By the time you read this, Marsha and I will have lived in Vancouver, Washington, USA, for a year. It no longer feels like we're on an extended camping trip -- we don't just live here, we're practically locals. Let me reflect on some of the things we've learned in the past year.

1) The name of the state to our immediate south is not pronounced AWE-regon. I'm not sure what the correct pronunciation is, but that's not it.

2) The United States was discovered by Lewis and Clark. All the parts of it worth mentioning, anyway.

3) Highway numbers here are not preceded by "the." If you tell someone to "take the 84 to the 205," they know you're from California.

4) State highway signs in Washington were not actually gnawed out by hired beavers. That thing with the number in it is supposed to be George Washington's profile. I guess Lewis's (or Clark's) profile wouldn't be wide enough for triple digits, at that.

5) You can turn left on a red light, but U-turns are illegal almost everywhere. This is obviously wrong. I suspect they only do it backwards to be different from California -- one of very few things that's not better here.

6) Vancouver (WA) is where the lazy people who got here too late to get into Portland (OR) live. Ask any Portlander.

7) Vancouver (WA) was here long before Portland (OR) (this happens to be true) and it's illegal to pump your own gas in Oregon because Oregonians are too stupid to figure out what hole the nozzle goes into without special training. Ask any Vancouverite (the jury's still out on this one).

Vancouver and Portland do indeed represent two different cultures separated by a common river. On the Vancouver side, the river flows to the right; on the Portland side, it flows to the left. Oregon has no sales tax; Washington has no income tax. If you're a newly arrived Californian who has trouble telling the two cultures apart on sight, you can always figure out which tax to pay by driving to the river and seeing which way it's running. This is pretty easy stuff, now that we're old hands at it.

There are quite a number of myths about Cascadia held by most Californians (and promulgated, with great zeal, by most Cascadians). One of these is that it rains all the time. In fact, that's not true -- several months out of the year, it's too hot to work on cars, not too wet. You can predict the weather by watching lawns. Grass has two growing seasons: 1) most of June and 3) the first week of October. The rest of the year, the grass seasons are 2) burnt to a crisp, or 4) mud. (I thought I'd better number them in chronological order.)

It does take newcomers a while to learn to interpret forecasts on the Weather Channel. "Chance of light drizzle by evening" means "It's raining now and will be all day," whereas "Heavy rain at times with localized flooding" means "It's raining slightly harder now and will be all day." Except in burnt to a crisp season, of course. The main thing to remember is, "Don't leave the house without a hat (unless the grass is growing)."

And you can just about watch it grow. Vegetation is incredibly prolific here -- once there's no room left on the ground, plants just start growing on each other, or on whatever else is handy. It's another myth that, what with the rain and all, cars rust quickly in Cascadia. In fact, they don't -- they lichen. I'm not kidding. They have special car waxes here that repel acorns before they can take root.

The mountains grew really tall here, too. Unlike most places, where the tallest peaks are part of a range of not-quite-tallest peaks, the ones here stand solitary, towering spectacularly above the foothills. That's because they're volcanos. From Vancouver, we can see two big ones: Mount Hood in Oregon and Mount Saint Helens in Washington. I'm sure you all remember a few years ago when Mount Saint Helens erupted and pumped lava, gas and ash all over the place. Mount Hood would have done the same, except that it's in Oregon and can't pump its own gas.

It's certainly not true that Cascadians are hostile to Californians -- they just don't hire them. We've had a tough time with that. Even when we're careful and give directions without using "the," it's awfully hard to fake moss growing on your eyelids -- one blink and they know you're not from here. I used to think it was all that coffee making the locals go around staring like that; now I know it's just the moss acting like Velcro.

Regardless of where we came from, I finally did get a job anyway. I'm now an employee of the State of Washington and I'm doing what I came here to do: web site and print design. I like it. I guess this means I've made it to apprentice Cascadian, at least, and I'm working on the journeyman rating.

Maybe someday they'll let me try my hand at some zealous myth promulgating. If that ever happens, I'll be sure to let you know.