We spent the weekend in Northern California for a wedding and it was very obvious that it wasn't Oregon.

Part of it was the heat. Oregon is not a cold place, but where we were was a good deal warmer and much more humid than either of us were used to. The wedding guests, though, were complaining that it was cold - apparently it was cool for the area, and so we were walking around with bare arms while the family members were wearing more and more layers as the event progressed.

Part of it was the cars. Oregon has a lot more big cars on the road than in, say, Britain - there are six wheel trucks, and huge SUVs aplenty scattering the roads but it is still a scattering. In California the big cars are the norm - you see more luxury SUVs and huge Cadillacs there, and there are hardly any Subarus which seems a very peculiar lack after Oregon (which is total Subaru territory).

The car we had booked was an economy model, so we were expecting to collect a Ford Focus or smaller, but our flight was delayed on Wednesday night and we reached the car place an hour or so late. What we ended up with was a Chrysler Pacifica, an absolute pig of a car. It was easy enough to drive once I got used to the sheer size of the thing, but the visibility was atrocious. Driving to the hotel in a downpour was difficult.

Part of the alienness of the place was the smell. I went out running on Thursday. The trails in Oregon smell earthy, but the heavy rain of the night before followed by the (to us) sudden warmth left a pervasive smell of damp rot on the running trail. And for some reason I kept smelling fenugreek: I don't know if it grows wild down there, but every now and then I would get a blast of Indian food smell.

The last difference was how people reacted to me when I was running. Here in Oregon if you say hello to someone on the trail they will usually say hello back. There, they just looked confused. It reminded me of the south east of England in that respect.

We're glad to be home.

Posted by Dunx at May 10, 2005 10:36 AM