Six

Another ten miles north, on the other side of Humboldt Bay, lies the small college town of Arcata. A quick drive through town reveals small streets confined with trees, a large park-like square in the center and a serious amount of bicycles. Reason enough to park the car and explore a bit by foot. On the way from the parking lot towards the center, I come across an official Birkenstock dealer. Little surprise then, that Arcata is politically rather progressive. It was the first city in the U.S. to have majority of the Green Party in their city council.

The central square, called Arcata Plaza, possibly for lack of a better name, is essentially one downtown block missing buildings and instead featuring a small symmetric park with a statue of William McKinley, 25th president of the United States, in the center. In a town that limited the number of national chain restaurants allowed in its boundaries, the statue of a president that was rather imperialist is good for the occassional run-in. Currently, the park is used by the town’s hippie community for their daily meeting.

I am tempted to spend the night there, but it is only two and we are on a mission here. So I set off again. Crescent City, the next city, is first described by my guide book as rather boring, before it launches into an explaination of all the terrific things one can do. Not quite convinced, all I do is filling up with gas.

Since Crescent City is also the last bigger settlement in California, I abandon my notherly course and turn inland. Soon, I am in Oregon (which, incidentally is where my car is registered) and in Grants Pass where I stop for the night. I take a room in a motel right in the middle of downtown. After moving into the room I try to refresh a bit, but fail to activate the water taps.

This sounds somewhat embarassing. In my defense, however, Americans don’t seem to be able to agree on a single mechanism. So far, every room I was in had a completely different mechanism. The only thing they all share is a single ball to regulate both water pressure and temperature—except for some shower controls which skip on the pressure regulation.

That, indeed, results in an incredible amount of options for the designer to choose from: turning the knob clockwise or the other way, moveing it backwards, forwards, left or right, pushing it in and pulling it out. And the plain ball-shaped control doesn’t give any hint whatsoever.

The reason I can’t figure this one out is that it is somewhat tight. After a while I revert to brute force and indeed, you get the water flowing if you pull rather hard.

The motel is very close to what is euphorically called the historic G street. By now I am somewhat used to the fact that the historic district of a town is limited to three blocks of a single street. Some sort of fair is going on. Lots of stands have appeared on the sidewalk and lots of folk are about.

The temperature is a lot higher than back at the Pacific. The car thermometer says 91 °F while it reported only 53 °F this morning. I have no clue what that would be in Celsius, but after almost two weeks under the Farenheit scale I grew accustomed to it. Same goes for speeds in mph. It appears that the secret to getting a feel for a foreign unit is to not convert it to a known measure but rather use it as it is. This trick only seems to work for units that are a bit obscure to human observation such as temperature or speed. If a sign says ‘Construction Area. 1000 ft’, I have absolutely no idea where that area may be. Probably a bit ahead.