The Kitchen Blog

Cooking, Gardening, Angst and More. Including Job Search Tales and lifestyle tips about island living.

Morning Becomes Eccentric

The faint starry sky has faded to a pinkish fog anchored by dark mounds around us. The East is awash in this pink glow arising to the blue vault of heaven. We're slicing through the icy gray murk, past bobbing cormorants, jutting crags, and bell buoys.
Pink changing to purple the longer we surge forward, the further we head.

I'm riding in this swaying steel  hulk of discomforted humanity early on this day to spend the next 5 hours, my  cheeks splayed against synthetic comfort, traveling for what I hope is a one hour meeting with new clients. Then after a few more stops for sundries I'm 5 hours reversed, Westing my way towards the pinky purple glow of the ending day.

Commuting by ferries has to have its benefits and I guess one of them could be said to be the hour, twice a day, or unstressful relaxation. The chance to do something. Me, I write or work on business accounts or a set of tasks which I only do while I'm traveling on the ferry. Listening to headsetted music from my laptop I read those well travelled magazines which somehow only come with me on these trips, or I tap away on something like this so that, mainland ho, cup of coffee and wifi hence I can pause for a moment in my travels and connect with something larger than the harried moment I am living.

If I didn't listen to music on the trip I think I would be driven mad by the continuous pounding of the engines, the churning of the great wheel driving us forward, the not-quite-ready-for-stage guitar pickers, the slap, slap, slap of multiple solitare players--why don't they get together and play hearts?--the clack, clack of hundreds of knitting needles, the tennis shoe screech of linoleum, the flap,flap, swoosh of the Times, The Seattle PI, USA Today all being turned to the sports section simultaneously before heading to the business section, the want ads, employment, and finally the news of yesterday; round and round the stomp of walkers goes, the health conscious who can't sit still for an hour circulate the outside perimeter of the deck , rotating at their bipedal at 40 miles an hour, there they go, pace, pace, pace, here they come again.

In a moment I'll head back down to the cardeck, to squeeze between the swaying hulks parked too closely in an effort to make more money, to get all the impatient--I have somewhere to be--lazy, slackbeds who rushed to the ferry just at sailing time, not the hour before to wait in line in a freezing car for their ship to come in. My clothes will be dirty from scraping front and back on the unwashed country lane dirt of my neighbors from two islands. And I will compress my broken back, contorted into odd shapes as I try to crawl into my car through a 6 inch crack as I wedge the door against the hull of the ship--everyonce and a while some poser with a full bladder will be caught in his gull-winged $100,000 car pissing in his coffee cup because there is no way he could dream of opening his doors with a foot between cars either side. . . .

We're here and I'm headed there. Have a great day.

posted by: ChefNeal at December 14, 2005 08:47 | link | comments (1) |
san juan islands, ferries, mainland, ferry travel

Comments:

#1  14 December 2005 - 13:55

 

Beautiful post. I can visualize it all. Thanks for the scenery and the thoughts.

InMyLife

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