Perils of Caffeine in the Evening

Well, the rest of it, anyway, since my last post derived from our Ashland trip.  Most years, the Ashland trip in late June IS my summer vacation, because I’m forced to plan it in November; similarly ambitious ventures for the rest of the summer remain figments of my imagination due to lack of focus and total inability to plan, and Labor Day hits me like a wrong-way drunk on the interstate.

This summer, however, events contrived to afford me several additional adventures.  That’s owing in no small part to the fact that I’m not flying to Milwaukee a week a month any more, due to a persistent downturn in my client’s business.  I’d been making that trek for the last 11 or 12 years, and the rhythm and routine of travel, the Road Warrior’s mentality, has been a huge part of my life.  That monthly trip would pretty much take out two weekends, as I’d fly out on Sunday morning and land at SeaTac around midnight on Friday night.  I had become far too wrapped up in the Frequent Flyer mindset of whether I’d get upgraded, and scheming about how to squeeze in enough miles in a year (75k) to make Platinum, instead of lowly Gold (50k).  My last trip to Milwaukee was in December, and I haven’t checked into Flyertalk.com, where “elites” bitch endlessly about every little imagined indignity the airlines are visiting on them, in months.  If you’ve seen Up In The Air, you’ve gotten a whiff of that mindset.

I still work with my client remotely, and I can’t say I don’t miss that full week’s revenue, but so much stress has slaked off of my life this year since I don’t have to screw myself up to slog through TSA, and hole up in hotels furtively practicing my trumpet and making serially bad dietary decisions.  I’m Gold on Delta for the rest of the year, but I’m resigned to being mere Silver next year, and permanently consigned to steerage thereafter.

So, on to the rest of the summer.  One benefit of not traveling was that I got to participate fully in my band’s  marching season.  We played some really fun music, and played in parades in Seattle, Bellingham, Kirkland and Vancouver, BC.  The jewel in the marching season’s crown, however, was the wedding of two dear bandmates on a San Francisco-esque foggy August day in West Seattle.  We were commissioned to play the processional and recessional, but the wedding guests were digging it enough that we played a few more numbers, and I was grateful, as it was our last performance and I really didn’t want to let go of the summer’s music. The video begins with nieces of the brides waving rainbow streamers in lieu of carrying flowers. You might consider, in the future, why your wedding shouldn’t include a marching band. (password is “RCB” in caps):

(video here)

Check out the brides’ private moshpit as the Black-Eyed Peas recessional draws to a close.

I’m not a crier, generally, and I’ve probably attended fewer than 10 weddings.  My record is still clean, but it was very affecting to observe the joy of the brides, and their parents and families.  If possible, it was more moving to observe the couples in my band as the ceremony, so emblematic of their struggle - our struggle - progressed, sniffling, holding hands so tightly that their entwined arms evoked a metaphor of nothing so much as a wishbone.  Can you tell me with a straight face that marriage needs protection from people who yearn for it this fervently?

The brides still needed to drive to Iowa to become completely legal.  Fucking Iowa.

Well, what else did I do?  Oh, yeah, there was that 6-day, 5-night kayak-camping trip in Desolation Sound, BC.  I think it needs its own post. Watch this space (click to enlarge).

Mrs. Perils and I were sitting here imagining something we’re calling an “existential playlist” when we both thought of this song.  It’s a cover of a Led Zeppelin song, No Quarter, by a local band we used to stalk in the late 90s/early 2000s called Maktub.  It’s 8+ minutes.  Sit back, light something or pour something, and zone out:

[audio:http://phil2bin.com/sounds/No_Quarter.mp3]

I’m now at the age where “He lived a full life!” will roll glibly from the lips of my survivors, and as my shade ascends, descends or simply hangs in the viewing room like a bad smell, it won’t really have reason to protest.  Such high philosophy is noticeably absent when incidents occur on this side of the Great Divide such as the one on our hike on Friday.

We were walking a section of the Pacific Crest Trail in what is now the Soda Mountain Wilderness (thank you, Bill Clinton, for your 9th-inning National Monument designations) just southeast of Ashland that we’ve been on many times.  It winds through mature second-growth forest, breaking out into slide areas that afford gorgeous views, either west towards Ashland and Siskiyou Pass, or southeast to Mt. Shasta.

Due to heavy winter snows and below-normal temperatures throughout the spring (sound familiar?), nature is somewhat behind schedule, and we’ve been seeing wildflowers on our hikes that are usually burnt out and gone by the time we get here, and things everywhere are lush and green instead of the more accustomed brown and sere, and we were literally reveling in every step.

