justing.net

Reporting from the road II: destination reached

By Justin G. on 22MAY13FRI

More miles more smiles. Or, in our case, less miles less weird stuff.

< newthought >During the drive today, I saw a bit fewer things than expected< /newthought > but not anything out of statistical expectation based on yesterday’s observation.

Very succintly, yesteday the drive was 383 miles, and today it was 285 miles. Since there were 8 interesting things seen yesterday, if the rate is the same, we expect to see 6 today. I like error bars, so 6 ± sqrt(6) or 3-9 remarkable things expected.

Without further delay, here’s the report.

• The Human Bean, which in this instance is a coffee shop. That’s not the remarkable part. I distinctly recall someone on MB recently using the term, I think in some identifyably Oregon context.< marginnote >Maybe I made that up. I can’t find where I saw it.< /marginnote > Before that it was a phrase sometimes heard in my house growing up. Not much heard by me after leaving there. Maybe it’s an Oregon thing? Hard to back that up.
• “Fish Viewing Area.” This has got to be about the most Oregon (or pacific northwest) thing ever. You don’t notice these things until you’ve been away for a while and realize that you didn’t see anything like that anywhere else in all the other places that you’ve been.
• The adult shops. I was in Portland a month ago and there were quite a few. My recollection is that is actually usual. I was expecting to see some similar number on the drive this time, but there were only few, in the places I remember them being. I think I have enough to do, but I suppose I could do some counting to estimate the prevalence here vs other places.
• A whole lot of rain. Very on-brand for Oregon, but also kind of unusual for mid-May. Thank goodness for Rain-X!

Seeing 4 remarkable things is a little low, but maybe 8 was a bit high yesterday. Small numbers are trickly like that. I’ll get another shot in a couple of weeks when traveling in the reverse direction back south.

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