Filed under: newcomer to seattle
The journey from Phoenix to Seattle now complete, the housing situation now settled, some of the sights now seen, I awake one morning and realize I start a new job the next day. Dang, you mean this doesn’t last forever? I’ve been enjoying it so – clearing out my head, getting out of the box for a little stretch. But it was after all a job that brought me here, so it must be done. And from what I hear it’s no slacker job either. Cutting edge web programming, a few notches above anything I’ve done before. Others had assured me I can handle it, it’s just going to make my head hurt for a while. It’s nice that other people have confidence in me, because I don’t always have it myself. I’ve always believed I’m smart enough to rise to any mental challenge, but I haven’t always sought them out. My ex-wife once accused of being mentally lazy, and I didn’t disagree. But if it came down to it, is there anything I couldn’t wrap my head around? I don’t know, I’ve known people much smarter, and a lot of them didn’t go to college. But I digress; the main challenge at this new job is an academic one, and that was always my strength.
So the first day was spent surfing the company’s website from a user standpoint. I did not have to sit down and prove my worth just yet. The rest of the week was more training, eventually with some glimpses at the code itself. The guy training me, Tim, is 25 years old with 10 years of web programming under his belt – about the same as me – but to a much deeper level and at a lot younger age. Like many web developers, he did not go to college. Until recently universities did not teach this stuff – you had to learn on the job like I did, or by trial and error on your home computer. There is a whole generation of young programmers creating the internet as we go. Marketing execs may tell us what to use the internet for, but the nerds make it happen. And then they invent the new stuff before the bosses even know it’s possible. They are plumbers, carpenters, bricklayers, electricians and architects all rolled into one. It continues to amaze me. Tim knows cold fusion, java, javascript, sql, .net, c++, EXT, as well as the usual supporting languages. I only know a fraction. I was intimidated by his technical superiority. But he was not trying to make me feel that way, he was very supportive and knows that this company is working at the highest levels and anyone coming aboard will have a lot of learning to do. On top of that, he has been the only programmer on his particular project for a while, so he’s desperate for someone to share the workload with. It’s very much in his interest that I succeed.
Life:
I have today, Friday, off to travel to Sacramento for my cousin’s wedding. I’m on the plane right now. We just passed right over the pit mouth of Mt. St. Helens. It’s fascinating from the air, frightening from the ground. I drove by it a week earlier, on the way to Portland. It’s a jagged smashed out shell of a volcano, like a sandcastle kicked by God. And I remember when it happened. Seeing it in person reminded me of a dream I had a couple years ago: the visual image of looking up at the night sky and seeing the moon with half of it missing, terribly torn out by a huge meteor or some engineered explosion. To see something so massive, so basic, that has been there your whole life, for everyone’s whole life, to change so suddenly and by such violence.
Anyway. The long summer days have allowed for continued exploration of this new city after work. When work ends at 5 the sun is still high in the west, about what 2 oclock looks like in Phoenix. I could fit in a full round of golf, and just might once I get back to town with my clubs. My mom brought them up from Phoenix on the plane to this wedding, along with 2 suitcases full of clothes. I somehow neglected to bring anything with long sleeves, and only a few collared shirts for work. People in Seattle don’t dress anything like Phoenix. They dress up more for work and for going out, and for casual attire most people in my neighborhood dress punk, goth, gay, or if nothing else a cultivated trashy look – anything but lazy and scrubbish like me. Girls do not wear makeup here, it’s weird. I’ve always liked the natural look, but here it makes for a lot of plain looking girls because the other thing people are not is as good looking as in Phoenix. Homely faces, soft unexercised bodies, pale vampire skin. I’m the tannest person wherever I go. Oh but the tattoos you’ll see. Every man and woman is covered, sleeved, and for no reason. Nobody has one tattoo, they have one hundred tattoos. I don’t have any. You see so many spider webs on elbows you’d think we were IN prison.
The downside of downtown:
After about 3 weeks here, some of the novelty of downtown living is wearing thin. Foremost, the constant strain of finding parking. In my neighborhood there is nowhere you can park all the time for free. Most street parking is free from 6pm – 8am every day, and all parking is free Sundays. But in some areas you always need a permit, like in front of my building. It’s taken a lot of circling the block and running downstairs to pump the meter at 2 hour intervals, but I’m getting the hang of it and have not gotten a single ticket yet. There’s actually a spot next to the building where no one seems to park because it looks like a bus stop. So that’s been my spot every night this week. To acquire an actual guaranteed spot in a parking lot a block or two away would cost $200 a month. I look at that as raising my rent $200, and that would make the rent unacceptably high. Fortunately I don’t have to worry about it cause there aren’t actually any of those spots available right now. So we live day to day.
Another growing annoyance is the traffic noise of I-5 about 100 yards out my window. At first I kept the windows open all the time and enjoyed the wall of sound. It was charming. Then it started waking me up at 430 in the morning, so I closed most of the windows. When they’re open I can’t talk on the phone.
Then there’s actually being in traffic. The freeways can get slow to and from work, but it’s not too bad because I don’t have very far to travel – 9 miles. But earlier this week I got a terrible taste of what they must mean by gridlock. I drove “Fred” home after work – he lives near me and got rid of his car over a year ago. I dropped him off right around 5pm the other day and started back to my place. It’s only a mile and a half, but it took more than half an hour. I literally could have walked there and back. I watched pedestrians pass me and keep going, eventually disappearing over the hill. It was so bad, it took 2 or 3 cycles of the traffic light to get through an intersection. Because you would get to the front of the line, and when it turned green you couldn’t go because the car at the back of the line in front of you was stuck with its back end still in the intersection. And then a couple cars would turn from the cross-street into the spot you wanted to take. So it became an endless, terrible, futile game. I turned onto some side street and drove a mile out of my way to get to my neighborhood from the back side. When I finally got home I just sat down with a beer and did nothing for a while to let it dissipate.
You can’t find a proper grocery store downtown. The closest place is a quik-e-mart where everything is overpriced and underquality. The best beer there is Redhook – and that ain’t very good. It’s passable, like Sierra Nevada, but nothing you want to live on. I did locate a specialty beer store in the neighborhood and learned that there are several other breweries in Seattle, and most of them do make an extra hoppy IPA, but they charge crazy for it. Some are $18 for a single 22 oz bomber. Cmon, it’s not GAS for christ’s sake. Finally though, I found a pretty decent sized grocery store a little further up the street, and they carry Butte Creek IPA from Chico, which is probably my favorite outside of Sonora’s. Yeah, I’ll say this now – I was really spoiled living a mile from the best brewery in the world. In all my travels of the west coast or anywhere else, I’ve never found a beer I like as well as theirs.