Until this one step.  The one with my right foot as I was leading us on the trail through moderate underbrush.  About a quarter-mile before, we’d flushed a pair of grouse, and been startled at the loud, low vibration of their wingbeat, so we were on alert as we proceeded the rest of the way through the meadow.

So when I heard a vibration and scuffle on that fateful footfall*, I wondered for a second if I’d disturbed a grousing grouse*.  Two more strides, and I heard Mrs. Perils’ maidenly exclamation…”holy fucking shit!“, I believe it was…as she leapt up onto a log well off the trail.  What she had seen was a western diamondback rattlesnake, about 1 1/2″ to 2″ in diameter and at least 4 feet long, just to the right of the trail where I had stepped.

We were both pretty shaken, and as we proceeded each ensuing step was as fearful as they had been euphoric before. We froze at every rustle in the undergrowth.  As I had on countless other hikes, I turned to Mrs. Perils and assured her, “It is only the wind, Gretel!”

We tried to remember what the current procedures were for dealing with a snake bite.  Back in the 70s, we’d been sold snakebite kits that had razor blades and suction devices for draining venom; we knew that this treatment had been discredited, but were fuzzy about current best practices.  We got to a clearing with a sumptuous view of Mt. Shasta, but our enjoyment was muted.  We had a cell phone signal, so we made our one Lifeline call to a client of mine whom I knew liked to search the internet, and he pretty much confirmed what we thought we had remembered: immobilize the limb, keep the bite below your heart, no tourniquet, etc.  Oh, and call 911.

Our hike was not on a loop trail, it was an out-and-back, so we would have to walk past that spot again on the way back to the car, which was 3 - 4 miles beyond it.  Rescue would have been a major undertaking.  (did I really say “undertaking”?).  We walked on about another mile or so, hoping that, given time, our reptilian interlocutor would decide to move to a different snack bar.  Ultimately, though, we had to turn around and head back. We found a couple of sticks to brandish, and walked warily.  We didn’t know exactly where the encounter had taken place, but knew the general vicinity, and tapped our sticks ahead like blind people as we walked through.

Once we knew for certain we were past the spot, we built up an absurd sense of euphoria the rest of the way, as if we had a map that showed for certain we’d passed the lair of the only dragon in the forest.

Here are some photos to show why a person would undertake (there it is again) a stroll into the forest (click image to enlarge):

More photos in a gallery here.

* I know I can write stuff like this because I’ve read some Barth recently

(Entrance to the Bowmer Theater)

We’re in Ashland, OR for our annual haj to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.  Once again, my mom has flown in from Toledo to attend with us, and once again, the weather is so far hot & sunny, such a change from the cool & overcast spring we’ve had in Seattle.

One big glitch: On the day before our departure, I received an email from the Festival that they’d discovered structural damage to a central beam in the large indoor Bowmer Theater, and that it would be closed indefinitely.  This was a pretty large deal, since 4 of our 8 plays were scheduled to be performed there:

• To Kill A Mockingbird
• Measure for Measure
• Imaginary Invalid (a Moliere)
• August: Osage County (a contemporary play by Tracy Letts set in small-town Oklahoma)

We were left with:

• Pirates of Penzance
• Love’s Labors Lost
• Henry IV, Part 2

all in the outdoor Elizabethan Theater, and:

• Julius Caesar

in the small indoor New Theater.

Since my mom was already in town, and we already had our airfare to and lodging in Ashland paid for, there was no thought of canceling.

As events progressed, the Festival devised a way to stage the canceled plays in the cavernous old Armory building just up Oak Street from our lodging, so we lined up in the street Tuesday afternoon to see if we could get a seat for To Kill A Mockingbird.  As it happened, there were plenty of seats inside, all on folding chairs in neat rows in a huge auditorium.  There was a certain sense of disenfranchisement, since I had bought front-row tickets for all of our plays last November in the members’ presale, and our seats in the Armory were more than halfway back.  Still, kudos to the Festival for going outside the box to deliver the product.  And, the Armory performances are free to anyone who held tickets to the original performances; we got our choice of cash refunds or vouchers for future performances of any play, this year or next.  I selected vouchers, since I have a glimmer in my eye about another trip down here later in the year, after they (hopefully) have re-opened the Bowmer.

