In which Scarlet drives blind... Lea confronts her inner nature... Larry walks into things... Lea triumphs... Piaw extols the virtues of his Palm Pilot and his friend... Epilogue...
Anacortes 1998 Aug 08 Saturday
But now we had a problem: Scarlet was barely able to see, and it was pretty much illegal for her to drive. But she didn't trust me with her stick shift car (despite my much vaunted experience driving stick-shift in France), so she used the cell phone to call in an appointment at the optician's near Seattle, and I got into the car with her (Larry got into the car with Lea), and off we went.
Being the seeing-eye dog for a myopic person who's driving is an experience. I read signs to her, watched for traffic, and looked for intersections. A day without glasses had actually helped, since there was no adjustment period for her while she learnt to sight read. Once on the freeway, we were in much better shape, since the road was straight, there wasn't much traffic, and I was used to spotting for my brothers when we drove, since my brothers and I tend to drive that way anyway.
Lea and I talked in the car. I talked about living close to UCSF, a medical school. I talked about the time I got a call from Piaw. Danielle Berry (Piaw's friend, world-famous game designer, nice lady) was in the UCSF hospital for some scary procedure. She had lung cancer, had months to live, and every so often was trying some scary procedure or other. Piaw was going to visit her, and wanted to know if I'd go along to help him find his way around the hospital. I'd been in the hospital area of UCSF maybe once, but hearing Piaw on the other end of that phone line made me think that maybe he could use a calm person around.
This struck a chord with Lea. When she'd been young a friend of hers had asked her to accompany her for a hospital visit--with some girl she didn't even know. The girl had just finished open-heart surgery, had a massive wound. Lea watched the road as she asked "Why did she want me along?"
I think my jaw might have fallen open. I looked at her. Didn't she notice? You might have noticed. Go back and re-read this whole travelogue. Look for each of the blow-ups. Do you notice who never gets upset? I gabbled, "Hey, if I was going on a hospital visit and I was all nervous, you are exactly the kind of friend I'd bring along." She looked kind of sad at that, damned by her sanity.
Lea said that she'd taken a bicycling class in high school. After the last day of class, she'd ridden her bike home, had an accident, and ended up with a whole lot of road-rash on her back. She'd stumbled into the house with a ripped-up back, covered with blood. Her mom had freaked out, had said, "Wait 'til your father gets home!" Not in the sense of "Your father's going to be mad," but in the sense of "I'm too freaked out to clean you up, but your dad will be able to handle this." I think I said something understanding like, "Jeez, it's a good thing she's not the med student." Her dad had ended up picking the gravel out of her back. Perhaps her dad is one of those people who you bring with you to the hospital.
Seattle
We reached the shopping center where the optician's was without any major incidents, and Scarlet ran in to her appointment. I took the opportunity to fix up my glasses and to replace the scratched lenses (which had happened while the boat was heeling over the day before). Lea and Larry arrived, and when Scarlet came back out with her prescription it was too late for her to get a pair of glasses that day, so she opted to go home to her spare pair, but not before we ate some lunch. Then a mad scramble to get home, get cleaned up, and dinner.
I was such a zombie. Walking through the mall, I walked into a column, bruising my shoulder. Twice (once each shoulder). I was able to wolf down one and a half food-court gardenburgers before I realized how bad they tasted. I was so looking forward to getting back to the house, to showering, to dinner, to bed.
Back at the house, Scarlet dug up her old pair of spare glasses. She held them up, scowled at the frames. "I can't believe these things are so fucking dorky," she said. I looked at them, did a double take, held up my own, nearly identical glasses. "Hey, fuck you, lady," I observed.
I was re-packing, not listening to the others figure out where we were going to have dinner. All of the sudden, people started to excitedly jabber about something. I looked up. Piaw and Scarlet were looking at Lea, saying that something was "great!" What could it be? "Hey, did you pass the board exams?" "Yeah." Everyone was looking at everyone else, grinning like idiots.
