Loose on the Palouse with a WSU ball cap

As my wife heads to Portland, Ore., my thoughts turn to:

1. What am I going to eat for the next five days?
2. Hey, I bought a ballcap near Portland a couple of years ago!

Not just any ballcap. This was a genuine Washington State Cougars cap, an early 21st Century Nike model with stretch-to-fit elastic in the back.

I bought this cap when I joined my wife at a conference she was running at a resort — The Resort, in fact — on Mount Hood. Having lived in Seattle for four years, I should have known to pack a hat for the rainy Pacific Northwest. But no.

Which made for a great opportunity to buy a new cap at the shiny new Fred Meyer department store we passed on our way up the mountain. Freddy’s had lots of choices if you were an Oregon or Oregon State fan. There were several Washington Huskies caps, too, but just one lone Wazzu lid.

In my cap calculus, you score extra points for buying against the grain. So donning a Cougar cap smack in the middle of Duck and Beaver territory made perfect sense. Washington State probably has the smallest fan base of all the Pac-10 schools, and that’s all the more reason to root for the Cougs.

The overwhelming number of U-Dub grads and students in Seattle was often hard to bear during my Seattle years, and I enjoyed my annual visits to the WSU campus immensely. Driving through the hills of the Palouse was always a thrill, so backing the Cougs seems right.

Although this cap is sport-agnostic, I bought it in September and thus consider it a football cap. This post makes three consecutive red caps, and I promise to insert some contrast in the next post.

In the meantime, what the heck am I going to make for dinner?