Nothing much going on
Writing a blog has a few challenges: how to find interesting topics to cover, how to take, choose and edit photos, how to present and solve a problem, how to format pages so they invite the reader to stay a little while and hear your voice, and of course, how to find something to write when you don’t have anything to write about.
Right now, there’s nothing to write about. No home improvement, no big changes, no nothing. When there’s nothing to do, go somewhere else and find something interesting.
I used my frequent flyer miles and went to Seattle last week just to get away from the house, work and the cats. Even though Colorado had been enduring some below zero weather, it was colder in Seattle and I ended up having to go to a Columbia store and buy a jacket just so I wouldn’t have to spend my whole trip in a car with the heater going full blast. Columbia is an incredible product and if you’re cold, go there.
While in Seattle I stayed at a duplex I saw on the VRBO website. VRBO stands for “vacation rentals by owner” and people put their homes on the website and you can book their property for just about any length of stay. I stayed in the bottom half of a home in West Seattle, just a few blocks from where I used to live just off 60th Avenue SW. The rental was very nice, complete with kitchen, dining room, big family room adorned with a huge big screen TV and plenty of books and games. Mostly, I spent time looking out the huge picture window that had an almost unobstructed view of Puget Sound as it heads south towards Tacoma.
While there I got to see a pod of killer whales, I ate prawns the size of my hand at my favorite West Seattle seafood place and I walked the beaches. I returned to a filthy but magical old haunt, the Pike Place Market. When I lived there I would take the bus down there each Saturday and buy apples, get a cinnamon roll from the Three Sisters Bakery and watch the Communists protest American politics and most times they got their asses beat by people who didn’t really care about American politics but had a little time on their hands.
I spent time in Uwajimaya’s, an oriental-focused market in the International District. Fish fill huge tanks and you can pick your dinner while it’s still swimming. The tank leaks, so be careful not to slip. You can buy all manner of unfamiliar vegetables and products whose labels contain only characters, not letters. It’s cool. You can peruse the bookstore that has more books written in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Hmong and many other dialects I’ll never know. I bought some small blank notebooks and fountain pens and looked at volumes about Zen philosophy and true stories of Samurai bravery and tactical strategy. The biggest section contains books called “manga” that are cartoon-picture novels that cover every topic from Hello Kitty to anal sex. I also bought a Chinese astrology book for 2014 that tells me I’m in for a very successful year but I need to take care of my health because fire and metal will influence me this year. That fire part worries me.
Of course I went out to Kingston Cemetery to see my dad, uncle and grandmother. Their graves are a little overgrown and I try to go out there each year to say hi, trim them up a bit and tell them all the news about people they never met. It’s worth a $27 ferry ride since I usually go out to Point No Point lighthouse in Hansville and walk along the beach.
The Point No Point resort used to be a thriving fishing destination and each morning small numbered motor boats would roll on a makeshift slide into the water and then motor out for a day’s fishing. Armed with little more than fishing poles, 50-pound test line, Spam and several six-packs, it was the good life for hundreds of fishermen. Few, if any of them wore life vests because back then people were smart enough to not be stupid enough to get themselves killed. After they returned triumphant from the day’s ventures, you never wanted to stand under the dock after the fishermen came back or else you’d get covered with pinkish fish guts thrown over the railing of the dock.
Small cabins painted white with green trim dotted the a portion of the resort and you could rent them for the weekend. My parents would take me there each year though I never understood the attraction; though dad loved to fish he never did. It was much like his love of airplanes and airports. Though he could fly, he would go to the small local airports and talk to the pilots at the customary airport luncheon counters but would never go up in a plane. He’d rather talk about than catch or fly.
Food at the little cabins was simple fare that was packed in baskets by my mom. I remember eating Campbell’s vegetable soup and crackers and having rolls with salami for lunch or dinner and in the evening my dad would take me over to the small restaurant/tackle shop there and buy me an orange pop from one of those old metal pop boxes with the heavy lid and inside were a jumble of pop-bottle tops at attention, waiting to be chosen. Evenings were spent watching the sunset while I sat on a treacherously dangerous swingset as sand fleas tickled my legs or walking along the beach looking for pieces of colored glass worn smooth by the sand and waves, something now extinct with the popularity of plastic and the advent of recycling but back then it was treasure. The comforting light from the Point No Point Lighthouse provided perfect ambiance, accompanied by the soulful foghorn when the marine fog rolled in. It was idyllic.
The resort is now gone, the dock is decayed and the rails for the slide are rusted and frail. The little 500-square-foot cabins were up for sale last year and you could bid and buy and cart them away. Last week most of the cabins were still on the property but were shoved together in a sad pile of unwanted toys at the end of a not-so-successful garage sale.
The lighthouse is still there but is automated. The old keeper’s cottage can be rented out and that weekend it was a group of youthful cyclists who were readying a grill for dinner on the beach where once a keeper and his family looked through the windows and contemplated the skies. Memories of those people are in my head, back in the days when the light had streams of rust trailing down the white paint and the shiny Fresnell lens upstaged the dingy light house. On, off, long. short was its aged message, now killed off by GPS. It’s more tradition than anything and painted and cared for, the light is a showpiece rather than a workhorse.
Back home again, it’s nice to be here, comforted by routine, the pace of cleaning up cat hair and finding new recipes for the Saturday potluck at work. In my imagination, I walk through the Pike Market with its dead fishy smelly mixing with the smell of Three Sisters Bakery and the sounds of bumbershooters hawking their talents. I walk on the beach at West Seattle and look out to the water for boats or fins and in West Seattle for real estate. I hear the sound of the ferry boats and see the signs in the International District that are in both English and I assume, Chinese.
After three days, I came home, feeling better about the Bar B even though I didn’t get to do all the things I wanted to do such as go out to Snoqualmie Falls and visit my aunt in Port Angeles. It’s my routine and Seattle is my home although I can’t imagine living anywhere else than Colorado.
Like I said. Nothing much going on.