April 26th--Seattle to Olympia

Most of last night, where i left off, was pretty good. Getting my baggage and bicycle went largely without incident, but i discovered when i opened one of my bags that my little honey bear had roared all over the inside of the bag. I was being shooed out of the station by an Amtrak agent, so i had no opportunity to deal with the problem then, so i just left it...in fact, i left it until the next day.

Matt had advised me that i may have to do a bit of walking after learning that i was traveling with my track bike. I assured him that i was running a ridiculously small gear and would likely have no problem, unless he was up at the top of Yesler or something, Yesler being a famously steep hill in Seattle where cycling races often occur for that very reason. "I'm at the top of Yesler," was his dead-pan response. "Oh...," i said. It was indeed a rather difficult climb. I had forgotten how steep Yesler was. Nevertheless, it still required no walking as it was after 11pm and there was no traffic, so i could do switchbacks across the road. His apartment was indeed very nearly right at the top of Yesler, and he was on the forth floor, so it was quite windy.

At his apartment building, he buzzed me up and let me in and graciously offered me a beer. The television was tuned to Comedy Central, so we watched a bit of the Daily Show, Steven Colbert and South Park while carrying on a mostly disjointed but pleasant conversation. During the conversation, it became clear that he had to get up at, like, 5:30am, and i began to feel bad for keeping him up, but then he offered me another beer and i was in a quandary, wondering if i should refuse his hospitality or stretch it, either option seeming rather rude. So, i took the easy route and accepted another beer. The appearance of some horrible programming on Comedy Central was the final cue that it was time to retire.

There was a guest room, so i actually had a bed of my own: a luxury i certainly hadn't expected.

In the morning, i set about to finally deal with the honey explosion in my bag. I rinsed all of the effected things off and washed out the inside of the bag. I was surprised that the damage was not so great. After that was done and everything was hanging up to dry, i took a shower, though i didn't have any shampoo of my own, and it seemed that Matt and his partner Claire had moved in so recently that they'd not yet gotten any, either. I managed with just my little bottle of Dr. Bronners (DILUTE! DILUTE! DILUTE!).

It was drizzly and cold-ish and windy outside, so my stuff wasn't drying very fast, so i decided to use their dryer when i discovered they had one (if you're reading this, Matt and Claire, i hope that's alright). In the meantime, noticing that Claire had left the internet music station on the computer, i decided to use their internet (again, i hope that's alright, guys) to track down what had happened to the pictures i had uploaded while in SF. I had tried to give Adrienne the link to it so she could check it out, but none of the URLs i gave her worked. I then tried to walk her through logging into my account to browse through the directory to find them. It turns out there was a different password than what i had remembered. Anyway, after some communication with the fine folks (Ben, that is) at Electric Embers, my web host (a wonderful, collectively-run operation), i figured it all out and sent the proper URLs to Adrienne.

By this time, my stuff was finally dry, so i packed up, got in touch with Andrew (whose phone does not play well with mine, despite the fact that i have Nextel and he has Sprint--ostensibly the same company at this point) and figured out the ferry schedules to and from Vashon Island. He had advised me to take the ferry from West Seattle (Fauntleroy, specifically) to Vashon Island, ride down to the other end of the island and then take the ferry to Tacoma (Deception Point, specifically). This struck me as a wonderful idea.

I finished packing up and left to go find some food. Initially, i had wanted to go by the Atlas to see if it still existed. It was a small restaurant that had great vegan biscuits and gravy. However, i realized i was just a few blocks from the house i used to live in in Seattle, over a decade ago, so i decided to ride by and see what had become of it. Not a whole lot, as it turns out. The same rhododendron bush was there in the yard, though i was surprised to find a "Posted: No Trespassing" sign above the door. We had never had any problems there with trespassers, despite it being less than a block from Juvie, other than the time that a stray chicken wandered onto our doorstep.

After stopping by there, i remembered all the wonderful Ethiopian food right in the neighborhood, so i decided to save some time and have Ethiopian instead of going to the Atlas. Unfortunately, they were all closed, so i instead went to a new Haitian restaurant that was right next to the nearest Ethiopian restaurant. It was a bit on the pricey side, but i decided to try it out of curiosity. I'm glad i did because the food was excellent, and the one guy that seemed to be there (i'm sure there were others in the kitchen) kept bringing me more food, all of it excellent. Sitting there enjoying a wonderful lunch and zoning out on the CSI-type show on the boob tube at the bar, i was momentarily sad that i no longer lived in the neighborhood to enjoy this place.

As he had only charged me for the smallish entree that i had ordered, i left a substantial tip and waddled out of the restaurant, struggling to mount my bloated self on my bicycle and get out of town. It was now about 1pm. I rode down to the waterfront and took Alaskan Way all the way to the road to West Seattle.

In West Seattle, i caught sight of a sign for a barber shop and, having been sick of the mop on my head for weeks now, decided to stop and get a trim. This was a pleasant experience. The guy running the shop had that vaguely Skandahoovian intonation i associate more with Ballard than West Seattle, and he had all sorts of union paraphenalia and ancient political buttons hanging up about the place. He asked about my travels and, after that conversation had run its course, i asked about his, having seen his sign announcing which days he was away, including Spring and Fall vacations. He said he had gone down to Las Vegas and driven around Arizona. This sparked a conversation about the current drought down there, and then about the insanity of the enormous scale of developments in desert communities in the southwest. I shared my story of traveling through California Valley and the failed development there, and he talked of his little brother who has become involved in real estate speculation and has bought property down in that area. His estimation was that this venture was not going so well, and i had to agree. We parted ways and he asked if his prices were cheap compared to those in California and i replied that they were pretty much exactly the same. He was a bit surprised by this.