To Kill A Mockingbird

I had never read the book, nor seen the movie, so this was my first introduction to the story.  The production in the Armory was done without costumes, props or stage sets.  It opened with the full cast on stage, sitting on folding chairs in a semicircle, with an adult incarnation of Scout narrating.  As she was reminiscing about that fateful summer, actors would rise from their chairs and create a flashback tableau of dramatic action, and the voice would pass from the adult narrator to a pre-adolescent Scout.

As the production progressed, the actors involved in dialogue used an area about 10′ by 10′ to represent their interactions, and their strength of delivery did a lot to overcome the lack of visual context.

The story itself has two major plotlines: the first, the depiction of the Finch family and the development of Atticus Finch’s character as a father and citizen; the second, the civic and legal developments leading to the trial and its outcome.  To begin to appreciate either, it’s necessary to be able to place yourself in Depression-era, small-town Alabama.  This is where the lack of scenery and the first-rate production values of the Festival is quite apparent.  The surfeit of family sagas and courtroom drama in the cinema and on the screen in the ensuing decades overwhelms this work taken in its components; it would make an ordinary episode of Law & Order.  It really needs to be viewed through its temporal and geographical context.

What gives the story its spark is the collision of these two plotlines: the precipitous ripping of the Finch family from its comfortable niche near the top of the town’s social foodchain and making them the embodiment of all its resentments, armed only with a nascent moral carapace; and the journey of Jem and Scout from a mostly passive and credulous acceptance of the world as viewed through Atticus’ lens, to the crescendo of lurid and unvarnished images that are thrust upon them.

This last thread, the passage of the kids from Atticus’ protection and control, is almost lost in the hurly-burly of the trial.  It begins with their unbidden, perhaps forbidden, foray to the jailhouse to stand with Atticus, and extends as they assert themselves (as invited guests) to view the trial from the black folks’ gallery.

I’m curious now to read the book and join the majority of the civilized world.  I’d like to see how Lee’s prose stands up to the expectations of its myth.  I’d also like to learn the elements of backstory necessarily excised from the play.

Here’s a podcast with all of our RCB 2011 marching music, recorded at band camp a couple of weeks ago.  The recording was made in a cavernous room with no acoustics, during our last session on Sunday, so lips are a bit tattered and the sound is what it is.  Still, I think you can tell how much fun we’re having with this.

[audio:http://phil2bin.com/sounds/RCB_Marching_2011.mp3]

The theme is Dance Party, and our music director tried to make selections from the last 4 decades:

Gonna Make You Sweat
Ladies’ Night
Holiday
I Gotta Feeling
Land of a Thousand Dances
Copacabana
Four Minutes
Soul Bossa Nova
YMCA
You Dropped A Bomb On Me
Hey, Baby

More about band camp later.

It took me a while to make the connection.  After several instances of being irritated because I couldn’t find a rubber band anywhere, I realized that it was the most significant effect of our cancelling home delivery of the Seattle Times last fall.  We would always carefully remove them from the rolled-up paper and deposit them in the junk drawer in our kitchen.  This particular act of frugality began in the 70s when we took the Seattle P-I, and continued when we reluctantly switched to the Times with the demise of the P-I.  I don’t believe I’ve ever bought rubber bands, and now I’m confronted starkly with the necessity.

I’ve been reading the Times and P-I online exclusively for several years, a circumstance which was probably abetted by my periodic business travels, and seldom handled the dead-tree version even when I was home.

We continued with the Times even after it forced the P-I out of their JOA agreement primarily because my MIL, who was living with us at the time, spent a lot of her morning reading it.  Also, Mrs. Perils preferred the paper version.  And I admit that reading a newspaper online is not the same experience.  It has its advantages: compact, available anywhere, searchable, RSS feeds, free; the major disadvantage is that its visual geography seems more limited.  The “paper” paper has things in the same places every day, available at a glance rather than a click-and-wait.  Two examples that come immediately to mind are sports statistics and comics.  Even though the paper comics have shrunk as my eyes need them bigger, you could still rake your eyes over the page and snag on your favorites fairly quickly; online, you have to click a drop-down menu, select, wait, expand, read, rinse, repeat for every individual comic.  I just don’t bother any more.  And, I have no idea what the baseball standings are, or who is still left in the NBA playoffs.

There are moments when I’m reading online when I feel a little guilty about hastening the unemployment of the earnest ink-stained wretches still toiling away within print journalism’s august perimeter.  I had a pang as well one day when some carriers were going door-to-door pretty much pleading with me to re-subscribe.  I’m not sure what economic model could successfully replace home delivery.  I’ve paid for online subscriptions before (WSJ), and would be open to paying a single fee to read newspapers online, sort of how AOL experimented with corralling content under a single portal in the 90s.  I’d be disappointed in, and would probably resist, having to subscribe to every paper I lit on in pursuit of news.

