Whelp, we made it to Indianapolis.  Alive.  In one piece.  But it wasn't easy.

You're going to have to wait even LONGER for snowshoeing pictures... I just don't have the energy to sort them and post the good ones tonight!  Instead, I plan on eating pudding and telling you about my day.

Last night, I was going to be productive.  But I got tired, watched The Sing Off, went to the grocery store, and then went to bed.  Wyatt and I snuggled.  He is lonely. 

This morning I took a shower, finished packing, made some breakfast, and watched Meet the Press before Keli came and got me, and we hit the road (around 11).  The first hour of the "8:30 hour" drive was rain.  Not bad, just annoying.  Then all was well for about 3 hours.  Then, it started snowing.  And kept snowing.  For awhile, it was just dry, cold snow without much accumulation.  The kind you couldn't make a snowball out of with a prayed and mouth full of spit.  Then, it got verrrrry harry for about half an hour.  We were sliding all over the road, despite Keli's excellent driving skills.  We started thinking about finding a hotel because it was just not a good idea to go on, but then things cleared up a bit, and became more manageable for the rest of the drive to Indianapolis.  It took us a little less than 11 hours to get here (with a couple short stops).  But we made it safe!

Now, we have to decide if we will be able to make it up to South Bend tomorrow for our interview Tuesday.  They are calling for a total of 1-3 inches of snow in Indy, which is totally manageable.  But they are calling for "snow squalls" in South Bend through tomorrow, with estimated accumulations around 12 inches.  I predict that the regular old sedan car we drove up here will not like 12 inches of snow.  Nor will it like squalls.  What exactly a squall is, I have not a clue.  But it sounds bad.  I am imagining lots of wind.  White out.  Not enough car snacks in the world for a white out.  I don't think we want to drive through squalls...

Now, it may clear up by midday tomorrow, and we won't have a problem... but that seems doubtful.  Very doubtful.  We considered renting an SUV for the day.  But it would need 4WD.  And maybe crampons and self-guided driving capabilities.  And a hot chocolate dispenser. 

If we can't make it (which would be sad, because I know they put lots of effort into planning these interviews!), we will chill here in Indy, walk lots of places, and go to our interview here on Wednesday. 

We can't make a game plan until tomorrow though, so I'll let you know what happens.  Either way, it may involve me buying snow boots. 

Stay warm,
Kari

I can't believe it's been since Wednesday since I updated.  I blame it on the cost of wireless in airports...

I've arrived home, unpacked (shocking, I know), thrown a load of laundry in the washer, and now am sitting down for 14 seconds before doing a billion other chores today... since I'm heading out of town AGAIN tomorrow.  But before I start ANOTHER trip, I need to tell you about the rest of tour de northwest.

On Wednesday night, we went to sleep.  We were pooped.  Trudging through the woods in 4 feet of snow, in a practical white out, up ski slopes, while dodging wolves and grizzly bears, will tire a person out. 

Thursday was a wonderful, albeit rainy, day.  We started out by making pancakes and coffee.  Not just any pancakes, but SNOWQUALMIE FALLS pancakes.  Let me tell you a little about them.  You can only get this delicious mix in Washington.  It makes it more special that way.  You just add water.  I don't know how they do it, but they are the most magical just add water pancakes you can imagine.  I discovered them while staying with a friend when Sarah and I drove around the country.  That was in 2006, and I haven't had them since.  I sent an urgent message to my friend to find out where we could get them (Safeway...), and we stocked up.  Should last me a couple weeks at least....

Anyway, we had these delicious pancakes (with real maple syrup), and Tully's coffee in a french press (have I talked about Tully's coffee yet?  Maybe I'll save that for later).  After breakfast, we headed out for a day of shopping.  Stop number 1 was Powell's books; THE biggest bookstore in the world.  Yes, the world.  It has over 1 million volumes.  This makes it difficult to browse.  It was fabulous.  They do have the strangest, most awkward parking garage in the world though.  But, it was free, so who's complaining.  After wandering the book store and picking up a gift card for the girl whose condo we stayed in, we headed south, to outlets.  Why did we do that?

I will say that I pretty much knocked out all the Christmas shopping in a single day!  Which also meant that we had to buy another bag to bring everything home in... It wasn't just me.  Keli helped too.  I can't say WHAT outlets we kept in business for the next year, because that would ruin the Christmas surprise.  Just know that there were lots of stores, and they were wonderful, and I didn't but anything for more than 50% off.  I will say that there was a Le Creuset outlet, and it was tempting... until I thought about lugging cast iron across the country.  That is just a bad idea.

