May 3, 2021: But You Have to Have an Appointment -

In two particularly creative events, The Dalles and Eugene staged mass vaccination shindigs for their towns. In The Dalles, they chose a Friday Night Lights theme at a local high school; in Eugene, it was Drag Queens & Vaccines. We were even IN Eugene while this event was going on, but we didn’t go, because we are fully vaccinated and fully marinated already. We are more than happy to be out and about, and no longer waiting for the full effect, but we ARE missing those parties.

In a small, related story, a couple I know went to get their shots at a grocery store pharmacy, and decided to use their privilege to test the system. The store protocol asked for several things that Oregon law says a vaccination site can’t ask for: ID, insurance, and social security number. Our friends politely explained that the store protocol was wrong, and the store employees said they had no code in their system for people without those things. Our friends gently waited them out, and they Googled the law, then made a new code, and said they’d spread the word up the chain. They also hedged a bit when asked if they had turned away people who didn’t bring these documents – maybe they hadn’t turned them away so much as those folks had  just left…. They said it hadn’t been many people. Still, sigh, and I think my gently insistent friends deserve a round of applause.

If all of this is making you nostalgic for your vaccine hunting days, if you were one of those who didn’t get to enjoy that Hunger Games rush of attempting to schedule a vaccination appointment, or if you did, but with that excitement behind you, your life is feeling stale and flat, take heart: you can recapture that “what the hell?” feeling by trying to renew your driver’s license!

There are “currently no” appointments available in Portland or any of the surrounding suburbs, nor in Salem, Eugene, Corvallis, Hood River, McMinnville, Ashland or Astoria. Actually, there are no appointments anywhere within three hours of Portland. (There WAS one appointment closer than three hours away, in Hermiston, which is only two 2 hours and 55 minutes up I-84. That’s if you don’t stop for gas or a rest area, or road work. So okay, it will take more than three hours.) But that plum is gone,  because I nabbed it. Sorry, not sorry.

Here are some alternatives, if you would like to explore our great state:

·        Klamath Falls, June 1

·        Baker City, June 10

·        Coquille, June 14

·        Coos Bay, June 16

·        Enterprise, June 17

·        La Grande, June 21

·        John Day, June 22

·        Brookings June 23

·        Burns, June 23

·        Cave Junction, June 23

·        Canyon City, June 24

·        Grants Pass, June 28

Testimonial: I’ve been to these places, and the road to each one is pretty wonderful. Maybe you could use a road trip, even though a road trip (and a day or two off of work) to your renew your license wasn’t exactly what you had in mind.

For reference, today is May 3rd, so the next available appointment is nearly a month away. I got the renewal notice a few weeks ago, and I left it in The Pile,  because my birthday was six weeks away. Silly me. I’ll be driving with an expired license for a couple of weeks (and for three hours on the way to my renewal appointment).I'm guessing there are a lot of expired licenses out there.