At Least I Didn't Try To Guess Her Weight

I could tell as she placed the coffee on the table and her hands shook a little, that she was pretty new to waiting on tables. She was an attractive young woman, with medium length dark hair with bangs and a little girl voice. I estimated her to be in the her mid twenties we were her only table. In fact, we were the only customers at the Grill right then. Sitting in the outdoor cafe of this Golf resort in the middle of nowhere in Idaho. It's truly hard to describe the hours of empty country roads we drove to get there, but about 20 years ago, some investor thought this was a good idea, to put a golf course, fancy houses and some timeshare condos far away from anything. Thank God for my GPS and my absolute belief that it could find the place.
As our waitress backed away from the table, I wondered about this girl and how different her life must be than mine. Did she live on some large farm and feed the horses and cows before she came to work each day? How could she seem so innocent having lived the hard life one would have to live around here? I started thinking along the lines of Gilbert Grape and the urban kid trapped in the hick town. I sat back in the chair and enjoyed the sun setting over the mountains and thought how strange it must be to go each day from this place to some old falling down shack of a house to an abusive father and five brothers and sisters, and a mother that could do nothing but find fault. It must be hard on this girl that was trying to earn enough money to get a bus ticket out of the country and into the world of MTV.
Finally, my wife broke down and asked her about where she lived and I found that she was actually from San Diego, and just got out of the Marines where she had been a jet mechanic. She and her boyfriend had come here to spend the summer with his grandfather while she saved enough money to go back to college.
I sat back and pondered the great meal and decent coffee and my great insight into human beings. Yes, there is a lot you can know from just looking at a person......

I Guess You Had To Be There

This needs to be told, but I have a funny feeling that it will be a long time before I find the incident humorous. Even the ones most injured at the time are laughing about it, but somehow I can't.
It started with the best of intentions. My wife's knee had been acting up and a Cortizone shot from her doctor only made things worse. On the day before we left on our journey, we had gone to an emergency clinic to get her knee drained and there was the question of having a vacation at all. She was determined, and that was how we happened to be leaving the Seattle airport with her in the wheelchair, piled high with our bags and me learning what it is like to be with a handicapped person. It was going to be a trip of riding in the car and looking for places without steps. That was okay and I seemed to be getting the hang of having to tilt the chair back to go over bumps. I miscalculated on one thing though. In order to save a little time and energy, I got us on a "people-mover" which is a long flat escalator kind of thing. About halfway down it, she turned and said, "I don't think you are supposed to have wheelchairs on these things." Panic started to well up in my head, but I looked ahead and saw the looming lip at the end of the mover. All I had to do was to tilt the chair way back and sort of pop a wheelie over the lip. I knew it could be done, if I could time it just right. Just like in the movies, time seemed to slow down. I watched the lip of the mover get closer and closer and tilted the chair back until the wheels were at least 2 inches in the air. The next step would be critical, but I hit the lip and instead the wheels froze as if the brake was on. There seemed to be a slight pause and the wheelchair went sideways, suitcases in the air and she pitched forward. I worried about her fall and the wheelchair for only a moment, and then I learned the next thing about people movers: Everything most go forward. I went on top of the wheelchair and her Mom and Dad went on top of that. I started to get up and then saw a crowd of people trying to walk backwards on the mover to get away from the pileup, and I scrambled to get our stuff out of the way. We were all stunned and folks were coming from everywhere to see if we were okay.
We survived it, and all that is left is a big black bruise on her Dad's leg and she is walking better than before we left on the trip. They are all laughing about the big adventure that started our trip, but to me it is one more reminder about how suddenly things can go very bad.

The Last Thing I Thought I Would Ever See Here

So I saw them throw the fish at the Pike Place Fish Market, and I ate fish tacos at a really good eatery in the waterfront, but the real reason I was on this trip was to get off the grid, and that was gonna be tougher than I thought. The traffic in Seattle was not as bad as a I feared, but I did get stuck because of an accident during rush hour. It ended up being over 4 hours driving to Port Angeles, but as in most cases, the journey was as important as the destination. The drive was amazing, with snow-capped mountains on my left, giant bridges to cross, beautiful dark blue water, and the bright green permanent Christmas trees everywhere. I was doing what most people don't do. I was driving all around the water instead of taking the long ferry across to Victoria, Canada. I wanted to see the countryside and this was the perfect way to do it. The wildest part of the ride was crossing the bridge to Bainbridge. the wind was kicking up harder than I have seen it outside of a hurricane and at times a wave would splash up onto the bridge itself. I had both hands firmly on the wheel, hoping I was going to make it across. I then drove through nothing but woods for hours, hoping that I had the gas to make it back out of here. Around 8:30 pm, I was still driving and it was daylight as if it was 3 in the afternoon back home. I had made it to Port Angeles and found the ferry I would take the next morning. I found a passable hotel room and was steered to the restaurant next door, which was great. I had no reason to expect anything at all, but the waitress made sure she earned one of the best tips I have ever given, and I was one happy guy. I had made it! I was at the farthest tip of the Olympic penninsula. I was so far out, that I bet most folks that live in Seattle have never made it here. This was truly off the beaten path and I marvelled at that as I stood and stretched back, looking once more at the Olympic mountains with their snow and clouds.
That is when a silver Chevy Suburban drove by with surfboards on the roof...

