hamilton City, halfway between Artois and Chico. Looked like they were either overly optimistic building the place, or got very very busy sometimes – there was an entire other restaurant tacked on to the first. F tells me that it’s probably a little of both – for dinner most nights they open the main restaurant and close the room we were in, which is usually used just for breakfast and lunch. In any case it was good, I had a big flour tostada sort of thing. Here, I’m having the Chimichanga which often reads better than it tastes, but I need some grease to keep going. Will probably head a little way up the coast and find a decent campsite within reach of Portland, and end up there tomorrow.

Had a small incident with the fridge; one of the beers I had in it (keeping warm) popped and got beer all over; I knew that was what I was smelling when I pulled over; wasn’t bad and I’ve got paper towels and trash bags, but I really don’t need to carry beer with me, do I? Maybe I’ll make an attempt to polish off some of them tonight.

The coast is beautiful, alternating between foggy and sunny, and I’ve been getting out and walking on the beach and picking up rocks regularly – reference Lucille Ball in “The Long Trailer”. Per Eddie, perhaps I’ll catch-and-release them somewhere up the coast.

Am thinking that in a few days I may mail a package back to myself of stuff I’m sure I won’t need for the remainder of the trip, just to clear it out of my way; the Burning Man acoutremont (sp?) are rather bulky though.

Phone is working, for the moment, and I got email that way a little while ago. Decided that there’s a complex metric of how agitated I get about not having email: I think generally if I know I can’t get it I get only slightly more agitated day by day, to a limit where then I really don’t care; but if I attempt to get it and can’t, I get a lot more agitated. Wardriving is an amusing game but it’s annoying to have it be my primary method of connecting to the net. I imagine that in five years or less, this same trip may have broadband most of the way, though considering my phone coverage – or lack thereof – maybe it’ll take a bit longer. The “i” key seems to have somewhat improved, it appears – I know you were all anxious about that, as I was.

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