After outlet shopping, we headed back to Portland for an applicant dinner at an amazing pizza place!  The applicant group was large (12), so it was hard to socialize with everyone (and we were pooped), but it was still a good time.  

Friday we packed up the car, and then headed to the hospital for the interview day.  No details, remember.  They are top secret.  But it was a long, but good day, and we headed out just after 5 for the airport.  Annoyingly (I've only had this problem with red eyes), there was no one at the check in booth until 7, so we sat around (after doing some creative repacking to get all our bags to legal weight), until we could check in, go through security, and get dinner. 

The flights were flights... I slept for part of it, did a little cross word puzzling, we got breakfast in between, and Keli's roommate came and retrieved us when we got into Charlotte.  After a side trip to Starbucks and Great Harvest Bread (we need snacks for tomorrow's car ride...), I made it home.  Phew.

Tomorrow we head to the midwest for a couple more interviews.  Then I'm done traveling for a while, and at some point will be heading home for some Christmas time with my family!

For now, I'm going to get some more chores done (I have big plans for collecting a few bags of stuff to take to Goodwill).

Look out for some snowshoeing pictures later today!!!  They will be sweet.

Adios,
Kari

Sorry I haven't updated in a couple days... I've been too busy cursing at Oregon and Washington for their inability to paint a road line that shows up in the dark AND the rain.  With the amount of rain they get, you'd think they'd have figured that one out.  But they haven't.

I'm writing to you from Portland again.  Since the last update, we've gone from Spokane to Seattle to Portland.  Most of our driving for this trip is finished!  It's nice to be in one place for more than one night!  Let me give you the recap of what's been going on.

Monday, after Keli's interview, we hit the road for Seattle.  There were concerns that "the pass" (we didn't know what this really was, but it sounded daunting..." could make travel difficult, but other than some on again, off again fog, our drive went fine!  We got to our hotel after some random turns through downtown Seattle, and decided we were too tired to get up, so we ordered room service (BLT on wheat w/ a side of fruit x2) and watched The Sing Off, and then went to bed.  Yes, we are that exciting.  On Tuesday, we woke up with BIG plans for heading downtown, but were a little scared it was going to rain (it is Seattle, after all).  It was cloudy, but didn't rain all day!  Sweet.  I headed to the gym while Keli talked to her parents in Hungary, and then we headed out to look for breakfast (and coffee).  We stumbled upon a Top Pot doughnut store!  These are the doughnuts that Starbucks sells, but they are fresh and not frozen.  Hands down, best doughnut (or two...) ever.  Then we stopped at Tully's for some coffee.  Yum again.  We spent the rest of the morning walking through Pike Place Market, and oogling at stuff in the Patagonia, Mountain Hardwear, Columbia, and North Face stores.  Those places really need a clearance section.  Then we went BACK to Pike Place Market for fish and chips.  They were fresh.  And by fresh, I mean the dude across the counter from us was pulling the fish out of an ice bucket brought up from the water and chopping them up.  We also talked to a nice guy who was originally from Indianapolis about where we should go to residency.  His description of west coast vs. midwest: A beer after work vs. a kayak after work...

After lunch, we meandered back to the hotel and headed out for Portland.  Good timing, as it started to rain just after we left.  This was not as great a drive as the others... it rained the whole time, visibility was crappy, and my windshield wipers streaked.  But we made it alive! 

Did you know that OHSU (the place we are interviewing) is on the top of a hill?  Us neither, until we drove up it last night!  There is a cable car, yes the kind that's like a ski lift, that goes from the city up the hill and into the hospital.  It's pretty cool.  But anyway, we drove to the top of the hill BECAUSE we met a girl on the interview trail who offered to let us stay in her condo for FREE for three nights!  How excellent.  And it's within walking distance of OHSU.  Double excellence.  So that's where we are now.  We got in last night, ordered pizza, and fell asleep.  I don't think we've fully adjusted to the time difference...

