Saturday (January 20) I set off on a grand adventure. My car, the lovely Supra, was finally fixed and ready to be picked up after wallowing (well, wintering) on Bainbridge Island. So I began to develop a plan for getting it back - my dad no longer lives in that area, but I knew there were a couple friends who I could stay with, and.... blah blah blah... here's what actually happened:
Saturday morning Megan drove me up to Spokane to catch a flight to SeaTac. Evan tagged along and we had a good little drive. Until it started snowing. A lot. And then Megan accidentally took an exit instead of staying on the highway. And at the top of the exit ramp, like a big metal yeti, was a snowplow. Well, I don't claim to know what was going on in the heads of all the drivers involved, but what I observed was us going pretty damn fast on a snowy icy slope and the plow shifting into reverse and heading straight back towards us. Yes, in reverse, along an onramp. Like, yeah, it was that... stupid. So we ended up plowing into the plow at a good clip - maybe 20 MPH - but Megan's little Honda just bounced off the rear tires of the beast and there was no apparent damage. We were all a little shook up, though, and I ended up driving the rest of the way to the airport.
This is evidence that Megan and I were both at the Spokane airport, and it was indeed snowy.
I just don't get airport security. They never give me trouble, and I really feel like they probably should. Aren't I a suspicious enough character to merit some special attention? Uh, apparently not. My mom gets all sorts of shit from them. But me? Nope. Maybe it's my insistence on being polite to everyone who works at an airport, but really, I expect them to judge based simply on the way that I look. Once I was held back a little and they had a fuss about my earrings, but the guy in charge loudly stated for the benefit of everyone in a thirty foot radius that I was more of a danger to myself than anyone else. I wear these three woven-ring bracelets on my left wrist that don't come off without pliers (I've had them on for years) and they don't set off the metal detector. What? I mean, they're made out of a couple ounces of stainless steel, brass, and copper each. But I can't take more than a couple ounces of eyedrops with me to keep my contacts from fusing to my eyes. Ridiculous. Well, this particular trip was typically uneventful, but I was freaked out at security when a guy who looked like the evil cousin of Mr. Rat from the film adaptation of Wind In The Willows bellowed at me a query about the liquids possibly in my bag. I denied everything and then felt a little bad when I remembered afterwards that I had eyedrops, lip balm, and hand cream with me. I'm going to terrorize myself with moisture, I admit it!
I don't think that I'd ever flown Southwest before. They're goofy. The flight attendants and cabin crew were just... goofy. They referred to each other as 'darlin' over the PA, and when we touched down and were taxiing to the gate in Seattle the captain sang us a very silly little ditty about flying Southwest because they want our money and if you marry one of the crew you get to fly free. Seriously. Those are practically verbatim quotes from it. I wish I'd have written it all down. He had a good voice. The two women next to me ignored me completely, but I heard them talking about their plans - go to Vegas for a day, get trashed, bitch about their husbands, and go home. Which came first, the sitcoms about miserable people, or the miserable people? They seemed like they might be doing it just because it's the sort of thing other people would do.
During the hour I spent waiting at the SeaTac bus terminal, I watched some inebriated and ostensibly homeless people try to start fights with other transit patrons. I kept to myself, tried to act unapproachable, and continued reading Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance. What a fabulous book. I continued reading it on the bus, and I noticed that I always maintain vivid memories of the vehicles that I read books on in connection with memories of the books. Especially buses. I remember clearly the faces of the people around me and my memory connects them to exact pages of the book, paragraphs or sentences even. Cool.
The ferry to Bainbridge was very familiar, and I spent half the trip reading and half of it on the phone with people.
I met up with my old friend Naomi at a snazzy little bakery called Blackbird on the island, just a few blocks down from the ferry. We got some food and some coffee and chatted for about an hour about life. It was good to see her again, and good to get some individual human interaction after being in crowd-mode all day.
Instead of finding a ride or taking a taxi to the auto shop, I had decided to walk there from the ferry. It's about four miles across the island, and it was just starting to get dark when I left the bakery. The roads were mostly little winding two lane affairs with no sidewalks and a 40 MPH speed limit. I hiked along in the dark, with my luggage in one hand and my bag across my back, and dodged speeding SUVs and ditches. It took longer than I thought to get to the shop - about an hour - despite my attempts at a brisk pace.
