"Brother, go find your brother!"
Tom Sawyer
Thursday, while most of the passengers went ashore to play in tidepools, I stayed on the ship. I was sleepy and cranky and still avoiding obnoxious people. Besides, I'd just gone tidepooling on Sucia.
Instead, I watched Nancy locate and extract a toothbrush that someone had dropped down the sink drain. It wasn't that easy to find the toothbrush. Boats aren't rectilinear, they're curved. Considering this, you won't be surprised to learn that there's lots of places where the pipes are made out of flexible plastic tubing--it has to flex to fit to the curve of the hull. Nancy and the toothbrush-dropper had got the pipe free and had peered into it with a flashlight. They couldn't tell whether or not the toothbrush was in there or not.
Nancy had given up on that section of pipe, was looking to take more stuff apart. The captain wanted her to check the flexible section some more before dismantling anything else. Finally, she put the flexible section of pipe back, picked up an old toothbrush (used for cleaning the bilge), and dropped it down the sink drain. We listened. It had come to rest in the flexible section of pipe.
Soon, all obstructions were removed from the pipe and the ship had an extra bilge-cleaning toothbrush for its stores. I helped to put stuff back together. The only people on board ship were people I got along with. I didn't talk.
I went out on a small craft for the first time in my life. I learned a lot about how sails and wind work together. On a big boat, it can be pretty easy to just look down at the line you're working with and ignore the sails. On a small craft, you get the big picture.
It was pretty painful, though. Ducking out of the way when the sail passed overhead, I bumped elbows on wooden things. Clambering around to trade places with the others on the craft, I bashed my knees.
I liked the people on the craft. But I didn't talk.
But it really wasn't until everyone else got back from the tidepools that I realized that I hadn't been talking. How far had I slipped into my no-talking strategy? Why hadn't I talked while the obnoxious people were off the boat?
During the walk back to the boat the day before--why hadn't I talked then?
This was starting to feel serious. This was going beyond normal measures for dealing with a hostile social situation.
It was at about this time that I knew I had about two or three months to get into a better career situation before my brain started spiralling down into something bad.
The more I see of men, the better I like my dog.
Blaise Pascal
Back in Deer Harbor, the crew again gently coaxed the passengers off of the ship so that they could pump out and refuel. This time, I was ready.
This time, I shunned my fellow passengers. I didn't head for the showers. Instead, I traipsed down the beach. There were some black labrador retrievers there. There was something to throw and fetch. I played with the dogs in the surf, wandering up and down the short beach, splashing in the water.
After a long while, I walked back to the dock area. I looked up. Some of my fellow passengers were leaning against the rail. Some of them just beamed at me. I guessed that they were dog lovers. To a dog lover, it's entirely natural that you might shun human company to run around with some dogs for a while. If you avoid the gaze of a dog lover and look at their dog instead, they won't think you anti-social.
I reminded myself that I wasn't a dog lover. I reminded myself that I liked people better than dogs, mostly. I reminded myself that there wasn't much of this trip left, that soon I'd be among friends again.
After dinner, I was t^Hfaking a nap on top of the deckhouse. The captain climbed up on the deckhouse and lay himself down. I had my cap over my face, was looking very asleep. "You know, I've been sailing this ship for years, and it never occurred to me to sleep up here," the captain said. He was talking to a crew member. They talked a little.
"So, Larry," he said, and then he asked me a question. It was in a conversational tone of voice. Not in a tone of voice you'd use with someone who you might think was asleep. I forget what the question was. I tugged the cap off of my face and answered. Maybe my schtick wasn't fooling anybody. Maybe people had just been leaving me alone.
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. _ _ _ _ . It was to be my last night on the ship. Thus, if dew saturated my blanket, there would be no lasting consequences--the next night, I'd be at my cousin's house, where there were plenty of dry blankets.