The final gripe is on behalf of Petunia. She’s used to a doggie door and a yard, and now she has to hold her bladder for 9 hours while I’m at work. And she’s cooped up all the time. I take her out of the apartment 3 times a day but sometimes it’s just for 10 minutes. But then there’s…
The upside of downtown:
Greenlake Park, which I wrote about previously, is heaven for Petunia. A long trail to walk, lots and lots of dogs and people to check out, and most of all a big lake to play fetch in. If I chuck the ball as far as I can it takes her at least a minute to retrieve it. And that water is cold, even in July. She gets a hell of a workout, and always wants more.
The closeness to everything. Pike Street fish market, a major icon of this city, is just a stroll away. You could flick a marble down the street and it would roll all the way there. Aside from watching the men throw fish around, you can eat in restaurants or better yet buy your groceries from the fresh-daily selection of every fruit and vegetable you can think of, and every flower too.
No air pollution. I have not seen that brown layer of smog since passing the Bay Area. The air here is clean – clean as can be. I don’t know why, there’s not a lot of wind, but the air must keep circulating. My skin has cleared up completely, after living with some acne for years in Phoenix. And they said it was stress. Yeah, the stress of living in a shitty environment.
Water everywhere. Puget Sound to the west, lakes to the north, south and east. I cross beautiful huge bodies of water dotted with boats every day. Whitecaps when it’s windy. When it’s clear you can see the Olympic mountains to the west and 14,000-foot Mt. Rainier to the southeast, covered in snow in July.
Out of town:
This weekend I’m in Sacramento. Next weekend I plan to camp in the mountains. Last weekend I camped along the Columbia River. The picture below isn’t a lake or an ocean, it’s a river. I’ve never seen one so wide, ever.
Imagine how much rain and snow the northwest gets. Well, it all drains into the Columbia, making it the largest American river after the Mississippi. In places it is over a mile wide, or several. It divides the land. There is no sense that this is a moving water that has carved a path through the land. This is simply a water, and land north of it and a land south of it. Three separate things. For most of it’s length there is no possibility of spanning it with bridges. The only bridges I know of are at Portland, and at Astoria about a hundred miles downstream at the mouth. Where the Columbia empties into the Pacific there is such turbulence and constantly moving sandbars that literally hundreds of ships of all sizes have gone down there in the past 150 years. They call it the Graveyard of the Pacific.
I drove highway 4 on the Washington side of the river, twin to another highway on the Oregon side. I got out late enough from Portland to know I wouldn’t have the time – much less the tent – to do traditional camping. So I drove until it was late and dark enough, and pulled into a wildlife preserve. The sign said it was protecting the Cascades Whitetail Deer. I wasn’t sure if car camping was allowed, but at that hour I wouldn’t be caught until morning, so I drove slowly down the road and pulled into a pullout that seemed designed for the purpose. My car is not large but it is a wagon and believe it or not if the rear seats are down I can fully stretch out in the back. Petunia slept in the front seat, and it was downright cozy. In the morning this was the view:
That’s now my desktop photo. I can’t claim any skill, it was just that beautiful a sight. We drove off quickly before any rangers came along, and continued toward the coast. The next picture is in a little town nearby in Wahkiakum county. Everything has native american names here. Like most places in America I guess.
Eventually you reach the coast at Long Beach. It’s a peninsula that stretches north from where the Columbia reaches the sea, and it claims to be the world’s longest beach. By the map it’s about 25 miles, so I guess I believe it. You can drive on it, so I did. With the fog that morning you could only see 150 yards in any direction. I could hear sea gulls crying before I could see them fly into view. It was eerie but beautiful. It’s the most pristine beach I’ve ever seen. There wasn’t a single cigarette butt, candy wrapper, or even a footprint except what Petunia and I made.
The only litter is the empty shells of dungeness crabs, red and brittle from the sun and wind. The wind blows hard from north to south, and makes tiny dunes in the sand that run perpendicular to the sea, which looks strange. This would be a wonderful beach to camp on, but by morning you could be driven insane from the wind. It was blowing constantly about 20-30 mph. Relentless, making everything difficult, even talking. But travel 200 yards inland and the sky is clear, fogless and calm. A strange and intriguing place I will go back to.
From Long Beach the road turns north and you pass through Wilapa Bay, oyster capital of the world. There are a lot of capitals of the world up here it seems. I figured I ought to try these oysters, so I bought a plastic pint tub of raw ones to take home and cook. They were called medium size, but each was as big as my tongue, and far slimier. Earlier in the day I had stopped to fish in a creek and landed what I guess is the largest trout I’ve ever caught. Now I had seafood for my first home-cooked dinner back in Seattle.
Further up the road is Aberdeen – obscurely famous as the place that produced Kurt Cobain. I loved Nirvana in their time. I have all their stuff. They were extremely influential on me musically, but Kurt was a real downer and a jerk. What exactly was he complaining about? He was a punching bag in a little redneck town and somehow became as big a rockstar as there is, and he had to kill himself? Don’t blame it on Aberdeen though, it looked like heaven to me – woods everywhere, water to fish, close to the coast. Try living in Phoenix.
On a more personal level, Aberdeen is also famous for being next door to the reservation where my very good friend Catie grew up. In fact she and Alex and their son Flynn were just there a few days before me, but our schedules didn’t jibe. I really really hope she can show me around there some day. She’s described it as the most beautiful place on earth, and I don’t doubt it. Aberdeen is a logging town, and the reservation is somewhat lawless, she says. A place of immense natural beauty but where children are afraid of the woods at night and sometimes bad things happen in them. But that’s mostly confined to the edges of the forest near Aberdeen. The reservation contains a couple wild rivers full of salmon, and several miles of unspoiled beach. It’s odd after hearing so much about it back in Phoenix where such a place can’t properly be imagined, so that it seems like a fictional place existing only in her memory, that I should come so near the actual place and still not get to see it.
From Aberdeen it’s a quick drive to Olympia, the state capital. That’s on I-5 and an hour or so later you’re into Tacoma, then eventually Seattle. Like most everywhere, the distances are shorter than in Arizona.
Filed under: newcomer to seattle
The fireworks turned out a lot more fun than anticipated. My friend here, who I’m going to call “Fred” for now, and I spent the whole day moving more of his stuff from what is apparently now my apartment into his new apartment. I have some mixed feelings about all of this. He is leaving this nice highrise for a tiny joke of a place nearby that isn’t all that much cheaper. He said the landlord told him it was 400 square feet, and when he took me there the first time I took a look around and said ‘You mean 400 cubic feet?’ It’s the size of 2 parking spaces. I have questioned his reasoning at least a dozen times now and insisted he reconsider – enough times that I feel any more would be insulting, and still he refuses to change his mind. It makes no sense to me. He insists it is what he wants. Even though I have repeated that I may only be in his old place for one month. If that happens, he would then have two apartments, two rents to pay, and one very big headache.