It was SO good to get my car back. I had missed it so. Wonder of wonders, it ran beautifully and I went straight back the way I came and got in line for the next ferry. I've realized in the weeks since then what actually happened to my car in months of 2000% humidity and cold... everything that could possibly corrode, did. So I've spent quite a bit of time scrubbing gunk off of things. But it works, and that's the important part.
I got to downtown Seattle a little after 7:30 and made my way to Chance's place. It was, of course, great to see him (and his girlfriend Sara) again, and we spent a couple hours sitting around, chatting about life and sharing music. Always good to hang out with Chance. Why don't you ever come to Moscow, man? Oh, that's right, you already live somewhere cool. Nevermind.
About nine I took off for Leanne's place and met up with her. We drove down to Renton to her boyfriend's pad, I met the boyfriend, and we gathered together a posse and walked to a nearby friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend's place, where a birthday party was taking place. Leanne was the ONLY person there I knew, which could have been really awkward, but I ended up just relaxing and having a pretty good time. Many inebriants were consumed, which certainly glossed over some of my shyness, and I crashed on Jeremy's (the boyfriend's) couch that night.
Sunday morning I followed Leanne back to her place and we caught up on stuff for a while. I woke myself up properly at Starbucks and began the drive down to Portland. I don't know why I thought it was a five hour drive, but it seemed to fly by and it was a delightful surprise to be there only three hours after leaving the Seattle area. The sky was gray, and driving over the bridges into Portland's northwest industrial area I felt like I was seeing the city for the first time. Every light gleamed suggestively and every splash of color stood out as an advertisement. It was very much like meeting up with an old friend who you haven't seen in years - everything different from your memory stands out, even as your memory is being added to and quickly, simultaneously, the differences become the new vision of what so-and-so is 'supposed' to look like. So, like that, with a city. Hmm.
I met up with my uncle Chad and his partner Chris before anything else, clumsily navigating my way to their little apartment, befuddled by memories of driving the wrong ways last time I was there. Eventually, I found them, and had a very good time hanging out and talking with both for a while. It's always kinda weird to be there, but this was definitely the least weirdness I'd ever experienced because, for the first time, I was visiting them alone and on my own terms. I'd never seen them without one or the other of my parents around, and to have all that baggage removed from the immediate conversation was a thrilling liberation. I talked about philosophy and ancient Greeks with Chris and discussed school/life choices with Chad. It was great to see them, and I really look forward to being able to do so more often and get to know them better.
This is the point in the travelogue where I catch myself saying too much and remember that I was going to summarize, skim through, and otherwise be succinct with it. See, I'm not doing so well.
After leaving Chad & Chris' place, I found Meredith. What a wonderful person. Really. It was a dreamy couple of days, where I couldn't shake the feeling that I was about to wake up, but consciousness persists and I remember it quite fondly. We became pretty good friends, I think, and in a peculiarly accelerated way. It wasn't really at all like meeting somebody in person is supposed to be, or at least normally is. It was more like we just hadn't seen each other in a few months or years, and we just got along. I hope that everyone who experiments with making friends online before meeting them in person gets as lucky as that at some point in their life.
Meredith also pretty much taught me how to fall in love with Portland. So I pretty much did. I'm really looking forward to being there again, and I'm ready for the next step of evaluating it as a place to live. You know, the actual practical consideration time, where I start to find out that housing is going to be like three times more expensive than it is here, and I'll freak out about it but also start finding jobs to apply for and such.
I left for Boise on Tuesday afternoon, and had an uneventful but very long drive.
In Boise I met up with Jesse, who I often refer to as my oldest and bestest friend. I hadn't seen him in a couple of years, and we've both changed a hell of a lot in that time. He now lives with a bunch of guys in some pretty cool apartments near BSU. One of the roommates is our mutual friend, Austin, who I've actually known since I was three years old but haven't kept in very close touch with. It turns out that he's an extraordinarily gifted artist, and overall I would describe him as one of the most serene people I know at this time. Jesse seems to be doing pretty well, except that he smokes like a chimney factory. I really hope I find a way to see him more often - seems like we're back in similar enough tracks with our lives that we could be close friends again.
Wednesday I drove back up to Moscow, and clearly everything since then has left me pretty much unscathed, since I'm here now finally writing about what happened more than a month ago. Before closing this chapter, I just have to say that the drive from Boise to Moscow has now been revealed to me as not exclusively a horrible horrible deathtrap. That particular Wednesday it was clear and sunny, cold but not icy, and it was one of the best few hours of driving I've ever had. The car handled perfectly, I had fun, I was safe (enough), and the music was, of course, good.
Thanks for reading!