By now, it was after 2pm and i was seriously lagging in getting myself to Olympia. I was still feeling a bit bloated and sluggish, but i made my way to Fauntleroy and purchased my ticket: $4.20 plus $1.00 surcharge for the bike. I waited about 30 minutes for the ferry and went on first, with the passengers, as is customary. The ride was short, but pleasant and scenic. Upon disembarking, i remembered the steep climbs that invariably greet one after reaching land. I climbed up that hill and rode the 13-or-so miles to the other end of the island. I stopped in the town of Vashon and mailed my water filter back home, figuring i would probably have no need for it. The scenery was mostly unremarkable, except for the part where the road hugged the coastline along the bay on the eastern side of the island.

Seattle's grid of numbered streets was continued onto the completely separate land mass of Vashon Island, a quirk of Washington civil engineering that never ceases to confound me.

I arrived at Tahlequah, at the southern tip of the island, with about 20 minutes to spare before the next ferry. There was no charge for the ferry as fares are collected only going to the island, but not upon leaving it. This ferry ride was even shorter than the last, though i did have enough time to check out some of the historical photographs from Deception Point.

The ride through (or more exactly, around) Tacoma was similarly unremarkable, again except for where the road, Grandview, provided a view of the coastline and then dipped into Chambers Creek. From there, the road followed the coastline through Steilacoom, with an active railroad between the road and the shore. The route turned left and inland at the ferry terminal, following the Steilacoom-DuPont Hwy through Fort Lewis. The community of DuPont was rather vexing as i rode through. It seemed to me that it was a sort of company-town for the Intel plant located there.

After passing through DuPont, the only way through to Olympia was on I-5. I was surprised to find that I-5 was closed to "pedestrians and hitchhikers" (and i struggled to imagine a hitchhiker that would not also be a pedestrian) but not to cyclists. I rode on I-5 a couple exits and a few miles, over the Nisqually river into the town of Nisqually, where Martin Way ends at the highway. I had arranged with Andrew to call him from Nisqually so he could have some advance notice. Wanting to take advantage of my momentum, i climbed the hill up out of the Nisqually Basin before calling and, after leaving a message, rode down Martin Way the last 8 miles into Olympia.

Andrew had apparently not gotten the message as he was somewhat surprised to hear from me out in front of his apartment. He was only a couple blocks away, so he arrived quickly and explained that his loose pants prevented him from noticing the vibrating of his phone.

I asked if he had just come from work, and he responded that, no, he had just been at church. He explained it in a sort of way (perhaps a bit defensive in hindsight) that it seemed that he was at this church doing outreach work for the cooperative development nonprofit where he is employed. As the evening wore on, punctuated by Thai food procured from a place with an almost embarassingly happy Buddah statue and eaten on the waterfront, however, he began referring to it as "my church," which rather surprised me, especially since the church isn't particularly liberal or progressive: it was a Cavalry church. While he's clearly not down with a lot of their views on God, he has been reading his Bible, culling from it themes of horizontal, non-hierarchical methods of social organization. And while it would be traditional for someone with an anarchist background to undertake these sorts of studies in order to attempt to convince congregations of the folly of their ways, he mentioned that many of the congregations he's visited have already done much in the way of taking to heart the communalism of early christianity, by doing away with previous hierarchies, even in some of the most "conservative" congregations. He described it, in fact, as a "movement" within evangelical christianity. It made me think of One Punk Under God, a cable television series i came across on the Sundance Network, which follows around the son of fallen televanglists Jim and Tammy Fae Bakker. The son is a punk, of sorts, with tattoos and piercings and a sort of DIY ethic. Andrew mentioned one Sunday service in which a punk christian band came to play.

The whole thing is very strange to me, and i tried to keep an open mind about it, despite my orthodox notion that anarchism and non-hierarchical social organization are irreconcilable with Christianity, no matter how communalist its congregation. I've moved farther away in recent years from agnosticism and toward an atheism that is outright antagonistic toward religion or spiritualism.

Andrew, on the other hand, seems to have gone in the opposite direction, having become superstitious to an amazing extent. Or, perhaps he was always so superstitious and i never found it of particular note because for much of the time when we were hanging out together in Santa Cruz, i considered myself pagan and engaged in (and organized) pagan rituals regularly. And yet, it is not some vulgar type of superstition: i doubt Andrew would be at all concerned if a black cat crossed his path. It has more to do with syncronicity, and mindfulness of a tendency of certain signs and symbols to aggregate with specific meanings.

It still all strikes me as rather hoakie, and not just because i've since gone in favor of Freud over Jung, but it did force me to consider what i missed in ritual, and what i could gain from a different kind of mindfulness. I imagine, for example, that faced with a totally different world, when i move to Egypt, i will have to throw out many of my preconceived notions of what the "rules" are. Not just the obvious cultural differences, but the more subtle things that one knows about the world one lives in without knowing that one knows them, and, hence, also without knowing to what extent they will be inadequate to a totally different place. I'll have to be open-minded enough to recognize patterns of signs and significance that would make no sense in my current world, and might, indeed, seem rather hoakie or superstitious at first glance.