My weekend over the past three days were just as jam-packed as if they had still been a part of my Birth Week, mostly because crammed into the middle of it was my rescheduled Birth Week activity with Jennifer: the requisite overnight stay, for the first time having to happen outside the calendar bounds of my Birth Week Vacation. At first, she thought she was going to be able to reschedule it for the weekend of May 7—the previous weekend—but, my one-week-postponed vacation overlapping with Mother's Day fucked up a lot of potential planning. Jennifer had forgotten that she had a Mother's Day Weekend trip to Lake Chelan that weekend, so we couldn't get together during my actual vacation.
Thus moving it to the
next weekend—this past weekend—was just as well, as
Kitsap Live Steamers only does their "Public Run Day" rides on their steam engine-run miniature trains through the woods on the second and fourth Saturday of every month. Before I had to postpone my Birth Week, Jennifer and I had a plan set to go there and ride the train on the fourth Saturday of April—the 23rd. But because April actually had five Saturdays this year, the fifth being on the last day of the month (my birthday, the 30th), that meant there were three weeks between the last April run and the first May run, which did not happen until May 14.
It all worked out, really, and I was very happy. Jennifer tends to be very generous when it comes to my coming to stay the night with her, and has no problem coming to pick me up at the Bremerton ferry, even though it's about a 45-minute drive from her house in Union (it used to be 56 minutes from the old house where she lived with Eric on Kristi Court in Shelton, so I guess at least now it's a slight improvement). So, allowing Shobhit to keep the car for his work shifts over the weekend, I caught the bus on Saturday down to Colman Dock where the Washington State Ferries are (thus the first seven of the
83 shots I took on this overnight trip were of the temporary pedestrian bridge to it, and the new Colman Dock and Seattle Ferry Terminal still under construction—it does look like it will be very cool when it's finished,
next year), and got on the 10 a.m. ferry to Bremerton.
There was a
memorial, sort of cremated ashes "burial at sea" on that ferry ride, something new and different I had never before witnessed on a Washington State Ferry.
Matthew (her boyfriend) works on Saturdays, and Chase and Ian were at Eric's for the weekend, so Jennifer had only hope with her (she's 19 years old now . . . I can't deal), and they were there waiting for me when I arrived. Earlier in the morning it had been raining pretty hard, and Jennifer was afraid that would make it so we couldn't do the Kitsap Live Steamers train ride, but I messaged her then that the forecast had the rain stopping by 11 a.m. so I'd still like to try, so we did.
Kitsap Live Steamers is inside the South Kitsap Regional Park, in Port Orchard, which is across the Sinclair Inlet to the south from Bremerton. Driving around Sinclair Inlet meant another 20-minute drive or so to get there, and it did sprinkle a little, but it was fine. Jennifer even said she called them to see if they were still opened, as the website does say "
inclement weather can delay the trains." They said they were open, so we were all reassured and satisfied.
I think it was a good thing we got there fairly early in the day; I think the line likely got longer as the day went on. As it was, we only had to wait for about two rounds of the roughly 10-minute train, and by the time we got on, they actually had two different trains running at once. I don't know the cumulative length of their railroad tracks, but they've got
a surprisingly complex system going on, after
more than 30 years of operation. I found the whole thing very cool, and the ride utterly delightful.
Jennifer was kind of funny, as she saw how many people were bringing small children, and it clearly made her self-conscious that we were riding without any small children. It was clear that no one else cared, though, so, soon enough she got over it. The train has
seven cars in all, six if you don't count the "engine" car at the front and five for regular riders not part of volunteer staff who drive the train. This effectively becomes one family or group per car, and thus five per train, although I'm sure there might be some instances where two couples could get onto one car. The "car" for passengers just consists of a thin sort of bench you straddle with your feet on baseboards. I found the miniature train itself quite charming, and the forest scenery through which it ran very pretty and lovely.
We didn't do anything else at the park, and really just left as soon as we were done with the train ride. They do ask for donations, and neither Jennifer nor I had any cash on us so she asked Hope for some cash. I'm not sure how much she put in the donation box (with
a model caboose atop it) but I think it was probably $20. After we finished the ride, I said, "Well that made me happy, thank you!"
For all my Birth Week activities, even though this was outside my actual vacation time, this was "train #16." Technically 15, I suppose, since all I saw was a railroad near Auburn Environmental Park when I met up with Gabriel and Lea the previous Saturday.
