20090616 Leaving USA

Dad and Jessie and Karen and I packed our gear into the car and drove north, past the Tulalip casino, past Mt Vernon tulips, through Bellingham, and crossed the border into Canada.

Using a helpful GPS unit nicknamed "Hilda" we navigated to downtown Vancouver and up to Stanley Park. After delicious giant burgers it was time for a healthy walk, but suddenly I was feeling like I might be coming down with something: I felt a chill shoot through me. No worse time for this: they would be rejecting passengers with fevers from flying to Japan! So I napped in the car while the others had a walk.

Hilda complained as we chose a less trafficky way across town to Wanda's house @@lle 49.22631,-123.08543,85m@@, where Karen and I would stay the night. There she was with red hair and her big smile, Wanda herself, getting on her bicycle to go work as a model. We quickly left our baggage and she gave us a key and was off.

Now we cut through traffic again to Granville Island, where Dad and Jessie dropped us and bid us adieu, heading back to the USA. We had a few hours to kill while Wanda was working, so we strolled around as raindrops hesitantly began to fall. After strolling quiet neighborhoods with gardens reminding me of Christof's part of Portland we caught a couple fast buses back to Wanda's and I rested on a couch and was feeling better now. Maybe I was just allergic to Hilda?

Wanda came home and we opened wine and had a good long catching-up session: I have not seen her since she lived in LA.

20090615 Everett, WA

Another day of last minute errands: post office and the like. Back to Dad's for dinner. Final packing up and boxing up, and a walk down to the beach to see the sunset for me and Karen.

20090614 Everett, WA

Karen had the chance this morning to meet Dad and Jessie at the breakfast table after they returned from church. Jessie threw peanuts to a bluejay on the deck.

Later we went to Mom's and the three of us made a run to the REI flagship store in Seattle: Karen needed shoes and trekking poles and I got a new tent for camping on Hokkaido. Returning to Mom's in Everett we took a short hike in the neighborhood to test Karen's new gear. In the evening we sat around sewing things and getting acquainted.

20090613 Everett, WA

Drove my Dad's red pickup truck today. Visited Mom: we went on a very successful shopping trip, nabbing shoes, peppermint oil, and a new camera. Visited Pappy: JoAnne cooked an exceptional dinner and Russ and Whitney came over to join us. I had to bolt out the door and hustle down to SeaTac Airport to pick up Karen (formerly "of Arabia") who had just arrived from London. Let the Big Trip begin! I swept her back up to Pappy's in time to rejoin the dinner party as the sunset painted the sky.

After the dining and goodbyes I took poor tired Karen on a quick ride through night lit Seattle, past the Space Needle, out to Ballard to meet RV travelers Max and Shannon (on their way to new home of Montreal). We checked out their rolling abode and curious cat, parked two blocks off the main drag near a skate park.

20090612 Portland to Seattle

An early morning MAX trip out of town to St Vincent's Hospital brought nostalgia for the place I worked on software five years before. And Zeke was waiting for me with stethascope around his neck at the cafe, where we ordered coffee and had a brief chance to catch up before he went to work.

Back downtown I met Ben and we found the ubiquitous JohnL in a coffee house designing a menu for a restaurant. Two Christians discussed plans to convert the world at the next table. Soon it was time for me to heft my bags and guitar to the Amtrak station and board a train.

The four hour trip was a comfortable roll across the great Columbia River and up through forests slowly being converted to housing sprawls and traffic malls, the rusting redneck junkhomes slowly being pushed out somewhere further. I had time to reflect on all the great friends I have from San Fran all the way up, offering me rides and beds and parties.

In downtown Seattle there was Pappy in his car waiting and it was sunny and we drove across the floating bridge and to his gorgeous home on Lake Washington and began to scheme about Japan and China. He really wants to go! And with his fifteen year old son Sam. On the computer we looked at maps and priced air tickets.

JoAnne came home and it was time for a run to good old Kidd Valley for burgers. It was late evening before Pappy delivered me to Dad and Jessie's home in Everett.

20090611 Portland, Oregon

We took Crazy Jeff's truck to Burger Basket for necessary sustenance and then he delivered me up to Portland, to the downtown ON Gallery where Bluefoote greeted me with a hug and pushed a bicycle at me and said "come on, let's go" and we went across the Burnside Bridge to join a gathering of bicycle freaks in a park and then form a costumed and decorated parade looping through neighborhoods of interested onlookers, past rose bushes, tooting and ringing and laughing.

I cut loose for a few minutes to visit Christof at his suburban home and he grinned as he poured me a cup of sake. But I had to rejoin the parade: I found them milling around in another park. Ben and Emily guided me to one of the wonderful Portland pubs for dinner and drinks in a porch swing beside an open fire.

20090610 Salem, Oregon

Crazy Jeff, with his lovely little daughter, picked me up in Silverton in the large work truck of the construction business he has formed. I got a tour of the subdivision he has created out of what were his parent's fruit orchards, and I got to greet his folks and his hired hand. Then we took his son J.J. to the final Little League game of the season, where the boy got two base hits and made it to home plate and was awarded a trophy.

Kendra showed up at the game and, after handing off the kids to their mother Trisha, we trio paid a visit to a pub run by Jeff's high school family.

Next Stop: Silverton, Oregon

Lloyd the cat met us with happy meows as we rolled up wearily to the tidy suburban home of JohnL. I lay my sleeping bag out on a mat in the corner of a guest room, and Lloyd decided that I was his new couch.

In the morning JohnL was hand-roasting coffee on his porch with his antique hand-crank roaster, while at the same time checking his email on his iPhone. Past and future meet.

First Stop: Mallethead Ranch

Larry drove the big black Escalade and I rode in comfort, rolling several hours north into the full moon night of northernmost California near Mount Shasta. Arriving late at Mallethead Ranch we met JohnL, who drove an equal distance down from middle Oregon.



In the morning I got a free buzz cut...



JohnL returned home with me to his comfortable house on a quiet street in Silverton.

Leaving San Francisco on Motorbike

I rode the motorbike slowly out of San Francisco following Larry's big black Escalade in heavy traffic. The slowness afforded me a last contemplative look at the sunny city that had been my home for nearly two years. My head was spinning with the goodbyes of good friends.

We reached the Bay Bridge and picked up speed. I followed the black car's GPS-guided moves to Oakland, to an artist studio in the "hood" where a woman named Szonic was waiting. Kids passed on bicycles, the wheels decorated with aluminum foil. Szonic came out from a narrow unmarked doorway, offered a cold beer, and motioned to bring the motorcycle inside. The bike's new owner, Groovy Daryl, was coming in two weeks to ride it back across the continent to his home in Georgia.

This is Szonic's studio in Oakland.

Codemonks Finale

The Codemonks wrap it all up with a pitcher of beer at Maxfields.

Presidio sunshine

My last full day in San Francisco was a gorgeous warm sunny one with fresh ocean breeze bringing across puffy clouds. Larry came down from Mallethead Ranch for the weekend and we strolled with John and Cyrus in the Presidio. We posed next to an art installation by Andy Goldsworthy and fed birds on an outdoor patio at the golf course. John explained that all the food we ate was composed of corn and soy. Down through the fragrant eucalyptus groves on sand from the original dunes, we met a dog walker and his hounds.