michael + nellie’s blog of awesome

today we crossed over our first state line! the “touring” phase of our trip has officially begun and we can’t wait to see what’s in store!

we’ve been pretty impressed so far. oregon is a beautiful state with so many diverse landscapes and personalities. here’s some pics from the road, starting with a beautiful shot of mt. shasta that nellie grabbed ( she’s also responsible for that awesome shot of the GPS on the golden gate bridge. )

a couple shots i snagged while nellie was picking out a cobbler. black bear diner strikes again!

funny story. i didn’t realize that oregon is a “full service” state. so, we pull up to love’s, i located my wallet, turn to open the door, and WAH-BAMM! a women, who looked like she just climbed off the swiss alps, has her nose pressed against my window, her flaring nostrils melting off ice flakes that had accumulated from the drive. after placing our order nellie and i frantically started trying to figure out what was the next acceptable move.
“so, do we tip her or what?!”
“i think so. how much to you have?”
“NOTHING, NOTHING! i’d have to go into make change and i don’t know if that will just escalate things!!”
“you’ve got to give her something!”
“this is crazy. i’m perfectly capable of pumping my own stinking gas! people in california do it all the time without melting down their local stations!”

as she returned, i made the decision to take the cute, naive approach and just ask. “soooo, can i ask you a question?”, “YEAH” she muttered in the most american accent she could muster. i collected my self and sheepishly added “are we supposed to give you a little, you know… somethin’ something?”, as i suggestively twisted a tattered 20 between my fingers. “WHAT?!” she fired back, her germanic glottal stop a little more prevalent. her nostrils started to flare up again and i realized, at that moment, that i’d made a huge mistake for stopping there. i mean, the money that we had saved by carefully rate shopping would now be absorbed with this crazy oregon mandatory gratuity situation. i threw the money out the window and spun off furiously. i managed to snap this picture off as the horrifying transformation unfolded.

fleeing for your lives builds up an appetite and nothing feeds hunger like battered clumps of deep fried wisconsin cheese! it was there that we met jamie. after talking a bit about our trip ( in the drive-thru ) jamie encouraged us to come inside and get a solid plan for how were going to see oregon. here’s a shot of him through the window.

we’ve been asking people that we meet this question. “if you could wake up tomorrow with any ability or quality, what would it be?” jamie said that he would want the ability to “bless people’s day with Jesus.” thanks for all your help jamie and really blessing us on the first stages of our trip.