It also happens that he shouldn’t be doing any moving at all because 2 weeks ago he had an accident playing soccer and *severed* his ACL (a knee ligament, the same as Tiger Woods famously had surgery on last month, but Tiger’s was only torn, not completely severed). So heavy lifting is totally unrecommended pending his surgery in a couple weeks. Well, we were moving a couch up some slick marble steps and suddenly he lets out a cry and crumples to the ground. I had been fearing such a moment all day. I watch helplessly as he crawls up the steps and curls up on the couch holding his breath in silent agony for about 2 minutes. I couldn’t say anything, I knew he was in a kind of pain I’ve never felt, and here I was accomplice to it even after objecting to the whole idea of moving. When he could speak again he said he could feel he had re-torn everything. And a few minutes later he regained his composure and we were working again like nothing happened. It may be stupid, but damn is he tough.
Anyway, we called it quits around 8, in time to get ready and meet his girlfriend across town to watch the fireworks at the Gas Light or whatever it’s called. A marina. There’s a lot of water around here, I haven’t gotten it all straight yet. We drove as close as we could find parking and then walked about 4 miles further until we ran into her and her cousin on the street. Four miles with a re-torn ACL. Petunia was with us, dragging me along the sidewalk on a mission of her own. We found a spot amongst a large crowd standing where they could between road and the waterfront. The display commenced with a slow motion flyby by a Chinook military helicopter dangling an American flag in its spotlight. That helicopter is huge, it carries tanks into battle. Twin propellers thumping as it crawls through the air. Then proceeded an hour-long fireworks display that literally filled the entire sky. It might be the most impressive I’ve ever seen, and this includes the many years as a child that I got to witness the Washington DC fireworks from the Potomac River with my cousins I used to spend summers with there. But they say pyrotechnics advance every year, and I believe it. There were cube-shaped explosions, star-shaped explosions, ones that looked like Saturn… except to me it looked like the Planet Hollywood logo.
Petunia I have to say handled herself well, but was definitely shaken. Dogs tend to get spooked by fireworks. She kept looking up at me for some kind of explanation, panting, wide-eyed, and I could only pet her head and tell her she was ok. She tried to hide behind my legs, then pushed her way into a rose bush oblivious to the thorns, and finally only calmed down while hiding amongst all our legs. Several years ago I had her and Tibbs at a beach for the 4th in the little town of Cayucos about an hour north of Santa Barbara. Kids were lighting sparklers and bottle rockets on the beach 10 feet from us. Both dogs were so scared they tried to burrow under me in the sand. It was one of only two times I knew them to show fear. The other was a parade with big Clydesdales that went by our old house downtown. Everyone was standing in the backyard watching but the dogs hid under a couch, afraid the giant animals were going to crash the fence and come for them.
Some mornings here I am awakened by the sun, sometimes by the traffic on the freeway below. The next morning I woke to the cries of seagulls. I planned to drive 20 miles south to a place called Redondo Beach and meet Brad from Portland and his girlfriend Pee Wee and their other Phoenix transplant friend Drew. The two men came to scuba dive and I had brought my fishing gear hoping to get a first chance at these productive northwest waters. Unfortunately I got hung up on not having a fishing license and not wanting to splurge for an out of state license just yet. They’re expensive and I couldn’t find a place that sold them nearby. So instead, Pee Wee and I wound up drinking beer in the parking lot across the street from the water all afternoon. Yes: we tailgated a scuba dive. It was great, we leaned on the truck through rain and sun, drinking beer after beer until the boys emerged from the water black and shivering. This picture is posed, but they really were cold.
Pee Wee coined a new phrase which I’m going to use from now on. See, she only drinks Bud Light, which was coincidental because I had inherited a case from Fred, who had it left over from his Super Bowl party. Yes, he had a case of beer that was untouched since February. I don’t understand it either. I had brought some of them in a cooler on the off chance they would come in handy fishing or perhaps I’d have to shove one up a chicken’s butt and grill it. You never know where the day will take you. None of that happened, but PeeWee was happy to take them off my hands. She doesn’t like the fancy beer that Brad and I like and that Drew homebrews. She explained that she had tried some one time, and it tasted like when she had accidentally gotten lipstick on her teeth and licked it. So anything fancier than Bud Light is now called Lipstick Beer.
I shared the lipstick beer I had brought in addition to the Bud Light with Brad after the dive, and another guy Scott who was in their party, then we all went to the nearest dive bar and had a couple pitchers and got to know the locals a little. This was in Federal Way, part of the southern Seattle/Tacoma metro area but you couldn’t tell by the people. In fact they denied being part of Seattle. Some of them had wicked bad teeth, and one female bartender, no older than 40, was actually missing two in the front. I’m no longer passing judgments, but I really don’t get it. It’s pretty normal to have crooked teeth, it’s another thing to have one or two rotting teeth, and then it’s another thing altogether to be missing front teeth. Isn’t it? But the people were down to earth and fun loving. Reminded me of Glendale. No offense anyone.
The next morning I woke up hung over back in the apartment, pulling the pillow over my eyes and ears until 11. Being Sunday and the last day before I start this new job, I wanted to do some touristy things while I still could, and the first order was to get some good seafood which I hadn’t really done yet. I walked 8 blocks down the hill to the Pike Street Fish Market and looked around. It was a mad house. Streets closed off, art displays everywhere. There was one stand with a placard that said ‘proDUCTive’, and I quickly realized it was the same stuff that January had read about and made a year ago – wallets, purses, keychains, etc made from different colored duct tape. I snapped a picture with my phone to send her and made the mistake of talking to the girl tending the display, and she insisted I delete the picture. I said ‘are you serious?’ She said yeah the artist is very particular that no one take pictures of it. I said ‘Artist?’ This is fucking duct tape. This is not art. It’s craft. I’m sorry but if an artist is afraid of people stealing their idea, that means they have no talent. Talent means only you can do it; even if someone else watches you, they cannot do it because they lack your skill, creativity and originality. I’ve sometimes been a musician and I don’t hide it or ask people not to record it. It’s a compliment if they want to. I’ll perform for anyone who cares to see and hear. I’m not afraid someone will see how I do it and go do it better and thereby take food off my table. If I’m any good, then you can’t. The day before, walking down Pike Street again I saw a crowd of 50 people standing around a black man on a corner with spray paint doing something with what I think was a surfboard and some tin cans. He was so in the moment that he didn’t even seem to see the crowd which was so close any of them could have touched him. That’s an artist. He wasn’t afraid of anyone stealing his idea because no one could have done what he did even after watching him do it. This duct tape artist hack doesn’t even show up to sell his or her own crap. Give me a fucking break.
