Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
thinking about how I would get from there to here and what route I would set off on
once I did.
I considered pedaling here, but two days heading in absolutely the opposite direction
I wanted eventually to go was a little too psychologically onerous for me, so I decided
to put myself and my bike on a bus. Then last night I had dinner with Laura Guimond
of the Portland travel bureau, and she brought along a television reporter—a young wo-
man—and a cameraman from a station in the Czech Republic who, on a limited budget,
were in town to do a travel story about the American Northwest. We made a deal; they'd
drive me to Astoria, and I'd give them an interview when we got here. Their English was
textbook good, though slangier idioms left them looking puzzled. At one point I said I
was bushed, and their reference point was the former president; I made a mental note to
speak on camera as literally as I could. They wanted to shoot me doing the dipping-a-
wheel-in-the-Pacific thing.
We left Portland the next afternoon. They were nervous on American highways, so
I drove their van to Astoria, listening all the way to the voice of their GPS giving me
directions in Czech. Astoria is pleasant and weatherworn, a fishing and tourist hub that
is not actually on the Pacific, but on the Columbia, a few miles upriver. (Don't tell the
Czechs.) It's not exactly a pretty place, but it has an aura of admirable longevity; it is,
in fact, old. Founded by John Jacob Astor as a fur-trading outpost in 1811, it was the
first enduring American settlement west of the Rockies, none of which I knew until I
got there, three weeks before the city's bicentennial celebration, just in time to miss it. I
have a newsman's timing, don't I?
Anyway, the Czechs set up a shot beneath the Astoria-Megler Bridge, a gorgeous,
steel-girdered viaduct that dramatically spans the river from Oregon to Washington. I
spoke into the camera, declaring my love for the beauty of America and my nervousness
and excitement at the beginning of such an arduous journey. And we did three or four
takes of a departing shot, with me riding along the wooden boardwalk in Astoria and
disappearing from sight, ostensibly in the direction of New York.
Then I bought them dinner. They were earnest and sweet-tempered. Probably not yet
thirty, they seemed very young to me, and a little unnerved to be on their own in an
out-of-the-way corner of a foreign country, though they surprised me a little. After we
ate I excused myself, saying we all must be tired, and the young woman reporter smiled.
“Bushed,” she said.