And so that night, I decided to sleep on the deck, under the stars. The Adventuress' locker had some extra waterproof blankets. I lay down one blanket on deck as a pad, wrapped myself up in my quilt, then spread out another waterproof blanket on top to keep off the worst of the dew.
As it turns out, I didn't sleep much. I was lying on my back. When my eyes were open, I was looking at a sky full of stars. Looking at such a thing, it required an act of will to close my eyes, and I was running short of willpower right then.
I looked up at the stars. Occasionally, I'd decide that I really needed to get some sleep. I'd close my eyes, try to sleep. Then I'd open my eyes--I'm not sure, but I think that I naturally open my eyes occasionally on my way to slumber--and then I'd see stars. I think I might have said, "Oooo."
I got, maybe, two hours of sleep.
The next morning, I was a wreck. The Adventuress motored into Friday Harbor. I stumbled through some good-byes, but really I just wanted to get the heck out of there--I had things to do. I was so tired, yet I still had to figure out how to get back to Seattle. Or rather, I had to figure out how to get someone with a functioning brain to help me get back to Seattle.
I called up Cousin Nancy and talked to her husband Cedric about possibilities. Theses sounded more complicated than anything I could handle. There was a ferry called the Victoria Clipper that didn't sound too complicated. I decided to learn about that.
At the Harbormaster's office, they pointed me at an area that they thought might sell tickets for the Clipper. Either they were wrong (which is a possibility), or I was too tired to understand their directions (which is likely), but I was unable to find a place to get more information about the Victoria Clipper. In retrospect, I could have tried a phone book, but I really wasn't thinking clearly enough to come up with a brilliant plan like that.
I called up my friend Ron and asked him if he would give me a ride from the Anacortes Ferry down to Seattle. He said okay.
I called up Cedric to let him know that I'd figured out a solution to my transportation problem. Before I got very far with my explanation, Cedric let me know that he'd made me a reservation on an airporter shuttlebus from Anacortes to Sea-Tac airport, whence from I'd have an easy time getting back to civilization. It was then that I realized that Cedric ruled. I tried to imagine how much mental energy and focus it must have taken to make that reservation, and failed. I thanked him.
I called Ron back to say that I wouldn't be needing that ride after all. Ron sounded pretty relieved.
The next leg of my journey involved getting on the Friday Harbor-Anacortes ferry so that I could get back to the mainland. I had been sitting around in kind of a stupor, and almost didn't notice when the ferry started loading pedestrians. I was just noticing that people were disappearing when I hopped up and started moving towards the gate.
"Larry?"
Blearily, I looked around. Who was calling my name? I looked at a bench, and then I saw him. I said, "Steven?"
What a pleasant surprise. Here I was in Friday Harbor, hundreds of miles from Berkeley, and I run into an ex-Geoworker. How nice to see a friendly face.
"Uhm, I'm Howard," he said. And, of course, he was right. I was reminded of just how tired I was.
I was going to have to work hard to smooth this one over. Carefully, I said, "Oh, of course you are! Howard Chen, of course. I only..."
I was going to make some kind of lame joke about how long we'd worked together, but Howard interrupted me: "Howard Lee." It was around this time that I started seriously considering fleeing to Alaska and hiding under a rock. I gave up on smoothing things over and started gushing out apologies and excuses.
That was when I noticed that there was no longer a line of people waiting to get on the ferry. "Uhm, but I have to go," I finished, and bolted for the gate, getting through just before it closed. Pretty good running for a lame-o, I thought.
Once I finally hooked up with cousin Nancy and Cedric (after some more lameness in which I didn't realize that Cedric was coming out to the airport to meet me at the airporter shuttlebus, so I caught a cab back to their place and... uhm, anyhow), things got a lot better. In their house, there were no horrible people hijacking conversations. Soon I was having a good Italian dinner at a restaurant in Wallingford and enjoying some good, if sleepy conversation.
Sanity is far too much better than the alternative, I thought to myself. I must be away from Geoworks by the end of November.
And I was.
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