7/20/14
Aboard Delta 1524, En route SEA-JFK
After 18 Days, it is impossible to describe how good it feels to type
those last letters of the dateline, and it almost didn’t happen. It was past 4 AM and starting to get light
again when I passed out last night, and I did not set an alarm. However, I knew myself, and I knew that I
would wake up in exactly 90 minutes. The
sun would be rising at at 5:40 AM, and, if I so desired, I would watch the
sunrise and then wake Sokol for our drive to Crater Lake. I did not think it was likely to happen, but
I wanted to keep the option open. I had
been looking at the maps, and I saw that there were two other NPS units next to
Crater Lake NP. It would make almost no
sense to ever take a trip to just visit those two units, and I had no doubt
that I would be able to incorporate all three units as a day trip on some
future visit to my brother. Also, I did
not relish the idea of doing 12 hours of driving on our last Day. The standby plan I had was wake up, spend the
afternoon exploring Portland together, have our final pipes, leave at 4 PM to
hit Fort Vancouver NPS, and then make our way to SeaTac. It was a brilliant plan, but it was not
definite. More importantly, it was an
easy and relaxing plan, or so I thought.
Plan A was fulfillment. Plan B
was enjoyment, or so I thought.
As
predicted, I woke up 90 minutes later, right before sunrise. I looked out their expansive window, and it
was cloudy. There would be no glorious
sunrise. I opted for Plan B and went
back to sleep, waking up 6 hours later.
I was the first one up, and it was past noon. Actually, Ceal had already woken up, but she
was still in the bedroom. If I was smart,
at this point, I should have gotten dressed, headed downstairs, lit up a small
cigar, driven the 15 minutes to Fort Vancouver NHS, gotten my stamp, driven
back, ditched the cigar, and come upstairs.
I could have done all of that in about an hour, and it took longer than
that from the time I woke before everyone was seated at the breakfast
table. Oh, that’s right, I was roped
into making breakfast for everything, which I was glad to do, until my brother
insisted that I add a cucumber to the eggs.
Instead, I sauted him some peppers on the side. I was very limited in the ingredients with
which I could work in their kitchen, but they had 9 eggs, some vegetarian
sandwiches, low carb pita bread, cheese, onions, salt and pepper, and bourbon. That was all I needed. I got everything ready to cook.
I knew that from the time I turned on the
heat until the time I put food on the plates would be less than five minutes,
so I insisted that everyone be sitting down before I started cooking the
eggs. It’s a good thing, too, since it
took about 30 minutes from the raw ingredients were ready until the time they
all sat down. It’s a funny thing. When I am travelling alone, I can plan my
schedule to a tee, including about an hour of Dutch time a day, which usually
goes to meals, gas, and traffic. When I
am travelling with someone else, I need to include a little more Dutch Time. When it is a total of four people, one of
whom is my brother, who has no sense of urgency, no ability to work in
parallel, no desire to keep to a schedule, all planning goes out the
window. I learned that the hard way when
we went on our Twilight trip, somehow eating up the 6 hours of Dutch Time I had
allowed on the last day and almost causing me to miss my flight.
I suppose I was naïve to think that I would
people to spend 2 hours exploring Portland and be on the road by 4 PM. We did not get out the door until 2:30 PM,
which left us just enough time to have our smokes on the waterfront and then
say our goodbyes. We were still doing
#NoGPS, which caused me to get a little lost and wind up the wrong side of the
river, but the whole thing only cost us 5 minutes. The Saturday Market, where Ceal assured me I
could find souvenirs, was more like a Christmas Market and street fair combined. I did find a t-shirt, but no keychain, no
pins. It didn’t matter. I would be back to Portland. I had brought 6 high-end Italian pipes with
me. 5 times Sokol and I had sat down to
each smoke one of them. That meant that
each of us had smoked 5 different of the 6 pipes. The most important thing to me at that point,
other than making the flight, was smoking that 6th pipe.
We found a nice place to sit down and lit up
our pipes, me having the Radice, Sokol the Castello. I gave my brother a cheap cigar, which he
smoked for a few puffs before quitting. While
we were smoking, two people came up to us and offered us weed. We turned them down. My brother was telling us how Portland is
reknowned for its weirdos, and we were at their Mecca. I cannot see that I saw Portland, but I saw
the heart of Portland. I did the
equivalent of going to New York and only seeing Times Square, Seattle and only
seeing Pike Place, Boston and only seeing Faneuil Hall, or DC and only seeing
the National Mall. It was enough, and it
was the only relaxing part of the day.