Today... ohhh, today.  What a day.  We really wanted to get some good outdoor adventuring in during this trip.  Neither Keli nor I have ever been snowshoeing before, so we thought that would be a good thing to try.  Turns out, we were right.  Today we headed out of town towards Mount Hood with plans to rent snowshoes and ask the guy where we should go.  The rain stopped by the time we got into Government Camp (at the base of the mountain), we rented out snow shoes for $10 a pop, and the guy told us where we could go for a nice "alpine hike".  I can't wait to get pictures up here!  First of all, snowshoeing isn't as hard as I imagined it might be.  It's because they know how to make good snowshoes these days.  I imagine back in the day, when they were made out of bent sticks and woven animal fur, people fell over a lot.  But technology's a beautiful thing!  We walked along a river, up a STEEP hill, through the woods, down another hill,  back up that hill (it led to a cliff...), through the woods, down the STEEP hill, and along the river again.  I think it was probably about 6 miles total... but that's just a guesstimate.  It started snowing about 1/3 in, and was soooo beautiful.  There was a little concern that maybe out tracks would get covered and we'd be lost in the woods on a mountain in the cold in the snow with nothing but trailmix and water.  But that didn't happen.  Phew.

Anyway, we made it out warm but wet, got in the car, scarfed some trailmix, stopped at Tully's and got coffee, and drove back to Portland, to "our" condo, and heated up some pizza. 

Now we're trying to see if we can get The Sing Off on our computers...

The day was a huge success.

I am in love with snowshoeing.  And really just being on mountains where there is 4 feet of snow.  At the beginning of December.  Ohh, that was the other good thing!  It's still too early in the season for it to be busy, so we only passed about 3 other people the whole time. 

Tomorrow, we are going to the biggest bookstore in the country, and other cool things that we haven't decided on yet.  You'll find out tomorrow.  Don't let the suspense kill you!

Now, I'm going to go to sleep.  Wait, it's only 7pm... Maybe I'll hold out for another hour.......

Who else played the game, Oregon Trail, when they were in school?  If you didn't, let me give you a brief explanation.  First of all, you put the floppy disk in the computer.  And by floppy, I quite literally mean flexible.  Do you remember those?  Okay, so you put the disk in, and the game starts.  You and your crew of peeps have to get from one end of the Oregon Trail to the other, without dying.  You must find food, avoid sickness, barter for things you need, ford rivers, and hunt.  Buffalo, preferably.  They give you the most meat.  Sometimes, you had to sacrifice your friends to avoid snakes.  But they understood, because on their game, you'd just drowned swimming across the river.  It was a good time.

Well, Oregon Trail may seem COMPLETELY irrelevant to our travels across the northwest... but it isn't.  According to my very informative road trip compadre, Oregon Trail ended in the Dalles of Oregon.  I didn't know that... because I never got to the end.  But that's beside the point.  Yesterday, we got up relatively early, and were packed and on the road before 8:30 for our 5ish hour drive from Portland to Spokane.

The drive took us through the mountains of Oregon (which, PS, were all snow covered and beautiful!), and then into the Dalles, which is an area where the mountains melt away into sloping fields (resembling Alpine Meadows, which I love) and a giant beautiful Columbia River floodplain.  Apparently, the Dalles can be quite the tricky area to drive, and between the snow and wind, it regularly becomes impassable.  Luckily, we had no problems.  I'm not sure our bright red Chevy Cobalt rental car can handle a whole lot of winter weather...

Our drive to Spokane was relatively uneventful.  We stopped for gas, and it turned out to be full service... and we couldn't figure out if Oregon is a mandatory full service station state, or if he was just there and we needed to tip, but we had no cash (Dad, are you reading this?), and he walked away too fast for us to give him one anyway...

Then we stopped at Walmart to get shampoo, and ended up getting some salami, cheese, bread, and apples for lunch (and a giant tin of popcorn.... impulse buy).  That is definitely my favorite car lunch ever.

We got to Spokane in early afternoon, checked into our hotel, and then headed down to the river for a walk.  We ended up walking along the river, and into down town for a while.  We stopped to get some hot chocolate, I oogled at an $899 copper mixer in Williams Sonoma (no, I would never ever spend that much money on a mixer, but it's still beautiful!), and we strolled back across the river to the car.  Keli had an interview dinner last night, so I finished my book (The Help, it was excellent, I highly recommend it), ate pizza, and watched football.  Our internet was having some issues, so I didn't do any productive online perusing.

Good evening!  I'm writing to you from all the way on the west coast in Portland, OR!  A friend and I flew out today for a week of interviews and general west coast fun.  More west coast fun that interviews, really!

I'm going to TRY to keep you up to date on whats going on out here, but I may be having too much fun and not have time.  So sorry if that happens!

Here's the review of today!