A restaurant had crab benedict and bloody mary, which totally cured the hangover. I’ve been wanting crab since I got here. It was ok as benedict, there was no hollandaise sauce but that’s ok cuz it’s not in the diet. Then I went to a shop that sold fresh whole fish and got a big juicy chunk of smoked salmon for snacking on, and a whole boiled dungeness crab to go, for dinner. Two and a half pounds that sucker was. This is what she looked like before…
And this is after I got through with her, using only my bare hands. Not so fuckin tough now, huh crab?
Not many of you know this, but as alluded to before I spent every summer from age 9 to 19 with my cousins in northern Virginia, and went to the University of Virginia for 2 years before coming home to ASU. Virginia shares Chesapeake Bay with Maryland and Delaware, and that region is home to the famous Maryland Blue Crab. It’s smaller than a Dungeness crab, and perhaps more tasty. We used to go catch them by hand in little swampy places with names like Wachapreague and Chincoteague, and then buy a couple bushels from the docks, and take them home to put on a crab feast for the whole neighborhood. The family contest was to see how long you could sit at the picnic table and eat these suckers. It would go all day. Dismantling crabs is so time and labor intensive that you could actually sit there and work through two meals. We’d start at lunch and work until dark, cracking the shells and legs apart without aid of mallet nor fork, pulling the meat out with out teeth or dipping them in pure vinegar. It was great, and now that I see the potential up here, I’m going to resurrect the tradition. Forget ribs and jerk chicken for now, crab is the new frontier.
After the fish market I took Petunia to Greenlake Park about 5 miles uptown. It’s a small lake with a trail that runs about 3 miles around it, and on this sunny day I would guess at least a thousand people were there jogging, biking, walking dogs, playing frisbee, fishing, paddle-boating, swimming, diving, tanning, making out in the grass, all the things you do in public parks. The mission was to give Petunia a solid afternoon of fetching tennis balls in the water after the long car ride and being cooped up in the apartment. Let her know this is her new home and it’s full of grass and water. Swimming and fetching are her favorite things in the whole world. I would throw the ball as far as I could and she would swim out, further than she’s ever swam before, and come back all out of breath, then shake off and be ready to go again.
And then came Monday and the first day of work on the new job. The first vision today was a perfectly clear blue sky out the window from bed, just like in Phoenix but without the heat. It’s the clearest day here yet. On the way across the bridge to work I got my first glimpse of Mt. Rainier huge in the southeast and not even as far as the horizon. It’s covered in snow, from top to bottom, just like it’s winter. Un-fucking-real. This is still July right? There aren’t even trees on it, just snow.
Work was fine, and I may have found the answer to my dilemma. It turns out most of the people in this company work remotely from all over the state. In fact, if you live more than a reasonable commute from the nearest office, they let you telecommute 100% of the time. So if I play my cards right I can do this 6 month contract in Seattle (telecommuting Mondays & Fridays), get hired on permanent and then move down to Vancouver, WA, across the river from Portland, thereby living in the Portland area but making Seattle wages. Come to think of it, that would be the fucking dream come true. We’ll see how it goes. The main thing in my control is to do such a good job that they can’t say no. They’re desperate for people who do this work.
So you want to know how to tell if someone is gay? It’s not by their dress or their voice or how they act. No, you can tell someone is gay by the fact that they live in my neighborhood. Every man and woman here is gay. This is called First Hill, and two blocks uphill is Capitol Hill, and that’s the famous gay part of Seattle. I didn’t realize this until yesterday. Two blocks here is about the distance I can throw a baseball. With a good tailwind, you could spit a block if it’s downhill. And it’s all either uphill or downhill. I have my bike sitting in the living room ready to go but in no danger of being taken out just yet. I’m scared to. It’s like climbing Squaw Peak just going to get coffee in the morning. After work today I went to a pet store up the block – majorly butch lady owner. I went across the street to the urban furniture store – tan blond gay guy smiling extra big at me from the register. I went back toward home and stopped at what I was pleased to learn was one of just 3 McMenamin’s brewpubs in town. They’re based in Portland and provide the main supply of lipstick beer there. The bartenders: gay. The patrons: gay. Finally a good looking latin girl came in to pin up a poster for some performance art show this weekend. She sat down and had a beer and eventually we started talking. Turns out she’s from El Paso but has lived here for 7 years. I told her I’ve lived in Phoenix until 5 days ago. She tells me all about the winters and the social scene here and I’m scared. She said in winter it gets dark at 3:30pm – WHAT THE FUCK!?!? And the people get real passive aggressive and downtown it quickly becomes a small world. And then she says ‘Are you by any chance gay?’ Now, isn’t that just what you like to hear from a nice looking person of the opposite sex? I say ‘No, I’m not’ and she says ‘Well I’m queer and….’ yadda yadda that’s where I tuned out. Just kidding but damn damn damn, why did I move out of the gay part of Phoenix and smack dab into the gay part of Seattle?
Filed under: one way road trip
By now the priority is just to get there. I’ve been driving forever it seems, and Petunia is visibly road weary. She hardly eats, maybe because she doesn’t know when she’ll get to shit again. It’s ok girl, we’re almost there I keep telling her. She just pants and gives me looks and won’t leave my side outside the car, and doesn’t really want to leave the car when we stop. I think she thinks she’s going to get left behind somewhere. I wonder if she thinks we left Tibbs behind. But she saw him and smelled him and watched me put him in the ground. And then had two weeks to get used to him being gone – going on walks without him, not seeing him bark when people come to the door. She’s started to pick up that duty in her small voiced way.
I woke up in the motel in Eugene, got ready quick, grabbed an espresso and – bad Maxwell – biscuits and gravy at the only place between the motel and the freeway. I couldn’t help it, it was a donut shop that also served coffee and these biscuits and gravy. At least this option had protein and carbs and no sugar. Most of you already know, but my obsessing about food is for specific health reasons, not vanity. I recently learned I have high cholesterol from years of eating everything I want, figuring since I don’t gain weight it must be ok. Now I’m just trying not to die of a heart attack, nothing more.
Once on the road it was only an hour-fifteen to Portland. I’ve felt no animosity toward other drivers since getting past the bay area. For one, less traffic. For two, the terrain has been more demanding and so people pay better attention. More two-lane highways instead of big interstates. In Oregon though, the speed limit is unusually low, like 50 or 60 on interstates. I assumed that was some sort of misprint and did my usual 75 or 80 as traffic allowed. I don’t think I could tell you what kind of car the Oregon highway patrol drives, if they even exist – I didn’t see a single cop in the state.
Brad guided me to his apartment by phone as I reached the Portland outskirts. He was working from home that day. We had a late morning beer and caught up a bit, then drove in to his office to introduce me to everyone. It’s a stylish brick building downtown, modernly appointed inside. We brought Petunia because – and please feel how significant this is – it’s cool to bring your dog to work there. So an hour later the three of us were sitting in one of the exec’s office talking about when they could bring me onboard. How cool is that? I was as scrubby as could be in plaid bermuda shorts and a tshirt, with my freaking dog in tow. I can say with certainty that’s a first in my professional experience. Portland just may be the coolest city around.
