It's a long way from San Francisco to Portland, Oregon, I can tell you that. About 650 miles worth. When I woke up in Mass Delusion's apartment in San Francisco in the morning, I knew I had the Haul of Hauls to make to get to Portland at a normal time. Originally, I was going to be interviewing Chuck Forsberg at this time, but I had quickly realized at some point during the week that I could never make it to Portland within the morning, and asked him if we could reschedule on my return trip. He agreed, and a huge weight was off my shoulders. This made the whole trip north a lot less stressful.

Even so, it was a very long trip up Interstate 5 (Mapquest says I must have gone 550+ miles on that road alone) but the lack of turn-offs and concern about direction meant I could focus on the countryside. While some people loathe long-haul trips, I like them a lot; so seeing the neat variances in the landscape, none of which are like what I have back east, was a lot of fun. I was able to drive fast, but not too fast; I was aware of the high fines for speeding from my previous California trip. As a result, I didn't get to Portland until very late indeed.

I called Jayne and got directions to her place, but of course I tried to wing it on my own and ended up deep in the middle of Portland, with its nutty one-way streets and the fact I was on the entirely wrong side of the river. Eventually, with a lot of help by Jayne over the phone, I was able to find her apartment.

Jayne lives in a basement apartment in a nice building, sort of what some of us would call 'the edge', with a very tiny living space. She sacrifices luxury to have the capital to work on her technical projects; a hacker in the true sense of the word. She also has the loudest fridge I've ever heard in my life. We actually had to pause the interview whenever it came on.

We talked about her times on BBSes and the politics involved, and a host of other, similar subjects. Jayne knows her stuff. The result was a solid hour of tape discussing BBSes and her relation to them.

While on paper it seems wasteful to have a single interview for a whole day of travel, this whole trip was meant to be a consolidation of what would normally be three trips. So really, I had to account for these long travel times, and Jayne's flexibility in when to have the interview worked out great for me.

As usual, I underestimated what a blow the long trip was, and stumbled out into the night, eventually finding a nice little motel near the next interview. I pulled all the stuff from the car into the motel room, cleaned the car out of long-trip trash, and re-packed all my bags, ready for the next phase of my trip, in Oregon.