• Drove to the airport in the AM, got some coffee.
• Spent leg #1 of the flight trying (and failing) to complete a crossword puzzle.
• Ate lunch at fudruckers.
• Spent leg #2 of the flight napping, listening to James Taylor, reading The Help, and trying (and failing again) to finish the crossword puzzle.
• Arrived in Portland, oogled at Mt. Hood from the airplane (we'll be there soon!), got our rental car, and went to our hotel!
• Drove to the hotel we'll be staying at later in the week... just for fun.
• Went to the Widmer Brothers Brewery!  Apparently, they like to brew their beer here in Portland, so we figured we'd try some out.  5 of the 6 were good... one was not.  Note to self:  Don't drink anything called "Old Embalmer".  I had an EXCELLENT schnitzel w/ potatoes.  Yummmmmmm.
• Went to REI to investigate snowshoe rentals and get socks for Keli.  I also found a pair of running tights that I actually liked that were on sale. 
• Now we are here, in the hotel, trying to stay awake until after 9PM so we don't get too off schedule!

The rest of the week has some big plans!  We're heading to Spokane, Seattle, Mt. Hood, maybe Mt. Rainier, back to Portland, and potentially (most likely) some random adventures in between!

And I'll probably post about something other than my fun travels... probably.

Adios!
Kari

I was flipping through all the links on my blog after the redesign to make sure everything uploaded the way I wanted it to, and realized that on my "Things that make me happy" page, there is NOTHING under the "things that make other people happy" heading.  You can see for yourself, but don't look until you're don't reading this!

So, this being the second day of December and all, I would like to send out an plea for things that make YOU happy!  Remember, these are supposed to be the "mundane" things of life.  Not exciting things that SHOULD make you happy, but random things that you get exceptional joy out of. 

I know people read this thing... I watch the counter go up every day.  Don't pretend otherwise.  And anyone can leave a comment, even if you don't have a blog or gmail account.  So leave a comment about what makes YOU happy!  Better yet, if you have a blog, write a whole post about it, and them leave the link in a comment! 

I think that I will declare 12/2/10 as National Declaration Of Something That Makes You  Exceptionally Happy But Other People Think Is Not Exceptional Day.  In case you're wondering, I DO have the authority to declare a national day of something. 

So participate!  And then I can put them on my "things that make me happy" page under the currently empty heading, and THAT will make me happy.

Ready.....
GO!

I took this opportunity, it being the first day of December and all, to do my seasonal blog face lift.  I think I have blog design ADD... good thing there are ENDLESS possibilities!  This new design clearly has a winter/snow/Christmas theme.  That's because winter is the best, snow is the bestest, and a white Christmas would be bester than the bestest. 

I hope you understand how much emphasis is implied by my betrayal of all rules of grammar. 

My favorite thing, in the WHOLE world (maybe...), is being outside at night in the dark while its snowing... and it's not really dark because of all the light reflecting, and it never seems late and you never get tired and can play in the snow all night.  It's just splendid.  I hope that happens to me soon.  Now that it's December, it's a realistic possibility.

December will bring all sorts of fun things...

I finish my student health rotation on Friday, and it's been great.  There has been lots of excellent learning to be had, and I feel like I've reentered the world of family medicine.  The folks at student health are great fun (and they eat a lot, which clearly I appreciate).  I'll be sad to leave.  But not TOO sad, because...

I have off from Saturday until the middle of January!  I use the term "off" lightly because the next two weeks, and at least 4 other days of the rest of it, will be spend traveling for interviews.  But don't feel TOO badly for me because...

A lot of that interview travel time will be spent in the northwest and midwest... not interviewing.  I will, however, be rehashing my supreme navigation skills, spontenaity skills, and car-snacking skills.   

I will go home at some point... before Christmas!  I don't know when yet.  I feel bad leaving the feline munchkin right after getting home from spending two weeks away.  He's a people cat, and needs some loving, not time in a kennell. 

I will be riding my bike and running... Probably a lot once I'me done traveling.  Nationals, people, nationals.  I need miles.  And those little toe warmers that go inside your socks.  My feet get so frigid.

I think I will also go to NYC to visit my friend who just moved there.  She doesn't know it yet, but if she's a good friend, she reads my blog and just found out!  If not, I plan on showing up on her door with a map of Manhatten and my walking shoes.

I think that's it for the plans right now.  It's enough, I promise.

For now, I am just basking in the smells of my kitchen, and reading a good book.  I made peppermint patty brownies, Good Morning muffins, and chex mix tonight.  It was a very productive night.   

And now I must go to bed.

Happy December!