The difficulty with that job scenario is of course the fact that I start a job in Seattle on Monday. The place in Portland would want me to start in 1 to 2 months. The job in Seattle is a 6 month contract that will likely turn into a permanent position. So the choices are: a) tell the Seattle folks sometime in the next few weeks that I have to give my 2 weeks notice, and likely be told well never mind then because we don’t want to spend that time training you for nothing, and by the way you’re an asshole. Or b) accept the offer in Portland and wait about 6 weeks to give my notice in Seattle, thereby really wasting their time and training but at least making it look like I tried. Or c) decline the offer in Portland and proceed as planned.
The main factors are: a) Seattle pays way better for the next 6 months, but then if I come on permanent the salary would come down to a level that, after factoring the cost of living difference, would pretty much equal the offer I anticipate from Portland. b) the job in Portland is perm, not contract. c) I “think” with no real qualifications that I’d prefer living in Portland more than Seattle. d) It’s poor form to take a job, make them wait for me to get there, and then quit before I even start. But then e) what does anyone really owe anyone in the workplace, and wouldn’t it be better to get the shitty part over quick before they spend that time and effort on me? And in my defense f) I’ve been totally upfront to the people in Portland and the recruiter for the Seattle job about my options and preferences. The recruiter surely has not shared that info with the employer, but that’s his choice – I did my part by letting him know there’s a good chance I would bow out before the 6 months was up, and maybe a lot sooner.
So, HELP. What would you do in this case? Most people have said you gotta follow your heart. At the same time if the Portland option were not there, I’d surely be content with the job in Seattle. And let’s not forget the short term money is significant: enough to pay for the whole move and still put something away toward the REAL dream of opening that beachside bbq stand. Do I have too many dreams? Rockstar drummer, chef, writer. Programmer isn’t really in there but it’s been paying the bills for a long time now and there’s lots of worse ways to grind out a living. I get to use my mind and in a few years I’ll surely be working full time from home if I want, wherever that may be. Maybe from Phoenix in the winter and from here in the summer.
Like I said, overthinking things is sometimes not so good. Is it ever? That’s why it’s called OVERthinking, right? Well then how much is just right? Girls like to say make a list. OK, I just did. Everything cancels each other out except for the vague notion that one locale is going to suit me more than another. Well, we might have more info for that argument by now, but first let’s get us to Seattle…
After the meeting with the bigwig in Portland, Brad and Petunia and I went for a bite and a beer down the block at a sidewalk pub. Portland is probably everything you hear about it. The people are laid back, it’s the greenest city in America, everyone is au natural, there are more microbrews than mouths to drink them. Downtown there are panhandlers and drug addicts just like anywhere else. Some locals are wary of all the newcomers – everyone is moving there it seems. It’s artsy and folksy. It’s a city with the vibe of a smaller town. It’s as cheap as Phoenix. It’s the new hotspot.
By then it was 5pm and I needed to get to my final destination. For the rest of the drive I was just balls out – get me there NOW. We pulled up to my buddy’s place downtown around 7:30, but you couldn’t tell it was that late because the sun stays up forever here in the summer. Til 10. I remembered that from the summer I spent here a long time ago. His place is really really downtown. Like I’ve never experienced before, except maybe for a couple nights in San Francisco. Parking is a constant challenge, from the moment I arrived: ok you want to parallel park down the block for now but you gotta go move it at 7 in the morning, over to this spot in front of the building where you gotta go down and pump the meter every 2 hours, or you can park for free a couple blocks away if you can find a spot, then move it under the bridge at night, but it’s not a real safe spot so you might want to…. and so on. I’m not really complaining though. When I’m settled I can get a reserved spot a block away for $125 a month on top of rent. Or there’s a sign in the lobby for a spot for sale in the building’s garage: $80,000. You heard me bitch.
So this apartment is fat, and it’s mine for the taking – my friend is moving into a new place a few blocks away as we speak. I’ve paid for July, and we’ll see if I want it longer. The rent is almost as much as the mortgage I’m still paying back home. But whatever, it’s apples and oranges: apartment/house, downtown/uptown, Seattle/Phoenix… did I want to come here or not? One-room apartment, 14th floor, yeah there’s a view.
Here’s a better idea of it, from the rooftop 2 floors above:
With the windows open you hear plenty of traffic, but that’s part of the charm. Oh, and the weather’s pretty good. About 40 degrees cooler than what I left. It was muggy yesterday and I was moving stuff and at one point I said it’s hot. And then I remembered, and took it back. You forget quick. It rained hard but briefly right as I was driving into town. It washed all the dead bugs from Oregon off the windshield. In the past 2 days (is it only that long? Time has warped) it has rained about an hour, been sunny for a few hours, been mostly overcast the rest of the time.
Yesterday driving my friend (he at this point wants to remain nameless) to work, it was raining very hard, like wipers going full blast hard, and an accident happened right in front of us on the freeway. Two cars ahead this blue nissan pickup started spinning clockwise, then the driver tried to correct and wound up spinning 270 the other way and slammed sideways into the concrete barrier. It was pretty nuts. I had hit the brakes and stayed out of harm’s way, but the car between us had a front row view, like right off his bumper. I didn’t see everything but it seemed to be driver error. I don’t care how rainy it is you don’t just spin out like that for no reason. As we went by we saw the driver looked ok, restrained by a seatbelt, and the other car had pulled off and the guy was sprinting over to help, so we figured it was handled and kept on. I don’t know, what do you do? How many people need to stop? One to see if anyone’s hurt and call 911.
Other than that, driving around here reminds me a lot of San Francisco. I don’t know what direction is what. I drove all around downtown yesterday afternoon moving my friend but I had to be told ‘turn left here, turn right there’ every step of the way. I’m like a newborn baby, but it’s coming slowly. This morning I drove all by myself to his new place without getting lost, whereas yesterday I got lost within two turns and had to feel my way back home in ever smaller concentric circles, then run upstairs for my cell and back down to the car and be talked in like Cougar trying to land on the aircraft carrier in Top Gun. “You’re too low, pull up PULL UP”. There, I knew I could work in a reference somehow. Gayest. Movie. Ever!
It’s the 4th of July and at 7 this morning I walked Petunia 8 blocks to the famous Pike Place fish market to get espresso. It tasted like honey. This is dope, what can I say? Tomorrow: fishing in Puget Sound.
