Day 1: Compact cars, Kurt Cobain, and Corvallis

Greetings from Corvallis, Oregon where this Days Inn will be getting a bad review on Yelp.  Yesterday marked my departure from Olympia, 13 months to the day after I arrived.  I had foolishly hoped to hit the road by 9am, but a final run around Capitol Lake ended any hope of that.  I was looking forward to a nice leisurely run around the lake, but instead had my eyes peeled for Kipper, the hard-of-hearing loose pit bull with no tags.  Score one for responsible pet ownership.

I wasn't a packaging major at Michigan State, but perhaps I should have been.  The amount of stuff I jammed into my Civic was nothing short of remarkable, although I may have to strap Tanya and Matt to the roof of the car, Mitt Romney-style.  

After successfully completing my large-scale game of Tetris, I made one last stop to Nineveh, the Assyrian food truck downtown that has the single best food item in Olympia, the chicken shawarma.  The accompanying rhubarb soda?  Not so good.  It tasted strangely like pine, which perhaps was appropriate given my final day in the Evergreen State.

As I sat in my car eating, I had a strange compulsion to find out where Kurt Cobain lived in Olympia.  I don't even like Kurt Cobain.  Never thought much of his music and never understood the deification his fans have always wanted to bestow upon him.  In fact, if I lived in Olympia 25 years ago, I'm pretty sure he would have just been another one of the street kids who sat on the bench outside my office while his nicotine and BO wafted through my window.  That said, the idea of finding the house where he wrote much of Nevermind was strangely appealing.  A quick Google search turned up the address of 114 Pear St., which was a mere block away from where I sat.  Despite my indifference toward him or his music, knowing that an album that has sold over 30 million copies worldwide was written in the house was pretty cool.

With a stomach full of shawarma and pine sap, I finally hit the road around 4:30pm, heading west toward Aberdeen to make my way down the coast on 101.  It was at that point that I remembered that Cobain grew up in Aberdeen.  A quick Google search turned up the address of 1210 East First St, which I found upon entering town.  Aberdeen was apparently an old lumber mill town, and it's as depressing as one might expect from a lumber town.  Run-down homes and smoke stacks spewing garbage into the air (much like Cobain's music).  In what may be the greatest discrepancy between listed price and assessed value, the home is apparently for sale for a mere $500,000.  

Just a few blocks away from the house is the Kurt Cobain Park.  In this instance, "park" is a euphemism for "dead end street abutting a run down bridge."  There's a generic cement guitar sculpture and a sign describing the significance of the area.  I really wanted to get a picture of me wiping away the tears on his creepy statue, but I couldn't find it.

I got the heck out of Aberdeen as soon as I could and headed south on 101.  The terrain and views along the water were beautiful until I hit South Bend (no, not that South Bend), at which point the weather became typically overcast and foggy.  I passed through a number of small towns, none more memorable than Tokeville.  If you're an entrepreneur and you're not opening a marijuana store in Tokeville, you're not a very good entrepreneur.  The rest of the trip into Corvallis was uneventful except for the 45-minute traffic jam I hit in Seaside courtesy of the Hood to Coast relay race.

Today's activities include a visit to Oregon State's campus here in Corvallis and a visit to Swoosh University in Eugene, where I will conduct an in-depth sociological experiment by wearing an MSU shirt on campus in advance of the Sept 6 showdown with the Ducks.  Pics and recap to follow tomorrow morning.