I'm going to end my story before its ending. I'm not going to talk about dinner. I'm not going to talk about spending another night un-allergic to cats, nor the cat who sneezed on me the next morning. I'm not going to talk about lunching with Tyrie, rushing to the airport, not going to Cow Chip Cookies, missing my plane, spending four hours in the Seattle airport, thinking, "Maybe I'm waiting four hours for the next flight, but it's still faster than the train;" I'm going to leave all that out.
Because if I end my story right here, you see, then the story illustrates something. It shows that every so often, you can take off for a week or so, and maybe when you get back, you'll find that something that you set in motion before your departure will have turned out well. Maybe you find out that you passed the board exams or something.
Piaw still has some worthwhile things to say, though.
We did not recognized each other when we had all gotten out of the showers. We had all tanned darker during the sail trip. We had not seen each other cleaned up for days, and the feeling of clean clothes was something quite pleasurable by itself, and the anticipation of good food almost too much to bear. We walked down to the restaurant like close friends out for a night on the town. The preceding days had given us an easy companionship that made the night seem friendly, easy, and warm. (After all that talk about tension on the boat, you'd think that I'm making this up. That's what happened on the last trip too.)
Seattle 1998 Aug 09 Sunday
I woke up at 8:00am, and proceeded to clean and pack everything up in preparation for returning home. I was due to meet Tyrie, an old classmate of mine at the University of Washington for breakfast. Tyrie was one of those brilliant students who graduated from college when she was 19. She had been involved in a car accident last year, which gave her a head injury which effectively disabled her. I hadn't seen her since before her disablement, so this was a good time to catch-up.
I called her at 9 in the morning, waking her up, to tell her we had to be there at 10, since Larry's plane was at 12:00. That didn't leave us very much time at all, so we had to move things along fairly quickly. We arrived at her place exactly at 10 (thanks to the directions on my Palm Pilot --- in previous years, I would have just kept the directions on a piece of paper and promptly lose it on the boat), and then spent 20 minutes hunting around for a place that would serve breakfast.
Breakfast was a lively conversation. Tyrie was very happy, and not as depressed as she seemed to be when I last spoke to her via e-mail. Larry and Scarlet both spoke to her, learning about her family and just generally having a good time. I really had been too long since I saw Tyrie. She hadn't changed much despite her disability, and her strength of character in dealing with her disability was still something I found admirable. After breakfast, we rushed to put Tyrie back in her home, and then towards the airport.
Larry rushed in, and after several failures screwing around with trying to get checked in, I told him to dive straight for the gate. I then a got myself checked in and went back out to Scarlet. We went off to pick out eye glasses for her. We went through several pairs, with me favoring glasses that looked like her old pair, and her trying out various different pairs. Men and women are different about glasses. I go for maximum coverage, to prevent stuff from getting into my eyes while cycling, and she goes for fashion. But I guess the results aren't all that different. She doesn't get that much dirt into her eyes, and my glasses don't look that bad on me.
The time came, and she took me back to the airport. We hug quickly and I dash for the gate to get my film hand-checked. On my way to my gate Larry calls out to me. "Oops. I'm sorry you missed your plane..." He looked glum. "You better get on yours," he said, pointing at my gate, where the last few persons were boarding.
It was hard getting back to work. The mad scramble, the deadlines, the bustle. It makes one understand why people would buy a boat, get on it, and sail off for years and not come back. But that's ok. I'm already planning the next trip, day dreaming between compiles.
You know, when I started this trip I wasn't sure if I'd enjoy sailing after 7 days of doing nothing but sailing. But you know what, I did. And a lot of it was the crew. This crew was so jelled that I never had to really give an order. Sometimes by the time I thought of it someone had already anticipated the order and executed. I was a very pampered skipper, and if I get another crew this good again, it would be my blessing. As one of my friends once said, I'm an incredibly lucky guy.
Piaw writes:
| Total distance: | approximately 87 NM |
| Gas burnt: | approximately $7 of diesel |
| Boat costs: | $1600 (including tax and insurance) |
| Amount of film: | 14 rolls (8 rolls Sensia II, 6 rolls Velvia) |
| Glasses: | 1 pair glasses lost, 1 pair glasses broken |
| Food: | Lots of it, mostly in the form of Tim's Cascade Sea Salt potato chips |
| ^ |