Headed to Spokane 7/11

Rehearsal ran late last night, due to a party, and then when I got home I needed a sandwich, so I didn't get to bed early. I didn't get up early either. Thankfully I'd been packing little by little over the past week, so things were fairly ready to go. I asked Ru to pack his suitcase and this is what I found when I went to see if he had done it.

If you look carefully you can see a little suitcase peeping out from under that large pile of clothes. I didn't know whether to laugh or be mad, so I just went to bed. Then I thought about it, went and took this picture, then I laughed. A lot. 

Ruben Says: There was a lot of things that I couldn't fit in my suitcase and I left some of my clothes in a bag just so I would have enough room. However it was a good thing I decided not to cram more clothes in there because one of my cats peed inside of my suitcase making all of the clothes touching it stank. We had a bag of tide pods so we threw a couple into the suitcase and sprayed it with a hose for a while, thankfully it ended up working out. So during the time I was at Padma Ling's I spent a lot of time reading a book describing buddhism and the teachings, and I also played a lot of Donkey Kong Country Returns on my 3ds. I got to see a couple of cool movies in between red tara practice and everything else, adult comedies! I saw Zoolander and Hot Tub Time Machine while I was there. I thought it was very monumental for my mom to let me watch these movies this year lol. I imagined the absurdity for a moment that I watched that at Padma Ling's but then I let it go because I accepted by lack of purity and refinement. 

So we managed to get on the road about 9:45 this morning, with all the camping gear, clothes for days, Buddhist texts and items, books, guitar, electronics... We fit a lot of stuff into a Camry. 

Ru drove from Salem all the way to Spokane. The trip was pretty uneventful. We stopped at Cascade Locks for a snack and frisbee break, then we didn't stop again till Kennewick Washington where we had Thai food and got gas.  Just after Cascade Locks I saw mom's truck going in the other direction, they were coming home from Pendelton. 

Where we had lunch. It was quite good. 

The confusing roads we had to navigate to get to Spokane. Ru was a champ. Love the Waze app. (Thanks Cab for telling me to download it)

The message on my phone this morning. 

We pulled into Spokane at 5:30. Lama Inge was just starting Guru Rinpoche Tsok. It was very auspicious that we arrived when we did, we got to join the practice, and we got dinner! (of perfectly pure offerings). After dinner we settled in to our rooms. Ru gets the couch in the living room, I get the little room just to the north side where I stayed last time I was here, that connects to where Ru is staying. It's quite comfortable. 

My bed at Padma Ling

The view from my window

Ru and the Stupa

Tuckered out from driving

We walked around the yard, did some circumambulations, petted a old crooked cat, and then came in to relax. I wrote this blog post, and Ru spent some time on his phone. 

When we opened Ruben's suitcase to get his toothbrush, we got a very unpleasant surprise. One of the cats had peed in his suitcase. All of Ruben's socks and underwear smell like cat pee, and his new hard shell suitcase may be ruined. What an awful smell! 

Life goes on, and we must get to sleep. Chod practice starts at 9, and we need to have breakfast and be ready.