Even more Portland...

We woke up at the ungodly hour of 6:30 am on Sunday, and in due order staggered downstairs (okay, it's kind of hard to stagger while taking the elevator, but you get the idea...) for our free breakfast. The dining area of the hotel was surprisingly well stocked, and soon we were hunched over coffee, eggs, fruit, croissants, cereal, and the like. M. even made his own waffle. G. and Steve were especially groggy due to their late night shenanigans the previous evening (if you can call signing autographs and attending a gig "shenanigans, that is). Surprisingly, we were all finished with breakfast and in the van by a couple of minutes after eight. Then the long journey homeward began. The view from I-5 isn't as fantastic as it is along the coastal route, but we were treated to morning mist drifting slowly across low hills, and beautiful yellow clusters of gorse.
We ate lunch in Ashland at some Italian restaurant whose name escapes me. While there, we found time to drop into a couple of stores and purchase more stuff. Then we continued south, passing over I-5's highest point (forty three hundred-and-something feet), denying we had any fruit at the California border, passing the snow covered splendor of Mt. Shasta, and slowly descending into the dull boredom of the Central Valley. Our van decided to make this stretch of our journey less boring by suddenly stalling while in the fast lane. At first I didn't even realize it had stalled. The giveaway was that it was slowing down as I depressed the accelerator. I pulled over onto the shoulder, and the van started again after a couple of tries. After that, I decided that we could do without the air conditioning. This made the remainder of our time on I-5 somewhat stifling. Then, on 80, just as we started ascending the first of a series of low foothills that border the East Bay, the van stalled again. Apparently the strain of hauling around a full load of people on such a long journey was proving a bit much for it. I got it started again and we made it another mile or so before it stalled a third time. This time some rather rude police were watching. They took exception to us sitting on the median, and ran a traffic break so a snappy policewoman could use her car to push over to the shoulder. Then, instead of helping, they all rushed off, leaving us sitting in the van with even less room between ourselves and the traffic whipping by. Steve was amazed at the rudeness of our local police. It was his fourth encounter with them during his stay in California, and none of the other ones painted a rosy picture of our law enforcement personnel either. I waited ten minutes or so and got the van to start. We limped into Berkeley and said goodbye to G. and Steve. M., Jen, Willow, and I arrived back at our place at 10 pm. Fourteen hours had passed since we started our journey.

The first words we heard upon arriving were from Nate: "Where are my presents?"