My first night in Forest Grove turned out to be especially pleasant. I'd booked a room online at a local independent motel---the reviews were decent for an independent, but I sometimes forget about the real character of Oregon outside Portland, even in a college town like Forest Grove. A local independent motel in such a place is one that caters to working people (of which I am one) and not to tourists. There are few amenities. If the place is clean and safe and cheap (which it was), then you can say you have gotten your money's worth.
All this is somewhat of an aside because I had an especially pleasant evening there. While I was checking in, I struck up a conversation with the weekend manager, a very nice Thai woman, and we found ourselves become quickly friends. She was divorced many years from a Marine, whom she'd met in South Carolina, and by whom she'd gotten citizenship. We found out we had a lot of similar interests, and we shared some of our life stories, drinking beer on the plastic chairs in front of the laundry room until late in the evening.
She even ordered dinner for me, from the local Thai restaurant, just for fun at my prompting. It turns out they didn't deliver, so I had to go into downtown Forest Grove and pick it up myself. The guy at the counter was mightily confused because the order was under a Thai name.
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