The Easy Life?

We got kind of a late start today, lounging around Haley's house while she prepared her kids to go berry picking. Haley's life provides a great excuse to talk about geography and life choices. 

Haley grew up on the Sante Fe River just outside of Gainesville. Her husband Scott is still in school studying some kind of science, and they got married young and had kids young. They moved out to Port Townsend because Scott got into school, and they moved from one corner of the country to the other, far away from their families to raise their own little family.

Haley's house is kind of a dream. She has her laundry strung up in her backyard between the apple trees and the garden. She has kombucha fermenting all over the kitchen counter to bottle up and barter with at the farmers market. Sometimes she goes a full week without driving her car, and her kids don't have real toys, just collections of marbles, pieces of chalk and whatever else they find worthy to be "treasure". She watches other people's kids part time to make a little money, and does some marketing work for the lady down the block, but other than that she spends most of her time with her family. 

They just moved to Washington less than a year ago, and the town they happened to pick has a Waldorf school that Kepler loves; five yoga studios where Haley teaches and takes classes; local EVERYTHING like bakeries, cafes, co-op, and other start ups. She wanted to buy a big boy bike for Kepler but she checked with the local Buy Nothing Club and traded for one instead. Nevermind she lives in a place where summertime temperatures rarely breach 85 degrees, the punishment for smoking marijuana in public is $27, and she has easy access to both the ocean and the mountains. She said the only thing she misses about Florida is thunderstorms and evening frog choruses.

I don't live Haley's life, so there's probably a lot going on other than what I saw in my small glimpse. But I do often think about how life might be if it wasn't so hard. So far the West Coast has been this dreamworld of ease, where people care about the things I care about, like riding bikes, organic agriculture, and local businesses. I can emphatically say that hardly anyone in Florida cares about those things, and it makes life there hard. 

I have chosen to live in a place that's hard. It makes me feel like the work I do matters a little more since there are so few people doing it where I live. There are less than 200 certified organic farms in Florida, a state where agriculture is the second biggest industry after tourism. It would be so easy to pick up and live in Seattle and never have to walk more than a quarter mile to a health food store or ride without bike lanes. It gives me a lot to think about at this crossroads in my life.

I keep that all I want is to buy a house and have a perennial garden with herbs and fruit trees that I'll never have to uproot again. But I keep making decisions that put me further and further away from that vision. I have at least two or three more years before I will be able to picture what my life will look like for the long term. 

Basically the point of this is it looks like Haley made some good choices for her life by moving where it's easy, and though I don't know if those same choices would make me happy, it would certainly by nice if Florida were medium hard instead of just plain hard.

Whale Done!

After a sleepless night for me we woke up bright and early Monday morning to make it to the dock by 8:30 for a special Northwest treat: whale watching. I guess I'm grateful that Travis and I have different traveling styles because I normally just show up somewhere and find out what to do later, while he actually plans things ahead of time. Hence and whale watching tip. 

We loaded up on the Glacier Spirit, the tour boat used by Puget Sound Express. If you're ever near Port Townsend, go ahead and look them up. They serve unlimited coffee and Grandma's recipe for blueberry buckle on that boat. AND we saw an ass ton of  wildlife.

First sighting was a Minke whale in the distance. They only surface for air once, and then might not re-emerge until they've swum a mile away. The captain us all to keep a look out and tell him if we saw anything, and eventually he got a call over the radio that orcas had been spotted. There are three pods of resident orcas that live near the San Juan Islands just off the coast of Port Townsend. This was the L pod, which is the largest and is headed by a 103 year old matriarch named Granny. 

I've only seen orcas in Sea World, and after having followed this pod throughout the morning it makes me even more depressed to think about orcas in captivity. These whales were having the time of their lives-- eating fish, jumping out of the water, participating in adult extra curricular activities. They are social animals and they belong in the ocean, and I'm glad the era of whale and dolphin capturing is over, at least in the US.

We stopped at Friday Harbor for lunch, a farming turned tourist town on one of the San Juan Islands. It was then that I realized why I hadn't slept the night before: around 6pm I hate eaten two Cliff Bar Shot Bloks, little energy gummies each containing the amount of caffeine equivalent to a shot of espresso. After lunch, I just had to go to sleep. The rhythm of the boat moving, the drone of the engine, the patchy sunshine... Travis tells me there was a Stellar sea lion, harbor seals and a tufted puffin, but I was too exhausted. 

Luckily Travis had drank enough unlimited coffee to stay perky and chit chat with out booth neighbors, a retired Air Force mechanic and his wife, Sherry, a head start teacher. I was mostly unconscious and Travis has a terrible memory, so we can't remember the mechanic's name. They had just relocated to Washington and had finished up a cross country road trip, and took this whale tour to explore their own region. Travis must have made quite an impression on them, because they paid our boat fare, which was not cheap. It is sometimes quite amazing how strangers will do very VERY nice things for you. So thank you again you two, hope you have fun adventures exploring your new neck of the woods. 

First Pedaling of West Coast Tourrible

Turned out we had a few errands to do before we could leave Seattle, like go to REI to get Travis a patch kit for his sleeping pad. By the way, if you're ever on an outdoor adventure trip, REI is the LAST place you want to go. You will re-evaluate every camping purchase you've made and consider an ultra-light upgrade, and discover products you didn't know existed but you absolutely need. We had to get out of there QUICK.

