Travels with Matty 2018

                                                                Preparing for the trip      After leaving Sunriver, where we left a hat, we spent a day and night in Bend, where we left my leash. Bend has a nice waterfront area along the Deschutes River. Scenic walks and lots of shops. It  probably hurts the downtown businesses, but better that than Walmart. Bend is the only town I know where people navigate by brewery: "Turn left at Deschutes, cross the river at Immersion. We're just east of Boneyard."      Saturday we drove to Spokane. I'm pretty sure we left a flashlight there. Our friends live twenty miles outside of town on 5+ acres complete with a large pond and an unintentionally floating bridge. Matty helped out by moving and stacking firewood. The only real day's work he's done since he helped split kiawe wood on the Big Island last year.      We are waking up Monday morning half way across Montana in a private campground outside Livingston. We

     I did not witness the eclipse, so here is Matty's report:       "When I first read the scary stories about how central Oregon would fail to accommodate the expected throngs I was reminded of a "What If?" column in which a scientist answers absurd questions. What would happen, one writer asked, if earth's entire population stood shoulder to shoulder in the state of Rhode Island and all jumped at the same time? Would it affect the earth? The answer is no, the earth outweighs humanity by a factor of trillions. What intrigued the scientist was thinking about how everyone would get home and how many people would starve before being able to leave. His deduction: billions. It turns out that, thankfully, the Apoceclipse turned into a Y2Keclipse. It was also spectacular, thus avoiding being seen as a Comet Kohouteclipse. When I arrived at Smith Rock in Oregon the families near me consisted of whining children and nagging parents. As the sun disappeared the families

   By rights this blog should be written by a human being, but seeing as how my human is among the laziest carbon-based units on the planet I have taken it upon myself to write about our upcoming trip across America. My main purpose is to provide updates to people we are likely to visit so that, if they choose, they can make themselves scarce as we get near. It has been suggested that my observations would be more illuminating if I wore a GoPro, but having a camera strapped to my back is not a good look for me.      Three literary works inspire me. The first is, unsurprisingly, John Steinbeck's "Travels with Charley," a not altogether satisfying account of the circumnavigation of the US by a grumpy old man and his dog.  The second inspiration is "Lolita" which, if you leave out the scandalous bits, is a surprisingly great travelogue of the western United States in the early 1950's. My final inspiration is the writing of Archy a cockroach with the soul of a