This morning I woke up at about 7AM, walked over to eat breakfast in the breakfast room at Inn of the Beachcomber, and stayed a few extra hours to continue using the wifi connection in the breakfast room. At 11AM, I walked a few blocks to Gold Beach Books, a large bookstore and cafe to use my laptop for an hour and a half until the bus was scheduled to depart from the nearby Ray’s Supermarket southbound to Brookings, OR.
As I approached the bus stop, there was a 75-80 year old man who was waiting at the bus stop. We stared at each other for a second, I said hi, and the first words out of his mouth were, “how much does that backpack weigh?” Paul is a retired construction cost forecaster, who for many years employed his knowledge of economics/construction to forecast a project’s total construction cost based on labor costs, material costs, economic conditions, labor productivity, etc. He seemed to believe that his job/services was extremely important/valuable (and rightfully so), and seemed frustrated that his profession wasn’t seen as valuable and useful by many real estate investors and contractors. But then again we live in a short-sighted country/society where people would much rather avoid upfront preparation/costs, even if it means a greater likelihood of losing much more money due to a project running behind schedule or over budget.
Paul was originally born in England and has been relocating and traveling between and within countries for the past 50 years. At the bus stop on that Monday afternoon, Paul had all his possessions with him, a rolling suitcase and two carry on bags. As the bus arrived, Paul boarded the bus and the driver enthusiastically greeted him and updated Paul about his daughter’s travels. It was evident that the driver had met Paul sometime in the past, and was meeting him again after a while.
During the drive, Paul suggested that I should have walked on the beach from Brookings to Smith river. My initial reaction is that it would’ve been too inconvenient to repeatedly switch between the highway and beach, whenever the beach would become impassable due to the high tides. However, now that I think about it, I could’ve followed the Oregon Coast Trail, which would have provided me with a reliable walking path down the coast. reduced the preparation time for a coastal walk significantly. All in all, it would probably be a good idea to rest for the next couple of days and hike the Oregon Coast Trail as part of a future adventure.
Other passengers on the bus included two young ladies from London, one of whom is Victoria Browne. For the past couple of months, Victoria has been embarking on a Pacific Coast bicycling trip from Vancouver, Canada to Los Angeles, CA. She has been averaging about 40 miles per day, staying in motels every night after her rides. Today, for the first time on the trip she loaded her bike on a bus and was taking a break from riding for a because the scenery had been the same for hundreds of miles and she became bored with the same old views and scenery.
As the bus arrived in Brooking, I said goodbye to Paul and Victoria and walked across the street to the visitor center to use the restroom and ask for some activity suggestions. The lady at the visitors center was trying to be helpful and marked up a city map to guide me to a beautiful beach in Brookings. The roundabout walk ended up taking 30 minutes and resulted in me to walking through private yards, an unmaintained road lined with car salvage yards, and past a community of high-end oceanfront homes. Eventually, I ended up at Mill Beach, a state park with numerous rock islands/outcrops along the shore. The beach was very beautiful, exhibiting the glistening, dark blue/green colored ocean.
After exploring Brookings for a few hours, I boarded the 4:55pm bus to Smith River, a small town a few miles south of the California/Oregon border. At a bus stop near Brookings, the driver allowed a former inmate and his girlfriend to board the shuttle for free when the former inmate explained that he hadn’t been able to use a prison ID to cash his paycheck, and still hadn’t received his driver’s license. The driver requested that they pay him for the fare next week but I don’t think the driver was optimistic about receiving the money. I admire the bus driver’s generosity and kindness in trusting the couple and offering them the benefit of the doubt. It was a kind thing to do, and obviously made the couple feel significant and cared about. During the trip, the two passengers were very friendly and helpful, offering me tips on places to camp cheaply and free near Smith River.
A few miles before Smith River, the bus stopped at Lucky 7 Casino. Lucky 7 Casino is a Native-American owned casino, which I soon I had visited during my last road trip down the Pacific Coast. The blackjack dealer and I both recognized each other from our previous blackjack experience about a month ago. For the next 4-5 hours, I played a couple hours of blackjack mixed in with a few hours of Bingo.
My first (and likely last) experience playing Bingo
I walked from the blackjack table to the far end of the casino where the multiple-purpose convention room/bingo room was located. The folding tables throughout the room, were occupied by white, female senior citizens who showed up to Bingo night with their bingo daubers and a positive attitude. It was quite adorable. Typical bingo equipment includes a set of many Bingo Daubers, often in multiple colors. Bingo Daubers are colored spongy ink markers which imprint paper with a circle blotch of ink about an inch in diameter. Many of the bingo enthusiasts carried specially made bags with specialized compartments for each of their daubers.
I walked to the front of the room and bought a booklet of about 8 bingo pages for $22. Each of the bingo pages is for one game, and each of the bingo pages has about 9 different boards for each game. An employee of the casino randomly pulls ping pong balls out of a container and reads the numbers aloud. The players/gamblers then review their game cards and use the dauber to fill in any occurrences of the winning numbers on their game card. Each game has its own predetermined winning pattern. When a player fills in a pattern on a bingo card exactly like the winning pattern, they yell out “bingo,” win $250 cash, and the game is over.
There a few lessons/thoughts to appreciate from Bingo:
- First off, Bingo is purely a game of luck. There is no thinking/strategy involved in this game at all. The players have no control, no role in making decisions, and are simply acting as robots filling in numbers. The role of the players in the game, is similar to a game of blackjack in which both the dealer and the player are required to play by a pre-specified set of rules. Except, there’s no social aspect to this game at all. Each player is simply hard at work coloring in numbers. Witnessing how excited/entranced people become while playing bingo shows a lot about people’s psychology. By simply using a dauber to color in boxes, people can entertain themselves and feel productive/busy even if they’re actually doing nothing. People are simply buying lottery tickets and spending hours of time manually scratching their cards. Yet this manual scanning and scratching, probably makes players/gamblers feel like they’re actually doing something, and are entertained for hours. If people can be entertained and kept busy by scratching lottery tickets for hours at a time, how much more so can they feel “busy” and “productive” while doing unnecessary “busy” work for their employers.
- Old people are adorable. The 70-90 year old ladies were enthusiastically scanning and marking their papers. It was cute to see them busy and enjoying the game. There were also a couple of mother/son pairs which seemed to be spending quality time together
- Superstition/fallacies are in full force. I’m sure some people (whether consciously or subconsciously) are convinced that God/luck/karma/skill play a role in this game. Others undoubtedly have their lucky and unlucky daubers. Poor “God” probably has to listen to many prayers from Bingo players
Throughout the night, both the older lady on my right side and the middle-aged Native-American man on my left side won a $250 prize puzzle. The Native-American was especially helpful throughout the night, offering me tips to efficiently fill in the boxes.
After eating at the salad bar of the restaurant, at about 12AM I walked to Clifford Kamph Memorial Campground, about a mile down highway 101 from Lucky 7 Casino. The oceanfront campground was beautiful, especially with the full moon lighting up the meadow.
