The last time I got cited for a driving violation was on the
Olympic peninsula a couple of years ago. Other than this the memories were very pleasant, and knowing that Essan loves the sea, I wanted to take her to this beautiful
coastline. Speaking as a photographer, the first failure was the weather: perfectly clear sky, no clouds, bright sun. For this coastline, you need fog, rain, this kind of stuff. At least it was low tide. But the biggest problem was my inability to get us there. I had a map, mind you, but somehow I couldn't put things together. So it came that after a detour to the Hurricane Ridge in the Olympic
Nat'l Park we got to the proper coast at 5, with the tide rising rapidly, and the light not getting much better. By the time it was 8 and we both were nicely eaten by mosquitoes we decided after consulting the map that instead of driving to Astoria we should head back to Seattle.
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In Port Angeles we stopped for dinner, at The Bushwhacker. With a name like this the food had to be good. Before tasting any food, though, Essan got carded. "Are you 21?" -"Yes" -"Well sorry I still need to
see your ID". Obviously more disturbed than flattered, Essan had to go to the car dig for the ID in her
wallet. The food turned out to be of OK quality and we proceeded to head to
Seattle.
Ladies and gentlemen, please let me call for a minute of silence in memory of Pussy the Cat, who is now in cat heaven. After more than 300,000 miles of driving I still could say that I had a pretty clean driving record, with only the
occasional rodent and one snake on the books. But tonight, Pussy the Cat was the unfortunate victim of her indecisiveness. Not even my Xenon headlights and 13" four-piston brakes could change things when I saw the very hairy cat in the middle of the road, trying to decide if to continue the crossing or not. At the last moment she decided to
cross; she should have waited another second. This way, Pot with his already low front bumper, at that instance even further nose diving from maximum deceleration, took the poor thing straight in the middle, with a muffled "thunk". Due to oncoming traffic the impact at still maybe 30mph was unavoidable.
While we continued driving in the general direction of the Seattle ferries Essan continued to comfort me about the earlier events.
I love cats. The 80s radio station, playing masterpieces by Wham and the Bee Gees further helped to improve my mood, and soon we were by the ferry. For once with perfect timing, we were quickly loaded onto this much bigger ferry and enjoyed the upstairs view and seating during the 35 minute cruise. When we unloaded in downtown Seattle we headed straight to the motel, but were held up for maybe 15 minutes at a
railroad crossing, watching one single train go through. When it started with five locomotives I feared for the worst, but it got worse.
I have never seen a train this long... We hit the sac around 2, both visibly exhausted.