I also perceive a danger in the dismantling of the journalistic institution.  While we are flooded with a euphoric torrent of information, we as its wary consumer now need to do our own fact-checking, without the professional training to get it right.  On the other hand, we aren’t, as in prior times, being spoon-fed information by what is essentially an embedded member of the local oligarchy reluctant to step on the toes of its advertisers.  And then I’ll read one of the Times’ tortured anti-tax, anti-union editorials and I’ll think, nah, I can buy my own rubber bands.

I never remember my dreams.  And when I say, “never”, I mean that once every 4 - 5 years, I’ll awake suddenly and a vaporous 3 seconds or so will linger in my sentience, then make a quick exit through my nostrils when I exhale.  These infrequent and fleeting visitations are the only evidence I can cite that I actually have dreams, but they’re a comfort, because we all know that a person who doesn’t dream eventually becomes a serial killer (if he isn’t one already and has simply repressed the memory(s)).

This paucity of material is hardly grist for psychoanalysis, let alone for blogging, and you’re probably wondering why I’m wasting electrons and your precious time with it. Well, it’s a setup for this shocking disclosure: it happened this morning, and the sequence I remember lasted a good 5 - 10 seconds!

In it, I was walking down a long hall that extended through several rooms, and this place was presumed to be my residence, although it didn’t look like my real residence and in fact was more like one of my clients’ warehouse. Two or three rooms in the distance, I caught a glimpse of a large cat (cougar, leopard) crossing the hall and headed outside through an open door.  I had a half-second to register relief and begin to jump up on a table just in case (thinking as I did that a cat that size wouldn’t be deterred by a quick leap up onto what I then realized, with dawning irony, was a dining room table), when the lights went out at the end of the hall. Just then, I saw the cat rushing toward me out of the darkness.  I threw my arms up and yelled, “No! No!”. In the next half-second I realized that the cat had been in the process of running past me, and that I’d been a fool to attract its attention; and then I awoke, sitting bolt upright.

I wondered then if I’d actually hollered aloud, or only hollered in the dream.  Then I thought, no, even if I had that dream, which I’m not admitting that I had, I’m sure I have a healthy firewall between the alleged fantasy me and the real, dreamless me.  And then: “Was that you yelling? You woke me up!”  So I explained what I’ve just told you, and got a comforting hug in return, and I pretended not to notice “911″ dialed but not yet called on her cell phone.

I guess if you’re going to go to the trouble of remembering a dream that you might or might not have had, you may as well take a stab at interpretation. Why a cat? Why now? Does my subconscious know I have cancer and has cast it for its own purposes in the form of a dangerous feline? And has been trying its best to keep the bad news from me, and just fucked up big-time?  What is that thing on my arm?

And again, if I’m going to go to all that trouble, why this, and not a wild and vivid sexual fantasy instead (one that would certainly last more than 5 - 10 seconds, thank you very much)? Just my luck, I guess, because if I’d rent the night with cries of “Yes! Yes!” instead of “No! No!”, I’d have been beaten to death with her current nightstand collection of Virginia Woolf novels instead of the wary cosseting I was actually afforded.

OK, can we sleep now for another hour?

(40%) I’ve never been the one to say, “I work best under pressure.”  It is, in fact, usually calamitous.  But I’m flying home from Detroit to Seattle, and I was comped for free wi-fi, so I’ve set myself this task: to write and publish a blog post before my Macbook battery runs out.  And, be advised that my battery guage diminishes faster than the gas gauge on a Ford Explorer.

(38%) So I’m at the end of a week’s travel.  It began at 3:30 am last Tuesday, when a shuttle picked me up for a 6am flight to Orlando, where I attended a software conference.  There’s just not much to write about that.  I attended a session on inventory costing which was very beneficial, but would be a recipe for further alienation here.

(36%) Flew Thursday night from Orlando to Columbus, where my brother had been working all week, and we spent Friday touring the new student union on the Ohio State campus, then dinner and an impromptu appearance at a Columbus Blue Jackets game. My first in-person NHL game.  Impressive skating and puck-handling.  The obligatory glove-and-helmet-disrobing fight, which had no discernible cause, got over with in the first period.  Perhaps the Blue Jackets spent all their passion in that pas-de-deux, because they went on to lose 6-1, including goals allowed to a short-handed Calgary team, and another with 12 seconds left.