Next we stopped at the Union Farmers Market to visit Travis' friend Lane, who used to live in Gainesville and now works at Local Roots Farm east of Seattle. Man what a beautiful display at a beautiful farmers market.

I happened to be wearing my Ten-Speed Greens t-shirt, and the Josh, the farm owner, recognized me from the farm gram, which was pretty cool. He told me to email him about suggestions of farms to visit on the way down to Oregon. Lord knows it wouldn't be a vacation for me unless I volunteered at a farm. 

We finally loaded up all our gear, and rode off from the Polo Mansion fully weighed down with all our gear.

It was a short trip downhill to the ferry to Bainbridge Island, where we rode the bikes on board, tied them up and waved goodbye to Seattle from the sundeck. 

The islands across the Puget Sound serve as both suburbs and vacation destinations for Seattle, and arriving late Sunday afternoon we were faced with tons of traffic on the way to Port Townsend. But this is the West Coast, so nobody cares that you're on a bicycle. They just take it as a fact of life instead a direct assault on their existence. And then the first day of pedaling on West Coast Tourrible began. 

This year, Travis got an odometer/speedometer. This is a great idea. It will allow me to know how far I've gone and how much further I have to go, and it will allow Travis to push me to work a little harder. My normal bike ride style is to let Travis ride way ahead and take my sweet time behind him. Following him means no pressure, but it also means I bike reeeeeaalllllyyyyy sllooooooooww. If Travis is behind me telling me that he wants to keep a 11 mph pace, then I pedal my little legs a faster and actually break a sweat. Luckily my personal trainer agreed to let us stop and pick wild blackberry snacks along the way.

We arrived in Port Townsend just after the sun set around 9pm.

When we made it to Travis' friend Haley's house, I was exhausted. Luckily Haley is a very considerate host and left us rice and beans out on the stove, which we ate very quietly since her husband Scott and two kids Kepler and Serenoa were already asleep. Those were the most amazing beans and rice I have had in a long time.

A weird thing happened that night: even though I was extremely tired, I couldn't sleep and my legs were so sore they were in shock. I got up to go to the bathroom and every muscle in my legs screamed in pain, and I got chills like I had a fever. The chills happened a few times, even though it wasn't that cold. I was fine the next day, but I guess the lesson is you don't push yourself as hard as you can go on your very first day of riding. Wait for day four. 

Seattle Magic

When we asked where we could buy some beer, one of the Polo Mansion dudes suggested we check out the Capitol Hill block party happening right down the street. As we walked down the hill, I heard a familiar sound, and Travis was like, "Wait is that Matt and Kim playing live?" Why yes, yes it was. The block party cost $50 to enter, so we passed and decided to instead just walk around and look at all the goddamn people. 

SO MANY people. 

There was the gay couple in matching leather kilts window shopping for large appliances. There were the multitudes of girls so excited about summertime their tits were just out. Like see-through-lacy-bralette-only out. There was the street brass band playing dance tunes for tips outside the festival. And of course we couldn't pass up the bike polo game happening across the street so Travis could watch some of the best players in the country play a casual but astounding game of pickup. 

We came across a fancy whiskey bar called Cannon, and I couldn't help myself, we had to try it. They had a host who informed us that we would have to wait a few minutes before we could go in. The wait time, though extremely pretentious, made me feel very important once we were finally allowed to enter. It's cool to see what other cities are doing in their bar scenes. This place used only metal straws, served me a drink with a Triple Sec foam, and our whiskey flight came with a list of tasting instructions eight items long. I felt even more important after getting tipsy there. 

The next day we started our Seattle checklist of things to do. First up: the Beacon Food Forest. Let's be honest though. It was a community garden with a section of perennial berries and some fruit trees. The permaculture people have done a great job of marketing small urban orchards as "food forests". What's very cool is that the local government in Seattle helped to fund the project, along with other urban gardening projects throughout the city. People have it very easy here.

Next up was a visit to the workplace of my personal hero, Dan Savage of the Savage Lovecast. If you haven't listened to his podcast or read his column, just go ahead and do it now. It will make you be a better girlfriend. Dan records his sex and relationship advice podcasts with Tech-Savvy At-Risk Youth on the 23rd floor of the Washington Mutual Tower in downtown Seattle, and I got real excited to be there even though I know from Dan's Instagram he's on vacation in Europe with his husband right now. I grammed my photo anyway AND LOOK WHAT F*CKING HAPPENED.

The day continued on to the EMP Museum, which happened to be right next to the Space Needle.

Two birds, one stone. The Experience Music Project Museum has exhibits about fantasy, sci fi, Nirvana, Jimi Hendrix, and sound labs where you can record yourself in a sound booth after you've learned to play rudimentary guitar or keyboards. Definitely a very cool visit.

Then Seattle did it again. As we emerged from the museum into the twilight, downtown Seattle was exploding with parade prep. Bedazzled parade floats surrounded the museum, and the overpasses echoed with the multiple drumlines practicing. We had to stick around for the annual Seafair Parade. The top three parade heroes were the Mexican dancing horses, the middle school marching band with the disabled piccolo player whose mother pushed her wheelchair in line, and the Korean dancing troop, complete with crazy masks, puffy hats, drums, and gongs. 

Finally hunger won and the urge to eat was greater than the urge to see what float was next. And besides, we had to at least try and sleep so we could get up at a decent hour and catch the ferry to Bainbridge Island and continue the journey on to Port Townsend.