Monday, July 21, 2008

thank you, Portland!

I've been in Portland for thirteen days, and while my right knee still isn't fully recovered, the time has come to forge ahead.

Very early tomorrow morning, I'll be heading to the Metanoia Peace House to say a final goodbye to the good folks there, after which I have one shopping errand to do before going back to the hotel, packing up, and heading off to a hotel in Corbett, a little more than a 17-mile walk away.

I'm impatient to be moving eastward. Staying at motels is a major drain on the finances, and barring a significant cash windfall, it appears I'll be stopping at some point and finding work for a few months to make up for the drainage. I have cash for the moment, but plotting the graph of my expenses is a rather depressing exercise.

Aside from lodging, another major expense is eating. I normally eat just one meal a day, either lunch or dinner, and often add a cheap snack to that. When I eat, I'm not shy about gobbling carbs, so my one main meal is usually large: it's where most of my daily calories come from.

The problem, though, is that I generally eat this meal at a sit-down restaurant, which makes it hard to cut costs. I'm not the type to order the top-rank menu items; in general, what I do is order an appetizer and a modest main course, one that includes veggies where possible. Unfortunately, with appetizers running anywhere from $4 to about $10, the final cost of my single meal of the day often approaches or slightly exceeds $20, once we figure in the tip. That's a cash hemorrhage in itself: if I do this over thirty days, that comes to $600-- way too much for a single person to be paying for food.

The solution-- and this accounts for my morning errand tomorrow-- is to bite the bullet. A single dry food pack from the camp store, containing a meal that serves two normal people, costs about $8 or $9 at the local stores here (cheaper single-serving meals are available, just so you know, but they're pretty puny); spending $8-9/day for a meal, and staying disciplined about it, means paying only $240-270/month as opposed to $600. If possible (and much depends on the availability of camp stores), that's the new plan.

I wish I could shop for fresh ingredients and save even more money, but storage then becomes an issue, as does time: how much time should I spend departing from my route to shop for food? Where am I supposed to keep these bulky goods, storing them in such a way that they don't spoil?

I have moments where I wonder whether it might not be better to strip down to the barest essentials: a single change of clothing, my toiletries, my wallet, however much drinking water I require-- and simply chuck the rest, hoping that fortune will favor the foolish. Such moments are, at least for me, akin to the temptation we feel when leaning over the edge of a precipice: we know we mustn't jump, but some basic urge is tickling and goading our rational mind.

Anyway, it's time to leave. I've enjoyed Portland and have started to familiarize myself with its "TriMet" public transportation system (a bit reminiscent of some European cities, what with the light rail system that passes trolley-style through the downtown streets). I've come to like Lewis and Clark College, whose law library I used for transcription of the Genjo dialogue you saw in the previous post. I've also come to enjoy the people who, although they lean way too leftward for my politically centrist tastes, are generally very open and very friendly.

I'm happy to be BlackBerrying again (still a lot to do on that front), but worry that this new phone will also conk out on me. The warranty replacement policy stipulates that AT&T has the right to send a refurbished phone as a replacement, and that's exactly what I got. Having had nothing but bad luck with refurbished equipment in the past, my policy is Buy new. Keep your fingers and tentacles crossed in the hopes that my luck with refurbished equipment will change. At the very least, I hope this BlackBerry lasts longer than six weeks before dying.

And with that, it's time for bed.


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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think that Oregon's politics actually drive the more left-leaning folks further left than they ordinarily would be. If that makes sense.

See, Oregon is a pretty schizophrenic state, politically speaking. There's the uber-liberal urban areas west of the mountains up the Willamette Valley, and then there's the rest of the state.

Much of Oregon is frontier-style, western-US area. Gun rack territory. And those folks are awfully rightish in their political leanings.

So the urban areas become havens for even more lefty thinkers, and the state overall becomes a "battleground" state.

Anyway, yeah, you gotta keep shucking weight, and yeah, you gotta buy cheaper food. But this first part of the walk is a good trial/testing period where you'll learn a lot of things the hard way! ;)

If it were me, I'd have two pair of convertible pants/shorts; two lightweight t-shirts; one long sleeve lightweight (wearable in all but the hottest weather) shirt; a few changes of undies; three or four pair of good socks; and a solid fleecey sweatshirt deal, plus waterproof outerwear.

All made of non-cotton stuff for lighter weight and quicker drying.

A water filter/purifier. And then some dried foods.

Plan your route reasonably well and you could have packages sent to post offices along the way, General Delivery, and as long as you're there within 10 days of the packages getting in to the office, you can pick 'em up.

Food (haha) for thought.

Max said...

Camping food makes sense if you're eating between towns, but if you're in-town it's easy to save money on food. Backpackers throughout the world save money by buying food at grocery stores. Even a grocery store's hot prepared meals are cheaper than a sit-down restaurant--and there's no tip.

And what about going to the deli? I sure miss big deli sandwiches. If i were on a walk, I would base my whole trip on going from deli-to-deli! $7 at a deli in California will stuff you--and again there's no tip.