Filed under: one way road trip
This morning I woke up and for the first time in a long time had the sensation of not knowing where the hell I was. That used to happen more often. Does it happen to you anymore? Then it came back: I’m in my grandma’s house in Chico. I got up and joined the daily routine, which never changes regardless the day of week. That’s retirement. My grandpa Jim wakes up at 4am and gets on the computer. I remembered hearing the Windows startup chime earlier while it was still dark. He is a character. He’s 82 or so and still works for the state, although officially he is retired. His last position was California State Meteorologist. He’s a true scientist, and his passion for understanding weather trends gets him out of bed that early and working until dinnertime with breaks only for breakfast, a walk, lunch and a nap. He was raised on a farm and left to join the Navy in world war II at age 14. He’s been married to my grandmother for about 30 years, and I’ve never known him to keep any other schedule. He stays at the forefront of computer technology, in that every time I visit he has the newest Mac and the biggest monitor available. He has a crazy setup: Two macs and a PC, networked together with the monitors set up like we have at work – where you can mouse across two screens. Except his screens take up an entire picnic table.
And what does he do with all that memory and storage and screen real estate? He runs excell. His work is compiling and analyzing weather data from every weather station in the state, trying to find patterns. I’ve told him for years that his terabytes of excell files could all go into a proper database and a web-based application could be made to crunch all that data faster than it is now. Alan from work would have a heyday thinking up a better solution. But Jim likes his spreadsheets and the formulas in them would surely take years to transcribe into stored procedures and reports, so he does it his way.
The three of us walked with Petunia the couple miles downtown to their favorite bakery. It’s better than any bakery or coffee shop I know in Phoenix. Everything is just made better, and on top of it all they have the best cakes I’ve ever tasted. Every occasion calls for one of those cakes.
We walked home through the park, which contains a creek, which at a certain point is dammed to create the swimming pool shown below. It’s open from Memorial Day to Labor Day each year, and my grandmother swims there almost daily. It’s across the street from their house. It’s a pretty idyllic life they have there in Chico.
Petunia and I shoved off a little after 11 o’clock en route to Klamath Falls, just over the Oregon border. The main thing in between is Mt. Shasta. There have been wildfires in the area for a couple weeks now and the sky, while recently cleared up in Chico, was still bad north of there. When I was there a couple years ago I could see the peak on the horizon as far south as Redding, about 100 miles away. Today I was looking for it and could only first spot it from about 50 miles away. That’s a big mountain. The pictures I took don’t do it justice. It might be the single largest thing I’ve ever beheld all at once – at least from the ground.
When you get past the winding mountain roads around the volcano and Shasta Lake, the road rises a few thousand feet to the start of a high desert that reminds me of Arizona’s Rim Country. You pass through the town of Weed, which gets no end of jokes about its name. I stopped and bought a shirt for my friend Osean who I was going to see in Klamath Falls.
I know what you’re thinking: Osean? Yes. Pronounced like Ocean. His given name is Sean Callaghan, which is what he still went by when I first met him in 1999. We were in a band together. Really more of a side project, but we had a lot of fun and one show – in an art building at ASU. I remember the stage had a bare surface and my drums slid all over the place. We also recorded a couple songs at the Conservatory of Recording Arts in Tempe for someone’s final project. He played guitar, very crazy. I was in an experimental stage with the drums, and we basically all soloed all the time. Pretty unlistenable, but fun.
Anyway that was a long time ago. I hadn’t seen Osean since he moved back to Oregon in 2004. We got back in touch recently and I learned he had a nearly 2 year old boy named Juna with his girlfriend Brandy. When I arrived around 3pm today he was on his way home from work – doing construction type stuff. He’s a real smart guy. He taught me Autocad several years ago and led me to some part time work that made ends meet when I didn’t have a job for a while. He is, if you can’t guess, a real life hippie. Or at least that’s what I call it. I don’t know, now he has a child, owns a house, works a semi-regular sounding job. Not very hippie-like, until he removes his rasta knit hat and 2 feet of red dreadlocks fall out. Brandy is about as cool a person as I’ve ever met. She and I talked about healthy food a lot as she prepared a 3 course meal before my eyes – improvised, delicious and 100 percent organic and local, down to the greens grown in their yard.
I had planned to have lunch and catch up for an hour or so. Instead I stayed until dusk and had the most wonderful afternoon in a long time. They’re just great great people and a cute family. Which is surely breaking a few hearts in the audience. Some of you have met Osean in person and continue to ask about him to this day. For your benefit I will risk another 5% on the gayness scale and report that he is even MORE incredibly built than 4 years ago. I guess it’s the construction work. But I reminded him of the workout he told me he did back then: dancing in that arm flailing style you see at reggae festivals, but with a 10-pound plate in each hand. Imagine yourself doing that. Go home and try to lift a gallon jug of water with arms extended out to shoulder level. That’s 8 pounds, and I’m betting most of us couldn’t hold it there for 30 seconds. This guy is ripped like no one I’ve ever seen. He came home from work and peeled off his work shirt and pulled on the Weed shirt I brought him, and the sight I was exposed to… some of you ladies would have fainted. I was like, damn dude you’re a fucking viking.
So I left at about dark, originally intending to get to Portland but now forced to scale it back to Eugene, 3 hours away over the western Cascades. Osean and Brandy were going to try to hook me up with some friends there who, never having met me and vice versa, would give me and Petunia a free place to stay. Now, I don’t know about anyone else, but that’s kind of outside my concept. Strangers? Who welcome you into their home on nothing but the word of friends? I suppose I’ve heard of such things. I kind of balked, making excuses to let them off the hook. Is that what people do here? It’s so… free, open, trusting. This is outside my realm, outside my comfort zone, outside any experience. But then I considered the alternative: $100 motel on top of another $60 tank of gas. And then I bridged the gap in my mind. Hell, this is Oregon. It’s gotta be ok. You can trust people who are friends. These are good people, nothing more. Hippies, yes. This is how they roll. Why do I gotta be uptight? So I said ok in my head. Shit, it could be really cool. Meeting people is a good thing, right?
Alas, the hour was too late and the would-be host had to get up too early, so the hookup did not happen. I learned of this via a rare in-flight phone call. This whole trip, I’ve been following a rule of not answering the phone while driving. It’s purely a matter of safety – and it’s validated by the fact that this very day all of California came under a new law making it illegal to talk on a cell phone while driving unless it’s a hands-free headset.
I’ve given that some thought over the past couple days. I say hands-free makes little difference. You’re still on the phone and not paying attention to driving. How many times have you been driving, taken a call, and when it’s over you realize you have no memory at all of the past few minutes of driving? Texting is far worse. I’ve almost gotten in so many accidents while texting. I don’t do it anymore.
