the canada of california
otherwise known as oregon.let's go through this in bullet points:
-AiR heads up to oregon for icca quarterfinals. how, you ask?
- 15-seater van. i had to back up about thirty feet to get the entire thing on my camera.
- drama in the first fifteen minutes? seriously?
- SPRING BREAK! we hit the 5.
- after a pretty much uneventful ride, we pass through shasta and see the most beautiful sunset:
- only of course, to discover, an even more wonderful sign:
- give or take a few hours and we were in oregonia. a few stops in ashland and medford, and we were three hours away from eugene.
- more drama. but soon it's all business, and we're all fast asleep.
- the next day. a bunch of us decide to explore the university of oregon campus proper, so we bring the cameras and our lovely selves to the student union, the cemetery, and of course, the bookstore.
- we suit up and get ready for our biggest performance yet: a crowd of over 800 people, all of whom paid at least $15 to watch us.
- we hold our breath. we kick ass. we're second place. we're going to stanfurd.
- wait a sec. PARTY TIME!
- and after a few rounds of drink and gina wrestling rafi (and winning!), we headed back to our humble hotel and slept.
- a mere few hours later, we were gearing up to go back to california.
- about a few minutes away from mt. shasta, in a little podunk town called yreka, we receive a phone call from poursh, saying that the 5 had been closed due to a snowstorm. we check around, and according to some weather reports, the surrounding areas of weed were going to receive anywhere from eight to eighteen inches of snow. shasta would, by next morning, gain three feet of snow.
- we effectively realize that the three bay area a cappella groups who competed: AiR, noteworthy, and the stanford harmonics, are all in yreka, stuck.
- so, stranded in yreka, we decide to hop into the local walmart to buy tire chains and relieve some tension. highlights incude jooho in a darth vader mask, singing the mcdonald's "i'm lovin' it" tune in minor keys, finding musical unicorn pony sticks, and failed attempts at getting some rest.
- six o'clock. we decide to call the chp and other sources (read: parents) to determine our fate. by this time, noteworthy's with us, all for one and all that junk.
- the 5 northbound opens. we decide to find a hotel room to stay in, with the only other option being driving down a freakish road that, according to a local, "will kill you if you don't have four wheel drive." our two cars are the 15-seater van (now aptly named "eugene") and the noteworthy 7-seater soccer mom van.
- we decide to stay, and have dinner up in medford after securing three rooms in an ashland hotel.
- we are freaking stranded. so what do we do? we play the hat game.
- after a round of the hat game and three subsequent rounds of mafia (those noteworthy boys are CRAZY!), i finally decide to take a quick nap. by this time it's 2.30, and we have all decided to leave ashland by 6. some noteworthy members decide to stay up all night.
- a bunch of people get up at 6, only to realize that the roads still aren't open. overnight, the 5 had been closed all the way up to ashland to prevent overcrowding in yreka. (who knew?)
- the roads finally opened up at around 7.30, so AiR decides to leave oregon "for good this time!"
- a few detours and a few runs on the 5, we make it back to berkeley at around 5.30 in the afternoon. we were supposed to have gotten in on sunday afternoon, not monday dusk.
- all in all, it was a great trip. not so much drama, just enough. and as always, in the end, we're all so happy because everything's beautiful.
one picture really sums the entire trip up, for me at least:
you guys, i wanna go back to the party.
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