(32%) Saturday was the piece-de-resistance: the Ohio State-Purdue football game.  I was extended the privilege to purchase a pair of tickets to the game due to my winning the lottery conducted for alumni of my caste (those who give $10 - $25 bucks, usually by the accident of answering the phone in time).  The seats were awfully good - 4 rows from the top of C-Deck, smack on the 30-yard-line.   We attended the marching band’s pregame rehearsal/concert in St. John Arena called Skull Session, which is attended by 10,000 - 12,000 people.  By bro’s old band buddy had saved us seats in the front row, and we reveled in the band’s extraordinary sound.  (I’ll post video later)

(27%) After the game, we drove up to Perrysburg to visit our mom and to complete some chores that we’d started on our last visit over Labor Day weekend.  Both of her bathroom fans, installed when my parents built the house in 1961, had failed, and we had managed over Labor Day to remove them and their housings, only to find that nothing at Lowe’s would fit into the same space.  We struggled a bit at that time, then solemnly promised to finish the job on our next visit (each hoping, of course, that the other one would be making that visit alone).

(23%) We worked part of Saturday and a lot of the day Sunday.  One of the new fans would not work at all, and we had started to think that we would have to engage an electrician to find the problem.  Meanwhile, we had discovered a problem with one of mom’s downspouts that, left untended, had the potential to wash dirt away from the foundation.  The house is already experiencing an alarming amount of settling (it’s brick, so the evidence is impossible to ignore).  Another trip to Lowe’s, and we got started on that chore just as, of course, it started raining.  We fitted a new length of aluminum downspout and reattached it to a drain as lightning and thunder crashed all around us.

(19%, red warning) Then the power went out.  Like it’s going to here soon.  We worked inside on the fan problem by flashlight, and wer giving up when my bro discovered a severed wire to a switch that was almost certainly our culprit.  We patched in a new length of wire and bolted everything together.  We wouldn’t know, however, whether we’d been successful until the power came back on.

(17%) We enjoyed the rest of the evening socializing with Mom with candles burning, and imbibing sports the old-fashioned way: listening to the Packers-Vikings game on a battery-operated radio.  We took a walk along the darkened street and watched a gorgeous full moon rise above storm clouds, one house flickering inside with candlelight, the next alit from the hum of a gas generator.  More than 4 hours later, the power came back on.  We reluctantly snuffed all the candles and plugged the critical electronics back in, then walked upstairs.  The errant bathroom fan was purring beneficently. We declared the weekend a success.

(12%) Scene.  And I’m not editing.

For nearly eight years, Mrs. Perils’ mother has lived with us.  Back in 2002, my father-in-law, who had suffered some pretty severe dementia for several years and for whom my MIL was the sole care-giver, had just died.  In the weeks that followed, we came to realize that his severe dementia had masked a slight but burgeoning case of her own.  I remember the moment when I got my first inkling.

My in-laws lived in the Ohio town where Mrs. Perils and I grew up, and I would swing through there on business trips to visit my own parents.  I usually tried to set aside an hour or so to pop in on my in-laws.  On a trip shortly after my FIL died, I visited with my MIL, and we had a pleasant chat, as always.  As I recall, during the course of this conversation we dwelt a bit on Charlie and his memory issues, and at some point my MIL was talking and hit an air pocket, something trivial, but more serious than simply trying to find the right word or remembering the name of an author.  For an instant, we exchanged a glance of realization; then we laughed a bit and moved on, and I flew back to Seattle as I always had.

During a later visit by Mrs. Perils’ sister, however, we discovered that things had worsened: my MIL’s mental state had been exacerbated by depression, she’d been eating sporadically and housekeeping had deteriorated to a state where we felt it was dangerous.  Mrs. Perils and her sibs proposed a grand tour, prolonged visits with each of them in Tennessee, Idaho and Seattle, with the unstated intention that she would not be returning to her house.  The wheel stopped in Seattle.  We had the best situation - empty-nesters with no household strife, and Mrs. Perils with enough spare time to tend to the (at that time) minimal care-giving.

Our original intention had been to move her to an assisted living facility whenever we found one to our liking, and we toured a couple.  My MIL has always been a cheery and positive person with a good sense of humor, however, and we were enjoying having her around as a sort of extended holiday.  We tabled the move to assisted living, and life began to take its course.  At one time in the ensuing years, we had 3 generations of us in the house, as our son, then later his girlfriend, bunked out here.