Anyhow, I made an exception when Osean called because it was pertinent to my drive and where I would spend the night now that I’d be arriving at nearly midnight in Eugene. That’s when I saw the deer in the road. I was making some joke, or Osean was, and in my mind I registered something out of place up ahead. Is that a deer? Shit, that’s a deer. It’s in the other lane, but we better hit the brakes and aim to the right side of the road. Oh you fuck you’re gonna walk into my lane, okay swerve into the left lane, woosh we miss, I don’t know how close. The shit was a video game. I never stopped talking on the phone, I called the play by play to Osean. It just happened and I reacted like a video game. I KNEW the deer was going to walk into my lane because that’s what video games do – throw the next hardest thing at you. At first I didn’t even get excited, until a few seconds passed, and then a minute, and I thought of what might have happened.
I stopped at the next town and had my first experience with Oregon’s mandatory full service gas stations. I had heard that’s how things are here, and I thought what bullshit, I’ve been pumping gas my whole life, I can handle it. But you know, it turned out to be a pleasure. You get to go inside and go to the bathroom and buy whatever, while someone else is washing your windshield and whatever else you want. The guy was so nice. I was so rattled from the deer I pulled up on the wrong side of the pump, forgetting which side of the car my tank is on. He had to tell me twice. I finally got it and stepped out of the car laughing and said Sorry man, I’m from Arizona! He gave a big smile and looked me in the eye and said That’s ok, it’s all good, this is Oregon, we don’t care where you’re from! He was older like 60 and had a mouth full of bad teeth. It made me really regret what I wrote the other day about that. It was an uninformed generalization. What does one have to do with the other? Some people have access to health insurance and dentistry, and some don’t. But I still say rural northern californians are creepy.
I got to Eugene a little while later and found a pretty cheap, somewhat seedy motel by the railroad tracks, just next to the University of Oregon campus. I learned from the kid at the front desk that the Olympic track & field trials are being held here this week – I believe you can catch them on ESPN – and every hotel in town is full of our nation’s finest teenage athletes. I was only interested in a shower and bed at that point. Portland is an hour north, and I have plans to try to meet Alex & Catie who by sheer coincidence are in the area on vacation, and also Brad who is trying to get me a job with his employer. I should stop into the office and meet some people, press the flesh a little, do some gladhanding. They play Rock Band and apparently my drum skills may serve me as a secondary job qualification. Who would have guessed all those years of practice could be parlayed into anything productive?
Filed under: one way road trip
After spending all Saturday making decisions like ‘can I live without this for awhile, or not?’ and then finally calling it done when I heard my voice echo through the house, and going out for one last dinner and what was intended to be like 2 beers at Sonora, which of course turned into more when a couple friends happened in, I got to bed around 1, woke up early, walked the dog, got a coffee and croissant at AJ’s, packed the car in blazing morning heat, said goodbye to Mr. Tibbs, strapped Petunia into the front seat and pulled away with a final glance back at the house, the neighborhood, the trees and lawns, the landmarks, the mountains, the coffee shops, bars, restaurants and stores, all the places I know of home. It was 10am, five hours later than planned, 20 years later than first envisioned, but right on with my history of late departures.
I haven’t overthought this whole moving to Seattle. I may have underthought it a little, but it didn’t seem to need much thought. I’ve been through the decision making process before and this time everything just seemed right. The job, the money, the city, the timing: everything. So I’ve trusted it. I haven’t gotten sad about leaving my friends and family. Maybe Mr. Tibbs dying had something to do with it. That was the saddest thing I’ve ever known, and maybe I’ve just gotten all the mourning out that I have in me. Or maybe because all these people are still alive and I’ll see them again, it doesn’t seem like an ending, just a beginning. It’ll hit me I’m sure in a couple weeks one night when I’m sitting on the floor eating chinese takeout with no music and no tv and the phone hasn’t rung in days. Ok no, that’s not me, that’s some commercial.
At the same time I haven’t gotten overly excited about Seattle yet. I’m happy, for sure, enjoying the planning and the doing, but I haven’t had that Christmas morning feeling. It’s all one step at a time. I know the final result will be great, but there’s been so much to do in preparation, and no time to sit and ponder. And it’s all so surreal. I’ve been there several times before, I know what it looks like, but what will it really be like to live there? Will I get there and realize I can’t leave the life I’ve always known? I need the sun? I can’t take the rain? Have I lived in Phoenix so long that it’s all I can do?
Well, sometimes not overthinking is a good thing. Trust your instinct at this point. I don’t rush foolishly into anything. If it seems right then it must be.
At any rate, the drive across the desert sucked – balls. I took the picture below because it’s the most – no, the only – interesting sight along the way, if you can call it interesting. Little Harquahala Mountain. It’s just familiar to me from so many road trips before as a sign that I’m leaving Arizona. Different shapes of mountains, that’s the only thing that changes on the landscape.
This next picture is shitty but meaningful because it was the first glimpse of ocean out the car window – Ventura. Hooray ocean.
It would be another hour before reaching Santa Barbara. It was good to arrive. It was chilly enough that I was cold in gym shorts and – get this – a wifebeater. I wore one the whole way. Hey, I want to tan while I can. And anyway it’s my new favorite article of clothing. I’m going to wear one every chance I get now. Not really, but you see I never once wore one until January bought me some as a joke I think about a year ago. It’s kind of low class to wear one without something over it, or so I hear. I don’t know, when I see some dude walking around with that and a pair of baggy khaki shorts down to his shins, and white socks up to his shins, and like some Timberland boots and a bandanna down over his eyebrows and a goatee and lots of tattoos, I think he looks kind of bad ass. Is it just me? I’m kidding of course. That would be a vato.
Yeah let me say a little something about other drivers. They all suck. I have yet to come across another car on this trip and think, hey, nice driving there pal. Actually, that’s not true. Today, near San Jose there was some traffic and all of a sudden all the cars in the left lane slammed their brakes and the pickup in front of me drifted onto the shoulder so as to avoid rear-ending the car in front. That’s some solid defensive driving. Good work buddy, wherever you are. The rest of you can stick your tongue up my anus. And no syrup, you must taste my lunch. Wow, gross!
But for reals, what in hell is wrong with people? Arizona drivers, we all know what that’s about. Too old, too many kids in the back, too big an SUV, too oblivious, too self-centered – pick one. It used to be that California drivers were good. Too fast perhaps (if you think there is such a thing) but definitely skilled and attentive. No more. In the past 2 days I’ve seen countless acts of buffoonery committed by cars with California plates. They might as well be Arizonans. But worse than all of them are truckers. They can all fucking die right now as far as I’m concerned. I don’t need my lettuce or flat screen tv or whatever you’re hauling that bad. I’ll go get it myself if it’ll keep you off the road. I’ll say this now, I am not driving too fast (this time). Too fast is 100, or even 90. I’m going 9 over the speed limit at all times, and occasionally people pass me and that’s fine. I get over before they have to hit their brakes. This is what you’re supposed to do. But here’s what truckers do. They’re in the right lane going 60 behind another truck. I’m coming up behind them in the left lane going 80. They pull out in front of me for no apparent reason and with no one behind me. I slam on my brakes and wait as they pass their fucking butt buddy so they can – I don’t know – take turns drafting as some kind of mating ritual before they go hit the glory hole at the next rest stop? And this happened at least 20 times today. Just about every time I came upon two trucks in a row. Am I alone in this?
