Mile 3579: Bishop!

January 23, 2008 | Filed Under Uncategorized 

I actually rolled into Bishop yesterday morning at 6am. The first official order of business I conducted in Bishop was to deposit a check at the local Bank of America.

So you can imagine me being all bleary eyed and half-cocked from driving 10 hours through the Sierras on a single lane highway. Shambling into town with the pre-dawn light peeking up from the mountains after a 3500 mile drive over 10 days and the first thing I do is deposit a check. But hey, money’s gotta go where its gotta go.

Here’s a rundown on the total statistics as per my Garmin GPS unit.

• Total Miles: 3579.5
• Moving Average: 64.1 mph
• Moving Time: 55 hours 50 minutes.
• Max Speed: 112 mph (somewhere on I-10 in Texas)

Other random statistics I should share.

• Roadkill: 1,254 (95% of it being in Texas)
• Biggest roadkill: Looked to be a horse carcass (again in Texas)
• Highest Legal Speed Limit: 80mph (again, Texas)
• Crazy motherfucking dog chasing cars in the middle of the interstate (yup, Texas): 1
• Nights I slept in my car: 2
• Car accidents/wrecks seen: 4
• Amount spent on gasoline: $386.34

Sooo.. second order of business was to find a place to live. I needed to rent, and I needed to rent now. I didn’t want to spend another night in my car for a long time.

I found two places the first day - looked at both places and picked up applications. I didn’t have a good feeling about either place however because the landlords were looking for something longer than a 4 month stay I was looking for. I turned in the applications anyway and at the end of the day I realized I’d need to stay somewhere. I checked into this motel. The short native-american woman at the counter gave me my room key, #2 and said “checkout is at 10am”.

I was feeling kind of dejected. What if it took weeks to find a place? I didn’t want to spend $55 a night sleeping in motels. The other option was to head out to the winter campsite where the climbers hang out and sleep there. I did have a sleeping bag but no tent. So I’d need to buy one. And truthfully I didn’t want to spend my nights out there - because in the desert, the nights get to be really really cold. The part I hated most about my past Bishop climbing trips were the cold nights. And I wasn’t looking to relieve that experience.

I opened the door to my motel room and found myself in a tiny 8×8 room. A TV perched over the foot of the bed. I peeked into the bathroom. It was a little thing of a bathroom, barely any space for moving around once the toilet and sink had taken up their spaces. At least it was clean, I thought to myself.

I pulled back the sheets to the bed, expecting to find some natty old sheets. But they were clean, soft and comfortable. I laid down, thinking to myself that it could have been worse. But I really wanted to get a place. I kept thinking that if things just went so badly, and I’d be forced to head to S.F. earlier than I expected. I didn’t want to do that. I told myself the next day would be better and went to sleep.

I woke up early the next morning feeling tremendously better. I now think it was the overall fatigue from all that driving that had gotten me into that little bout of desperation.

I headed over to this property management company that I had discovered the other day (but were closed). Explaining my situation to the woman there, she waved her hands and said, “not a problem, we’ll get something for you.” We drove out to look at two places and after seeing the second place, I told her I wanted the first place we looked at. She said to come back in 3 hours and sign the papers.

I started to have hope that I’d not need to check back into that motel again.

Three hours later, I had the keys to the place and I stood there at the doorway, not quite believing it. It’s a cozy little 1BR cottage a few blocks off the main street in the city. It has a spacious front yard, back yard, and my own private parking spot. And it’s unbelievably cheap. Basically almost half what I was paying for a single bedroom in D.C.

W. Pine Street (the street that the cottage is located on). You can see the snow-capped mountains in the distance. Bishop High School is on the right.

View of the cottage from the driveway entrance. Its so small that the trees and bushes obscure it almost completely.

Front view of the cottage.

The kitchen. Note the new Martha Stewart dishware from K-Mart. They’re actually quite awesome and I like them a lot.

The living room. I’ll be using this area for working.

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Annnnd, the bedroom. The love cove. The room where the magic happens.

I haven’t had time to get out and explore Bishop (as in take pictures). But that’ll be coming soon now that I’ve finally gotten a place and can begin to settle down.

And I need to actually do what I came here to do. Go bouldering.

Whee!!

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