My MIL’s physical and mental state has undergone a gradual, but predictable and manageable, decline over the years (those of you observing me may say the same), until the last 2 - 3 weeks, when things started to lurch and plummet.  We had discussed in the past that there would be a limit to what we would undertake, but really had no idea what that boundary would look like.  We very definitely found it last week, when I was out of town and Mrs. Perils was getting only an hour or two of sleep at night.

Acting on a recommendation of a friend, we viewed an adult living center on Monday, and liked what we saw.  We are fortunate that they had a couple of slots available.  A nurse came to the house to conduct an evaluation Tuesday morning, and we moved my MIL to the facility after dinner that evening.

Mrs. Perils had explained to her several times what we were doing and why, and each time she had accepted the explanation; but then, an hour or so later, she would ask, “where am I going?” or “am I going somewhere”, and the words “we’re taking you to your new home” formed with difficulty, and shimmered in their strangeness.

The afternoon was a stew of emotions as we made preparations.  One was guilt: on my end, for the paltry number of times I actually sat down in the living room and engaged her in conversation, as opposed to flashing through with a quick “hi” or mugging for a cheap laugh; Mrs. Perils, I believe, wondering if she were being too quick to pull this trigger in case the week’s weirdnesses were something temporary.

Another was sadness, especially as we prepared to leave the house: there was her blue duffel bag, which I hadn’t seen since we’d taken her with us to the Oregon coast 4 years ago, packed and by the door; there was our cat, Rico Suave, her almost constant companion at her perch on the living room sofa, whom she was likely seeing for the last time; and there was the slow trip down the stairs off the porch to the sidewalk, which she and Mrs. Perils had taken twice a day for 8 years on their ever-shorter strolls around the neighborhood, also probably for the last time.

And, I have to admit, there was also exhilaration, at freeing Mrs. Perils of the despair of the past week, and of the sudden and unlooked-for prospect of a new stage in our lives.

I look back on the past 8 years and try to assess what we (well, mostly, Mrs. Perils) accomplished.  As Mrs. P has said, elder-care is not like raising a child; instead of a tremulous gift to the future, it is a managed degeneration with only one possible ending.  I like to think we afforded my MIL a quality of life that she would not have had in a long-term care institution: a cavalcade of normal life swirling around her as our friends, our neighbors, our son and his friends came and went.  I’ll count that as an accomplishment. (Click to enlarge)

Wow, it’s musty in here, like a summer cabin just opened for the season.  Let’s throw the windows open and let some of these soft August zephyrs waft through.  I’ve been busy working, of course, and playing music.  Also screwing around with Facebook’s empty calories instead of attempting more substantial fare here.  Let’s press the “reset” button.

It’s August already, and I’m starting to get that panicky sense again that summer is leaking away like air from a punctured beach ball and I’m rummaging through drawers trying to find an old bicycle patch kit, or at least some duct tape.

I was in Milwaukee week before last and was dismayed reading accounts from my paddling network of expeditions to the San Juan Islands and Canada’s Broken Group, so I sent out a plea for an overnight trip when I got back to town.  Several folks responded, and five of us ended up launching from the town of Shelton, near Olympia, and paddling to Hope Island State Park to camp for a night.

My employment is kind of curious in that I usually don’t get a ton of pressure from a single source, as a corporate employee might, but, because I am working with multiple clients at any point in time, a confluence of relatively minor problems can creep up on me like a sneaker wave, and I’m surprised to find myself stressed when there’s no huge problem.  And each client is thinking, “WTF?  I’m not asking for anything that complicated!”

So it was exhilarating to glide into the placid waters of Hammersley Inlet and let my cares slake away with each rhythmic slap of water against my hull.  By the time we completed our 7-mile ride and beached on the island, I was so relaxed.  Here’s a slideshow from the trip.

We harvested oysters and had them for dinner, assisted each other in sharpening rescue and rolling skills, watched seals showing off and basked in balmy August sunshine.

As we paddled back up Hammersley Inlet to our launch point in Shelton, we dawdled along the southern shore, waiting for the flood tide to give us a little push against the headwind.  To our amazement, we encountered a galaxy of starfish festooned along miles of the shore.  I have a waterproof case for one of my cameras, and I pushed it underwater a couple times to capture spider crabs, sea anemones and starfish cohabiting on logs and rocks:

If you see a guy giving CPR to a beachball here in Seattle, you’ll know that it’s me trying to salvage some more remarkable experiences from this 61st summer of my life.  If I bat it in your direction, as I did with my paddling buddies last weekend, take a second and bat it back.  You might just find yourself enjoying yourself.