Greetings from College Station,
Here's part two of the continuing adventure.
So upon arriving in Seattle, the first thing my auntie made me do was start hiking. It took a while to recover from some wild and crazy cold I picked up en route. After sufficent hacking, coughing and nyquil, I managed to start trail walking in the nearby Lincoln park. There's something like 600 steps between my auntie's house and the coast. Its a beautiful park. Its right across the sound from the Olympics, which in march are still fully snow-capped.
After that, and a nice day of urban hiking around the West Seattle peninsula, I got dropped off at the "coal creek trail", way out in Factoria (outside of Bellevue). It's completely devoid of fauna, but all the moss and overturned trees made for one of the more beautiful hikes in the Issaquah alps. 2.8 miles in, it connected with the Cougar Mountain trail system. Another 3 miles took me to my first "peak" of the season. A feeble 2000' in 2 miles, but pretty good for someone massively out of shape. The return trip landed me with the dilemma of bussing it back to Bellevue, and then back across Lake Washington to town, where I could then bus to West Seattle! SOMEHOW, but the "road luck" that I seem to have a store of, I managed to get on the correct initial busline.
Since the Cougar Mtn / Squak Mountain trail system is easy, nice, accessible and sufficiently long (avg 12-15 miles roundtrip trail, 1 mile on asphalt), it made for great training for getting up into the Cascades later in the season.
And did I ever managed to get out there! Originally, I had planned to hike up Mt. St. Helens with some friends of my Auntie. Terrible weather prevented that, but I did manage to take a nice hike in the east cascades that weekend. Gil, my auntie's boss (and a real cool cat), drove us out to Wenatchee Nat'l Forest, where we climbed up to a nice snowy ridge and had a nice snowy lunch. This was my first real NW hiking experience, snow in march, with rocks the size of large home appliances tumbling down at us, glissading, etc. What a blast!
There were many other memorable outings, and a decent number of peaks nabbed (for a NW rookie), including Mailbox & Snoqualmie Mtn. I even had one really fun week where I hit up Mt. Si before and after Mailbox. Got to see the Lyman Lakes, my first Moose (bastards are HUGE), etc etc etc. I had Wonderful time. Great hitching too, in the North Bend area, people are surprisingly nice! (Washington is supposed to be terrible for hitching, and downtowners certainly are terrible about giving rides...even when you share a hike with them ... )
I did work, of course, at PCC Natural Markets. A cute little co-op superchain that operated rather like Safeway. Stocking, Cashiering and hiking around the nearby old-growth forest remnants called "Seward Park" was nice. I often had to close, however, which meant midnight walks to the bus stop down Rainer Ave. (supposedly a nasty, nasty area. iron bars on the windows and poor folk, but, so far as I could tell, perfectly safe) Couldn't have a normal job, it just had to be edgy... HA. Although plenty of seemingly dangerous (and loud!) folk on the bus.
Time ran out in seattle, Texas was beckoning. Auntie Mary really is like a third parent to me, and Seattle really has become a second home... I picked up some new stove fuel, a comb and a NATO-issue wool blanket and nailed a ride to California on craigslist... which fell through at the last minute.
My mother, ever worried about my hitching, offered to buy me a train ticket to see my sister in San Fransisco. I jumped, packed my things, and ever-wonderful Irene saw me off at the train station.
The California-Zephyr really is a pretty ride, but most of it (ie Mt. Shasta) is in the dark. There were some picture-worth mountain views, of course. I'm not 100% sure what happened to those pictures I took. Anyway. I got off in Sacramento, home of Ahnold & Amy (also now at A&M), and I transferred to a train which took me into Berkeley, and walked to the BART Station. I had to get creative (no direct line to SF from Berkeley on sundays), but I finally managed to emerge out on Market Street, found the 6 (I think it was the six), and took my first wild SF bus ride (after the doors close, a mechanical voice instructs, "hold on", which I had too... it was packed!) to my sister's apartment.
SF was mad! I bummed around for a week, since my ride to Texas was somewhat delayed. Did the City-Lights Bookstore thing, Northbeach is nice, particularly the Happy Donuts shop just uphill from Chinatown. I got to explore a good deal of the city. Ras, the incense dealer who was a regular fixture on High Street in Columbus, somehow beat me to frisco and was dealing incense on Haight.
Unfortunately, I had to witness the psycological abuse by my sister's exbf "Shadow" first hand. Having never experienced domestic abuse before (and witnessing it a lot in my neighborhood in texas) I was a bit traumatized. I spent WAY too much money on espresso, wine and cigarettes. (Which, mercifully, I'm pretty much all off of now). ((BTW, its absolutely ridiculous how precisely similar all abusive men are. they all sound the same, and they really are all pathetic losers who have something missing in their souls/lives...)). Obliging my parents request for non-involvement, I simply put up with it until it was time to leave.
Amy (my ride, not the one at A&M) finally showed up with her borrowed car. It was a black Jaguar S-type with Mississippi plates! She came out with huge sunglasses and Mika, her chihuahua. I thought I was doomed, but it was quite the opposite, She was really savvy, cool and witty, but just happened to have a little dog and big sunglasses.
Anyway, we took off into the Southwest in the late afternoon, and traded off driving all the way through El Paso and onto I-10. Crazy! Arizona was wonderful. I watched the sunrise over the mountains from behind the steering wheel. New Mexico was a hole.
Just outside of El Paso, my stomach started to turn sour. Apparently, I had contracted the stomach flu from my sister. It came out in full force in the tiny little (pop ~ 1865) town of Dripping Springs. We pulled off at the Cheveron at 4 in the morning. Amy thought pepto would help (not sure if it ever did), but we didn't get any because the store didn't open until 5 am. I ended up vomiting twice in the yard. We got back in the car, which Amy subsequently drove into the nearby ditch. She called "e-surance", which was useless since Dripping Springs tow-trucks operatre on a "cash-only" policy. After another bought of vomiting, the local sherrif came and towed us out. It tore a tiny hole in her fuel pan, but nothing, apparently, deabiliting.
he must have thought we were nuts (or drunk). I was wearing my kilt (i've taken to wearing kilts in seattle. cf. www.utilikilts.com) , smelling like vomit, a tiny little Mika-dog was running around scared of the giant texan spiders. But we were back on our way.
We made it to Austin, where I vomited again outside an outerbelt shell station. Amy, a REAL trooper, had to drive the rest of the way to College Station. I really owe her big. She got me there, in 105 F weather, and we slept in my apartment for about 6 hours. I got to the apartment, by the way, only to be told that my subleaser hadn't paid june's rent! If I signed the documents to get the kets, I was going to be evicted if I couldn't resolve the matter in 8 days. Fortunately, I resolved the matter. anyway. I bid farewell to Amy and Mika and well... here I am.
Naturally a lot has happened since that time. Some good, some bad. That's all for now.
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