Anyway, we had some mishaps with the laundry. I accidentally put my inhaler through the washer, Loki put my teddy bear through the dryer, and I discovered all my socks were missing. On the upside, though, someone gave us $27 to get new socks, which we did :D
So, we went back to the shopping center where we'd been hanging out after doing our laundry. Loki bought a large bag of burritos and won me a bag of cinnamon twists. So he's a paying customer, right? We're sitting outside, minding our own business, eating burritos and talking about life, and a Taco Bell employee comes out and tells us that an irate customer called the police because we're hanging out, outside, on the lawn.
What...? WHAT IS THE LOGIC OF THAT? I mean, she was nice about it, but what the fuck was the Irate Customer™'s problem? We weren't bothering him. (I assume it's a 'him', a male preppy, because most women we've met have had some measure of compassion.) I wrote about it in my diary, which I'll excerpt for you here:
The shopkeepers and police here are nicer, but there are still spangephobic people who will complain to shopkeepers and the police and make them ask us to leave when normally they'd rather not even bother us. There are also businesses that make it clear upfront how inhospitable they are, with "No loitering" and "No panhandling" signs, and those are places I'd prefer to avoid. I don't want to deal with the police. I don't want them taking our names, no matter how nice they are about it. I just want us to get where we need to go, hassle-free.
One thing I did notice was that police were patrolling the shopping center a lot more than they were yesterday. There were also a few more spangers. Honestly, I don't understand spangephobia, especially against young, healthy travellers. Oh, you have a job making $50/hour to sit on your arse and do nothing? Good for you. Not everyone has your advantages and we shouldn't offend you just by existing as housefree individuals. I have a resume. It's letter-perfect. If you want to actually fucking help me by hiring me, then please, by all means, do so. Otherwise, stop acting like you're a Concerned Citizen™. You don't give a shit, you're selfish, completely uncompassionate, and have no right to complain about our presence if you won't do something to help us.
Another thing I hate is when people pretend that they're well-meaning, but they actually don't give a fuck and they're just trying to pass us off as someone else's problem. They won't listen to our individual situation; they just throw shelter pamphlets at us. We're a married couple, okay, we're not sleeping in "men's" and "women's" sections at a shelter. We just want a safe, quiet, out of the way area to set up our sleeping bags without fucking worrying about wakeup curfews or cops or disgruntled corpgov wage slaves.
And that about sums it up.
Later that day, we got a ride with some other travellers to Merlin, and after that, we got a ride to Portland. It was initially going to be to Salem, but it turns out that our driver, Jude, only had to make a pit stop there and then he drove us up to Portland. My friend Alys (an awesome writer and social commentator who wrote a subversion of Twilight-like books called Sacred Blood and runs a blog where she writes essays on problematic elements of Fifty Shades of Grey) gave us some tips on where we can camp and told us that the job economy is... not really that promising due to the large influx of people who have come here for work. Oh, well, hopefully we can still find our niche.
Note that we are not really that interested in "finding jobs" in the traditional sense. We would like to do things that actually contribute to the world around us and to travellers like us. We would like to further our own research and projects without becoming part of the corp-gov-wage-slave machine. So not being able to find work really isn't that big a problem for me XD
Anyway, you probably want pictures, right? So here you go!
Us on our way out from Grants Pass
Loki holding up a sign for a ride
Me in my new socks. I love this aesthetic; it makes me feel strong.
At Burnside Skate Park.
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