11:15 a.m. — Finally leave my hotel in Indio, CA.  Sunny. Temperature: 98 degrees.

12:00 p.m. — Driving around Joshua Tree National Park.  Beautiful. Sunny.

2:30 p.m. — Reach Amboy, CA on the way to Las Vegas, NV. Very hot. Brilliantly blue sky. Comfortable 72 degrees in Sam, but 112 degrees outside.

3:00 p.m. — Notice dark clouds on the horizon over the Mojave Desert. Lots of lightning in the distance.

3:30 p.m. — In torrential downpour in the middle of the Mojave National Preserve. Water on road. Lightning all around me. Very strong winds. 68 degrees.

4:00 p.m. — Reach Baker, CA, having seen exactly zero other cars on the road since leaving Kelso, CA 34 miles earlier. 98 degrees.

5:30 p.m. — Las Vegas!

(Start with Timbers, part 1 if you missed it)

The Timbers?

Yes, the Timbers.  The mighty, mighty Timbers.  That’s who they are. (or so I was told)

The Timbers are the Major League Soccer team in Portland.  In most parts of the country, the idea of professional soccer would prompt nothing but yawns, but in Portland, the Timbers are a big deal.

I decided I should go to a match.  It would be my first MLS game.

A short trip on the light rail later, and I was at Jeld-Wen Field.  Unfortunately, that was when I discovered that the Timbers were one of the hottest tickets in town.  The game against Toronto FC was sold out, and scalpers were asking almost double face value for the highly desirable general admission tickets.

You see, at most sporting events, general admission tickets would be the bottom of the barrel, nosebleeds waaaaaay from the action.  Not so in this case.  At Timbers home matches, the general admission section is the place to be.

I eventually bought a ticket from a fellow fan and staked out my seat in the general admission area — the “Timbers Army.”   What fun!

The Timbers Army during a chant

There were chants, songs, and flag waving from over an hour before the start to after the end.  Seats went unused, but the section was packed: everybody stood the entire time. I was so caught up in the excitement and energy that I hardly even noticed that there was a football match going on.

Kenny Cooper #33 of the Portland Timbers moves the ball upfield under pressure from two Toronto FC players during the second half of the match

The Timbers were up 2-0 for a while, but they had a late collapse, and the match ended tied, 2-2.

That was an unfortunate way to end the evening, but I had a great time anyway. I’ll be sure to try to catch another Timbers game if I’m back in Portland.

Most of the time, extended perusal of a restaurant menu is time wasted.  You’re probably at a chain restaurant, and whatever you order will probably be neither horrible nor exceptional.  You won’t even remember what you ate after a couple of days.  Just pick something and get on with it.

That logic didn’t apply while I was at Extraordinary Desserts in San Diego with my friend Stacy.  You see, the desserts at Extraordinary Desserts were, well, extraordinary.  There was a good chance that whatever I chose would be the best execution on a particular dessert theme that I would taste in my life.  Lots of pressure.  I didn’t want to squander the chance.

Fortunately, my decision-analysis studies kicked in, and I realized that I was facing a selection of one alternative from many, among which I was indifferent.  The upshot was that I could safely pick any of the desserts: the data available at the time suggested that I’d enjoy each of them equally.

I went with the mixed-berry cobbler, which was served warm.  It was excellent.

Warm berry cobbler with berry sorbet and a berry sauce(?) at Extraordinary Desserts in San Diego

The Safeway was like any other: a somewhat upscale grocery store with a decent selection of reasonably priced wine.  I had found an Argentinian malbec and was waiting to check out at the register.

I really hate the shopper cards that Safeway and similar stores force down their customers’ throats.  I blame the experience I had at my first job, which was working customer service at a grocery store that had such cards. As such, I try to avoid signing up for the cards.

My usual approach is to borrow the card of the person in line behind me.  Unfortunately, I was the only one in line that day.

The cashier scanned the bottle and asked me for my ID, which I provided.  She then asked me if I had a Safeway card.  I glanced once more for a savior to emerge at the register.  Seeing none, and not wanting to give Safeway several dollars of pure profit, I capitulated:  I asked to sign up for a card.

I wasn’t about to give Safeway my real name, address, and phone number, so I started filling out the form with some fake information.  I made a few marks with my pen before suddenly stopping.  I had just shown this cashier my real ID, and while I didn’t expect her to remember the details of my contact information, I figured that I had better make my fake information be pretty close to to the truth lest it draw suspicion.  For the Safeway card, I became Jeff Keatling living in St. Paul, MN.  My birth month and year were accurate, but I left the date as an ambiguous European number one, which looked kind of like a number seven.  I was so clever, I thought.

I paid for my wine before giving the sign-up form back to the cashier.  She glanced at it, then did a double-take.

“Keatling?” she asked.

“Yup,” I replied.

“Jeff?” she confirmed.

“Right,” I said.

There was then an awkward pause as she stared at me.  I already had the bagged wine in my hand, so I smiled, turned, and walked out the door.

I’m almost certain she thought I had used a fake ID for the booze.

Hypothetically, let’s say you were in Anchorage and had to get to Beaver Creek, Yukon in, oh… late July or so.  You’d probably be driving on the Glenn Highway if that were the case.

And let’s further say that you had just stopped at a coffee shack in the middle of nowhere on that highway for a hot cup of joe, so your mind wasn’t on the road so much as it was pondering, “Why are there so many coffee shacks in Alaska?”

Continuing with our potential situation, what if you crested a hill, saw a state trooper approaching in the other lane, and looked down at your speedometer to see you were speeding quite a lot faster than you had intended?  I mean, you would probably be trying to speed a little bit, but nothing like 25 mph over, right?

Now, I bet that you would pull over right away as soon as the trooper turned on her lights, even before she had the chance to turn around.  And I think you’d be polite and honest with the officer, because you heard once that being honest might work to get out of the ticket — and because the last time you were pulled over you lied, lied, lied and still got a ticket.

What do you think would happen?

Speculating, I’d guess that you’d still get the ticket, but for 10 over instead of 25 over.  Then I’d bet that you would think about whether or not to mention the incident on your blog, but I bet you’d probably write about it if you were scraping the bottom of the barrel for stories.

All totally hypothetical, of course.