Having Slept In Seattle

I'm writing from the opposite place of where I reside. Having recently left the steaming hellhole called Orlando, that place where t-shirts, shorts and flip-flips should be required wearing (and that is for in-doors work), I flew northwestward to the land where the sun never shines and the temperature is always like an air conditioned office. Of course I have been fortunate enough to hit this city on a beautiful, sunny day and everyone here is more than pleasant. From convenience store, to rental car, to hotel, everyone acts like, "I made it here, what more could I ask for?". I'm a little skeptical that these attitudes can prevail over a winter of gray skies and driveling rain, but for this trip, I would like to pretend that it is always like this in Nirvana, I mean Seattle.
The first impression I got from downtown is that everything looks old and really cool. Made me wish I had some dreadlocks and an old beat-up guitar and could stand on the street corner and play. Always present in the background is the elegant Mount Rainier, which unfortunately to me stands for a beer can. When I was a kid, there was some brand of beer that had a picture of Mount Rainier on the can, and dang it, that Mountain does look just like the one on that beer can.
The goal of this trip is for me to get as peaceful as this place. So far, I have only totally freaked out about 3 times, but that was getting here, not being here....

What The Great Dane Lady Thought

She had that look, as if she was able to transport Rodeo Dr into our small town. They built all of these fancy McMansions around us, the Beverly Hillbillies, and she was in her extra large Coach sunglasses, bleach blond hair, perfect body in a sports bra, running shorts and the leash on the Great Dane. One of the new McMansion occupants. You could guess her age, but you would be wrong. She was coming towards us on the sidewalk, upper lip already starting to curl as if she just stepped in something her dog might have left behind. Somehow I felt that look was for the three of us. There was the old bald-headed guy with no shirt and a big plastic garbage can with a nappy old towel hanging out, his petite wife, who was giving directions and curling her lip back at the blond, and the young carefree red-headed 20-something daughter, who wore clothes as an afterthought. The three of us were on a mission of great import, but I had the feeling that the blond could never understand. She could give money to the homeless, she could attend a ball to raise money for endangered species, but could she do this? Because, in that large garbage can, was a very large soft-shelled turtle that had somehow crawled up from the lake, looking for a place to lay eggs. She must have gone too far and tunneled under too many fences, and by the time we found her in our backyard she was trapped and worn out.
The only thing funnier than the looks between us and the Great Dane woman, was the scene of the three of us trying to capture a large snapping turtle. We did it though, and the bravest of us turned out to be the redhead, who figured that if you put a towel over the head of the turtle, she couldn't see to bite you. Once she was in the garbage can, it was just a 10 minute walk down the street to the canal, we we set her free, back in the water where she belonged.
I can only surmise what the blond would have thought if she knew there was a giant turtle in the garbage can..turtle stew for the neighbor's supper?

Appearances

Sometimes there is satisfaction in the smallest of things. Even though it wasn't that hot, a bit of sweat was lining up on my forehead, any minute threatening to cascade down my face. I was concentrating and feeling that good feeling of doing good on several levels at once. I was sitting in my truck in the parking lot of a strip mall while my wife and daughter were shopping in that black hole of a place; the Dollar Store. Many wasted hours of my life have been spent in those stores, trying to not look like a shoplifter while my wife endlessly compared and pondered items for her class at school. The combination of wife and daughter in the store at the same time meant I needed to find something useful to do, and today I really did it. I had some problem interior pieces in my truck. Things installed with permanent glue that the maker said could not be removed any way at all. But, me armed with with Titanium Gerber hunting knife and plenty of time to kill, proved them wrong. Slowly and carefully, I bore down on the serated blade against the rubbery plastic, feeling much the same feeling as deboning a fish. Yes, I was getting the impossible done, and I was paying the sweat no mind as I felt the pleasure of using my time in the the best possible manner.
There was a gleam in my eye as I looked up to see my daughter standing there outside my truck, staring at the shaved-head old man, sweating, shiny eyes, and a big hunting knife in his hand.
"Dad, what are you doing? You ARE the kind of person you warned me about!"

UP

We went to see UP (the animated movie) and it started off badly...they raised the price again at the movies and even with my discount, I was choking on the cost. We get there just in time and find easy seating, but where's our 3-d glasses? We are quickly clued in that the 3-d version is next door and started 20 minutes ago...fortunately that was 20 minutes of previews and the short film before...unfortunately the only 3 seats left in the theater were in the upper left corner. No matter....all of this left my mind by the first 5 minutes of the movie. All I can say is this is the best movie I have seen this year. I don't know if it hits me differently than the young children in the audience, but the story and pacing was so right on that I was fully involved the whole time.
The previews gave me almost no real idea of what was coming. The movie is not really that funny all the time, more sentimental than anything. The attention to detail was what grabbed me. There was a mantelpiece in the old man's house and at one point in the story they mention that he bought plane tickets to South America for himself and his wife that they never got to use. Later on, you can spot the tickets on the mantle...(oops, got something in my eye just now).
It's worth it to go to the theater, and it's worth it to see it in 3-d....