Ok, calm again. Breathe. Relax. I love long drives, and I hate them. 500 miles a day is not terrible, but it’s about 200 miles more than I want to go. So far I’ve gone about 1020 miles in 15 hours of driving: 7 yesterday, 8 today. That’s an average of 70 mph including stops for gas, food and to let Petunia out. By the way she is strapped in with this little harness for dogs. Today after my one stop (in Salinas) I got back on the road and passed a car I know for sure I had passed a few hours earlier. It was another Subaru with 2 road bikes and 2 surfboards on top. I had stopped for about half an hour. That’s how much time you make up in the left lane? Is that a lot or a little? When you’re driving for 7 or 8 hours what’s another 30 minutes? I don’t know but I am constantly fighting the urge to go faster. Cruise control helps. One time I drove from Davis, CA to home in one stretch stopping only twice and only to fill the tank. It’s 770 miles and I did it in under 10 hours. For the entire first tank of gas I was over 100 mph, early Sunday morning on I-5. In all it saved about 90 minutes, but at terrible risk. I guess I’m saying speeding is not worth it. Right?
Back to yesterday. In Santa Barbara I took Petunia to the first beach she and Tibbs ever set foot on. That was so funny. We had arrived at night and they’d been in the car all day. I led them to the beach and told them to go in the water. They couldn’t see the expanse of ocean. They got scared of the sea foam as it rolled up the beach. In the dark it looks like a long white snake. I threw the ball and they ran into the surf. They’ve loved the ocean ever since. This time the tide was too high and we couldn’t really get onto the sand so we went for a walk on the cliffs and then went to find a hotel. I tried several all in one area near the beach that I’d stayed at before. One was now a rehab clinic. After being told no dogs, no dogs over 25 pounds, no vacancy I took us a couple miles into town and found a Motel 6. Yeah, Motel 6 is absolutely nothing special, but it’s usually the cheapest clean place around, and all of them take dogs. $101 with tax. For that town, not too bad.
I found – what do you know – a brew pub 2 blocks down the street and went over for a late dinner. They had 50-cent ribs so I said ya knoooowwwwww, I’ve been pretty good today with eating. They were boiled. I got 5 at first and then another 15, could only eat 10 and took the rest home to Petunia. Remind me not to eat other people’s bbq. Boiled meat. Does that sound good to anyone? Their IPA was ass too.
This morning I got up around 6:30 and took Petunia out to pee and poo. I noticed 3 white converted trucks with “Eco-Pro” on the side. I don’t know that company but these were clearly biohazard cleanup trucks. Three of them, parked about 6 doors down. Big guys with big blue heavy duty rubber gloves on. I hadn’t been awakened by any shots in the night, only the people upstairs fucking – slow and hard. It sounded like someone was lifting one end of a desk a couple inches off the ground and then dropping it. It lasted all of 2 minutes and got faster at the end. Drunken sex, you can’t hate on that.
I took Petunia to the dog beach to see if we could play fetch. We did, it was good. She carried the ball herself most of the time as we walked along the beach for about 3 miles. She didn’t drink any sea water, I guess because she had drank a little yesterday and thrown it up in the hotel room. I’m sorry: Motel. We got our money’s worth of that place, but not like the poor bastard 6 doors down.
At any rate the beach was kind of interesting. Check this picture…
This is three big trees that have fallen about 50 feet from the cliff above. There were more up there waiting for the next big storm. I guess this was God’s way of saying ‘You grew too close to the edge’. Up close they were kind of cool. Some had moss growing on the trunks where high tide must reach.
This next picture is a live sea lion that was napping about 100 yards from those trees. A lady had warned me that it was there, and would bark at me and Petunia. We walked about 2 miles and never saw it until the walk back, by which time it had fallen asleep like the lazy dirty unbathed hippie that it is.
I got within 10 feet to take the picture. I thought, if this were Jackass what would I do? Go try to spoon with it? Shave my name in its fur? Piss on it? Well, even a sleeping big wild animal can wake up and bite the shit out of you so I let sleeping sea lions lie. Petunia at no point took any interest. She didn’t realize it was an animal at all. She’s more about the fetching of the ball in the sand:
And here, in memory of Mr. Tibbs, is the last picture of him. I took it a couple months ago in the back yard.
We quit the beach and went back to the motel and a mere hour later, about 10:30 we were in the car again. One pathetic note: by now the Eco-Pro trucks were gone. So this means that they cleaned up what we must assume was a bloody mess in less time than it took me to get ready in the morning. This, by the way, is why I’m always late to work. I don’t know what it is, I just fuck around too much. Espresso? Don’t mind if I do. Check email? Sure. Sit outside and listen to the birds chirp? Why not. It’s a new day, unique in its special way, why rush it?
Anyway. Up the 101 to San Jose. Over toward Sacramento to catch I-5. Arrived in Chico in time for dinner. Petunia remembers the yard from 2 years ago when we spent the summer here. Petunia also knew which motel room was ours every time we left it and came back. It’s uncanny. Dogs must have a better sense of smell than we can even imagine. Or some other sense. Better navigational skills than I can understand. We would walk out the door, through the parking lot, down the street a couple blocks to an empty lot where she could go to the bathroom. Then back and she would lead us off the sidewalk into the parking lot, past a dozen doors and then stop at ours and stick her nose in the door jamb. I even tried to test her by continuing past our door but she wouldn’t follow. Tonight we went out to dinner and when we came home she was outside the front door. We had left a gate open by accident and she got out but got scared and waited. She panted for a half hour after we let her back in. That’s what she does when she’s stressed out. Like the whole drive too. And then she ate a whole plate of cookies while no one was looking.
Chico is a great town. A college town. The shining gem of sophistication in the otherwise backwards farming and mountain towns of northern California. Don’t get me wrong, I love northern California a whole lot. I’ve spent a lot of time checking out every part of it. But there’s some bad sets of teeth around here. And where people don’t take care of their teeth, there’s a whole lot of other things wrong too.
Everyone here is getting ready for the big wedding in 3 weeks. My cousin Jake, who is about 22 and grew up in one of those little mountain towns near here, is marrying the girl from high school who turned his life around after he took a big detour a few years ago. Long story short, he has two wonderful twin daughters, a little older than 2, and he has full custody while their mom is hopefully never to be seen again. The wedding is in Sacramento, 250 guests including myself. Should be a lot of fun.