After our smokes, it was getting to be that time, and I was feeling
rushed. All enjoyment value escaped me,
and I just cared about getting the Sunday paper and getting on the road. We said our goodbyes, and I did both.
I figured that I could still get the stamp at
that point and spend some time at the NPS.
That was until I saw that the entrance to I-5 North was closed. I just got on southbound and figured that I
could turn around at the next exit, which I did, and it meant that I could
still probably get the stamp but not see the fort. Then we hit some traffic. All hope of the stamp was lost. It cleared up as soon as we got to the other
side of the Columbia River, but it was too late. Instead, we took our pictures at the Welcome
to Washington sign, and I lit up an Undercrown.
With no traffic, it would be just over 2 hours for us to get to the
airport, meaning we could stop for lunch and gas and still get to the airport
around 7:30 PM, which would leave me plenty of time for a triumphant airport
entry. No dice. The first kink was when I got pulled over
going 81 in a 70. The officer
pretty much balled me out, and I thought that was weird. He then asked about my driving record, and I
told him I had a couple of speeding tickets.
He asked if I knew the fine for the ticket, and I said that I didn’t. He told me and asked how it would be to pay
that. I said that I could afford it but
that it would hurt. I realized at that
point that, if I played his game, I would be getting out of this. I was right.
We got back on the road, and we hit some traffic right past
Olympia. It was really bad traffic, and
I was really hungry and really had to U.
It was looking tight for getting to the airport on time now. At 7 PM, we stopped for gas and food, opting
for Panda Express. It was a feast, and I
ordered far more than I could eat, giving Sokol, who ordered less than I did, a
lot of my food. Uh oh. There is one time more than ever that I need
a cigar, not want a cigar, need a cigar.
That is after eating spicy Chinese food.
We had just cleaned out and aired out the car. What would I do? I took my chances and lit up a Davidoff. It was one of the cheap Davidoffs, and it
smoked like shit, but it did the trick, barely.
I gave Sokol a little Davidoff, which he polished off in less than 15
minutes to polish off. I went back to
vigorous calculation mode. As soon as we
were north of Tacoma, the Traffic cleared up.
It’s funny, I know Washington geography almost as well as I know, well,
Alaska geography. From all the trips I have
taken there, it just stuck.
I ditched
the cigar as soon as we got off of I-5, and we celebrated as soon as we saw the
sign for Rental Car Facility. The trip
was a success. I would do Crater Lake on
some future visit. Next month, when
everyone is getting ready in the morning, I will dip up to Fort Vancouver NHS,
since I can be back at 10 AM, and I know there is zero chance of everyone being
ready by 10 AM. I would like to say PNW (WA+OR)
Complete by the time I turn 30, but that is not even a supplemental goal. It’s just something that would be fun and
should happen since I will probably go to Portland once a year as long as my
brother is there. It took some time
making our way through the airport, and I was a little worried about time. I think the best part of the whole airport
experience was that my pants would have fallen down at security if I wasn’t
holding them up. They had fit perfectly
without a belt when I bought them it in Iran last November. Last night, I went into my brother’s bathroom
to weigh myself, to see how much weight I had gained during the trip, since I
knew that I had been bad on my diet all trip.
I walked out and asked my brother in disbelief, “Is your scale accurate?” He said that it was. I had lost 5 pounds since I last weighed
myself in Scarsdale, a total of 35 pounds.
Granted, this was after the official Us my brother and I took in his
courtyard, which would have really pissed off (pun intended) his posh, uptight
neighbors, if they knew how we defiled the plants in the courtyard, but, still,
he was only 8 pounds lighter. It has probably
been close to a decade since our weight was that close.
Needless to say, we made our flight, and we
congratulated each other on a successful trip and going 18 Days without killing
each other. I doubt that I will be able
to sleep on this flight, and I know that I will be paying the price in 12
hours. As soon as we were airborne, I proceeded to write this
entry, which I will now close, along with officially closing the trip. Next stop: Fire Island and then right back to
SeaTac to visit North Cascades NP and say “British Columbia Complete.”
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