Perils of Caffeine in the Evening

The Electric Rosary album of the Seattle jazz/funk trio The Living Daylights.  They’re comprised of a drummer, bass and saxophone.  We heard them last Saturday night at the Tractor Tavern in Ballard, where they played two high-energy sets.  We first encountered them about 4 years ago, and seldom miss a chance to see them.  We first saw their sax player, Jessica Lurie, as a member of the Billy Tipton Memorial Saxophone Quartet at Bumbershoot.  Later, my wife heard a cut from Living Daylights’ 500-pound Cat album on KCMU (now KEXP) and remembered her.  We bought the CD and got to see them live a bit later at the Break Room (now Chop Suey), and were hooked.  Jessica probably weighs 110 pounds soaking wet, but plays alto and tenor sax with a huge sound.  The drummer appears to be borderline ADD, and bears striking resemblance to the Muppets’ drummer “Animal”. 

They toured pretty hard for a couple years trying to break into the next level, including teaming with Bill Frisell on Rosary (not a particularly good match - he doesn’t have their energy, and basically just couldn’t keep up), but it seems they’ve given up on it now, and only appear together every couple months or so.  Catch them if you can - they’re a real treat.

I’ve been blog-blocked this week, daunted by a fixation that the next post would have to be a detailed recounting of my Baja trip, a task that I have not had the energy to mount as yet.  While in Baja, I was completely out of contact, either by cell phone or computer, with work, the first vacation I believe I’ve had where I’ve not done at least some work.  So, I’ve been paying for that this week.  I took some notes on my Palm in Baja just to keep the chronology straight, so I will tell some tales as I wind down the next two weeks - maybe I can figure out how to use the “stories” feature of the Abuserland software.

I’m back from my 9-day kayak/mountain bike trip in Baja.  While I decompress and sort through about 450 photos and a bunch of dirty, soggy gear, here are a few snapshots of the trip.

I got home Thursday night, and had to fly off to Milwaukee Sunday, so I’m a bit disoriented right now, trying to quit using pidgin (and sometimes hilariously inaccurate) Spanish to order coffee and food and ask directions. 

Our “luxury” hotel in Loreto.

Lunch stop on a beach on Isla San Carmen

Sunrise over our campsite on Isla San Carmen

Beach on Isla Danzante

It occurs to me that I haven’t covered our itinerary in Baja.  Tomorrow, we’ll fly from Seattle to Phoenix to Hermosillo (on the mainland) to Loreto, on the Baja coast of the Sea of Cortez.  Our leader is acquainted with the owners of a hotel in Loreto, and we’ll stage our stuff there and stay there Tuesday night.  On Wednesday, we’ll fit out our rented kayaks and head for Isla Carmen, one of a group of islands in the Sea of Cortez that comprise a national park.  We’ll base camp there and do day trips for a couple of days, then move to a couple of other campsites.  We’ll be on the water for 5 - 6 days in all.  Then it’s back to Loreto for a couple days of mountain biking, then back to Seattle.

We’re supposed to pick Spanish nicknames.  I’ve been mulling this over for several days.  “El Jefe” is a non-starter, a he’ll be the guy any potential abdcutors will execute first.  “El Guapo” is out, too, and not for the most obvious reason (false advertising) - he’s the first one they’ll violate repeatedly with specially textured pinatas.  I think I’ve settled on “Mojito” - a trendy drunk, a modicum of mojo.

Got the passport - everything went swimmingly.  It has been a few years since I’ve been inside a federal office.  Since Oklahoma City, they’ve been scanning everyone at the door similar to when you board an airplane.  I was also taken aback by the ubiquity of George W’s mugshot.  Since I don’t watch TV news, I’m probably more familiar with George W’s face as presented by syndicated cartoonists than I am with actual photographs.  The poor devils in the Passport office were thrice cursed, having to work under the gaze of the unholy trinity of GW, Cheney and Powell.  I’d probably crack.

Also hadn’t been downtown in daylight for some time.  Walked through the Pike Place Market and up First Avenue (no low-flying fish today), home to the venerable strip club The Lusty Lady.  I’ve never been inside the club (my wife reads this sometimes), but they’re most renowned for their two-sided theatre-like marquee on the street that always has some sort of ribald snippet.  For the holiday,  on one side, it read, “Our birds come with no dressing”;  on the other, “Happy Spanksgiving”.

