Today I went to Salem, Oregon, to get a few documents notarized. This journey started out by us taking the MAX Light Rail to the Greyhound station downtown and waiting in a long line of tired people, before they let us know that there were no reservations under either of our names even though my boyfriend had booked the ticket the previous night.
So we then walked to Powell’s Books and sat in the cafe and managed to luckily find a rideshare off craigslist. It was fortunate that I brought my laptop! We sat there for a while and read and zoned out a bit and drank some Jasmine tea. All the while I was trying to figure out my way of getting to Arcata, CA, next week, and possibly extending my flight back here from New York, neither of which I’ve successfully completed yet.
The ride was not bad. The rest of the people were going to Eugene. I’m familiarizing myself a little more each time with I-5 South, passing places like Tigard and Lake Oswego, which were in the past a bunch of unassociated names. The driver was nice, she passed the exit of her town, Canby, and told us how she grew up on a farm there, and how Canby is just a bunch of churches, fast food places and a few gas stations. We drove through the plains of farmlands and passed random exit signs.
When we finally got to the outskirts of Salem, we talked about how it resembled so many outskirts of American cities we have seen in the past and will see in the future. The men in the car talked about their hiking trips in the woods of Montana or North Carolina, and having shock after entrance upon these anywhere locations in the USA.
It was raining heavily when we were dropped off by Capital Street. We walked by the buildings labeled by their respective bureaucracies, whether they were transportation, taxes, and finally to human services or whatever it was called. We had a productive time of walking down the dim, marble halls, finding the office and finally getting our documents stamped and signed and sealed with a gold Oregon state sticker. We then got to wait at a bus stop outside this building and stare at the Oregon state capital building, which I’ve passed on the Greyhound bus before. A bunch of school children who were on a field trip there were exiting the capital and boarding the yellow school buses, and they did not seem too interested.
We took an express bus from Salem to the Wilsonville Transit Center, where we got on a WES commuter train. I had never even seen one of these trains before, let alone ride one. We passed through some rural areas which were either green and vast or recently developed with ugly suburban houses that all looked the same. On we rode to the Beaverton Transit Center, where we hopped on the MAX, and rode it to downtown Portland, over the bridge, past the Rose Quarter Convention Center and finally to the 6 bus. This whole ride was about 2.5 hours.
It was reassuring to come back to Portland with our documents finally officialized. I hope I will not ever return to Salem again.