With 12 hours to go before my airport shuttle arrives, I’m starting to get serious about putting stuff in the two duffel bags I’m checking through.

I know I wasn’t supposed to shop on Friday, and I was strongly drawn to participate in Buy Nothing Day, but the fact is that, as usual, I was up against the wall preparing for a trip, and I spent a lot of Friday at REI throwing stuff into a cart getting ready for MY KAYAK TRIP TO BAJA ON TUESDAY!!!!!!!

I’ve never been to Mexico (my only forays out of the country have been isolated sorties into Canada), and my only knowledge of it comes from, in order of importance, the Marty Robbins song “Laredo”, the movie “Three Amigos”, and “All the Pretty Horses”.  The Cormac McCarthy novel admittedly conveys a lot more authentic information, but my new rule is I get to throw the most unpleasant one out, and that’s the one I choose.

My trip is being led by a guy I paddled with earlier this year, who has done this a few times before.  We had an organizational meeting Saturday, where I met a couple other participants (there will be 5 of us), and learned to my giddy delight that two of them are doctors.  They were rummaging around my friend’s first aid kit, quarantining out-of-date medicines and making plans to include stuff that kayakers who haven’t been to medical school wouldn’t have in their first aid kits, like suturing material.  Unless they’re in the black-market organ trade, I’m apparently in good hands.

My research on the internet had led me to blithely assume that I could waltz across the border with a driver’s license and a birth certificate, so I didn’t take the trouble to obtain a passport.  At our meeting, all expressed serious concern that I hadn’t done so, pointing out that the sites I was reading were probably pre-9/11 information.  They posited that I would be able to enter Mexico without much trouble, but that re-entering the United States might pose a problem of the Cormac McCarthy variety.  Matt Damon was a prettier prisoner than I would be, but still….  They pointed out that there was a U. S. government branch downtown that, if you were within 14 days of a trip out of the country, would allow you to show up in person and obtain a passport, providing that you had your pictures, birth certificate, etc, and were willing to pay the extra $60 for “expedited” service.  So, tomorrow morning I’m heading downtown to see if I can pry a passport out of the bureaucracy.

I’ll keep ya posted.  I’m taking my laptop with me, but since we’ll be camping for several days, and I have no idea whether I can hook up to the internet, I may be out of touch for a week or so.

We had a quiet Thanksgiving dinner, during which our son surprised us by suggesting that we take a hike together on Sunday.  So, we drove east on I-90 to North Bend and hiked a new trail up to Rattlesnake Ridge.  (There are few, if any, rattlers in Western Washington - the place got its name when a surveyor heard seed pods rattling in the wind and was scared shitless that it was a rattler.)

It was a gorgeous day once we got above the inversion layer that was blanketing Seattle.  The kid (22 now) led the way up the trail at a really rockin’ pace, and for the first time in my life (heretofore spent walking at his pace, carrying him when he just wouldn’t walk another step) I felt like I might not be able to keep up.  Since I’ve spent a lot of breath trying to get him to hike or bike or stuff with us/me, I wasn’t about to complain about a silly thing like the pace.

We egged each other, the three of us (my wife is a rock climber and no slouch on the trail), up the trail and ended up walking/climbing a long way on snow.  We got sweaty-hot on the hike up, then shivery when we finally stopped climbing and ate lunch.  There were some great views of the Snoqualmie valley along the way.

Picture 1: Early primates crouch in the cold and eat their meager repast.

Picture 2: Looking across the valley at Mt. Si.

Picture 3: Looking back toward Seattle and the inversion layer.

37 years ago this weekend, Mrs. Perils of Caffeine and I had our first date.  I was a senior at our suburban Toledo high school, she was a sophomore, and we’d been flirting for a year after meeting in band.  We had gone to an away basketball game because I was covering them for the school newspaper.   Afterwards, I drove her up to her house in my dad’s 1960 Chevy station wagon (never a favorite with fathers of my dates), we kissed, and the poor thing is still trying to find the door handle.

37 years ago this weekend, Mrs. Perils of Caffeine and I had our first date.  I was a senior at our suburban Toledo high school, she was a sophomore, and we’d been flirting for a year after meeting in band.  We had gone to an away basketball game because I was covering them for the school newspaper.   Afterwards, I drove her up to her house in my dad’s 1960 Chevy station wagon (never a favorite with fathers of my dates), we kissed, and the poor thing is still trying to find the door handle.