Jennifer then drove us back to her house in Union, stopping along the way at a burger joint in Allyn because she was getting hangry, having not eaten anything all day. She got me an order of onion rings, and I would have been fine with a small but she ordered a large, and that bag was gigantic, easily enough for three people. Hope had also had the same size onion rings with her chicken sandwich and neither of us could finish the onion rings; a good amount of leftovers were brought to the house. (The place was called Big Bubba's Burgers, if you ever want to find the largest bag of onion rings you've ever seen, along State Route 3.)
We stopped at a couple of stores in Shelton, a liquor store and then Safeway, for ingredients Jennifer wanted for the
blackberry frozen margaritas she wanted to make. We then went back to the house in Union (a town so small it's
not even an incorporated town; Wikipedia still only cites the 2010 census count of 631 people, but Jennifer said it was something like 760, which would currently make it barely smaller than Wallace, Idaho—the key difference being that Wallace
is an incorporated "city," as it has a rich and longer history, particularly with mining, that had it maybe four times its current population in the mid-20th century). We waited for Matthew to come home from work, Jennifer making it a point not to start drinking until after our next outing, which I think at least somewhat surprised both Matthew and Hope.
In any case, Matthew came along, and even drove, to our next destination:
High Steel Bridge, at 375 feet above the Skokomish River the
highest railway arch bridge ever constructed in the U.S., built in 1929 but converted to a roadway in 1964. But, having been originally a railroad for logging (built for Simpson Logging Company, which incidentally both Grandpa McQuilkin and Uncle Paul, who died recently, once worked for), Jennifer had presented it as an alternate idea if Kitsap Live Steamers were to be rained out; I already had it as a backup plan myself, from planning weeks ago. I told her I'd love to do both, and so we did.
The bridge is 2.4 miles down National Forest (NF) Road 2340, itself 2.3 miles down NF-23, itself 5.6 miles off Highway 101. The bridge is about 16 miles from Union, but the forest roads are largely unpaved so it takes a bit over half an hour to get out there.
It was still really cool and fun to see, though, especially after I found
an old photo of a logging train crossing the bridge. Also, apparently locals are partial to going out there and throwing fruit off the bridge to the river below, mostly pumpkins. And since pumpkins are currently out of season, Jennifer got a watermelon at the Safeway for Matthew to drop off the bridge.
I think we all assumed that fruit would not really be littering since fruit grows on trees and falls on the ground all over the place. I did do a couple of Google searches later, and just about every web page I found said this is also bad for the environment. I mean, it's clearly better than, say, throwing plastic off the bridge. But I guess we're all going to hell anyway. Or, maybe, a slightly less severe circle of hell. I got a pretty great video clip out of it; it was cool to see how the watermelon exploded upon impact from that height, even hitting water. That's physics!
We actually went to even another, nearby old railroad bridge, called
Vance Creek Bridge, this one still a railroad that was never converted to a regular road. It's at the end of a trail on technically private property; Matthew said the trail was a quarter mile but it was clearly longer—more like
0.7 miles. It wasn't too hilly though so it was okay, and it was well worth getting out to, in my opinion.
The bridge is . . . shall we say, "janky." There are no safety elements at all, which is why local authorities have tried to deter people from going out there, but people have anyway. Matthew told us the
bridge and railroad ties used to come all the way out to the ground level with it, but were recently removed due to renewed popularity of people taking dangerous photos on social media.
That didn't stop two other people we saw there when we arrived, a young man and a young woman,
climbing up a makeshift rope ladder that really could have been made far more efficiently; I could not fathom how they could easily climb back down it, they had such a challenge getting up. They did make it on top, though, and by then I had gotten the photos I wanted and declared we should leave, as I did not want to be around to witness a death. Jennifer was like, "What, are you squeamish?" Uh, when it comes to live gruesome deaths, yes I am!
As we got further away she said, "I haven’t heard any screams so they must be okay." I mean . . . who knows how much time those dipshits spent up there? You couldn't pay me to climb up there, even though
Matthew did try (he's 31 now, incidentally, or he will be whenever his birthday is this year), until Jennifer all but demanded he come back down.
We all walked back to the car and drove back to the house in Union, and finally had our dinner, panini sandwiches made in the panini press, right out of the box, that Jennifer's mom gave her for Mother's Day. The dinner, along with the frozen blueberry margaritas, was quite tasty. Jennifer got visibly buzzed and was giggling up a storm by the time 10:00 rolled around, and we were all so tired we declared it time to go to bed.
Once again, very generously, Jennifer—this time with Matthew, who again drove—gave me a ride back to Bremerton so I could catch the 11:10 ferry back to Seattle, thereby closing another springtime overnight stay with my cousin (that usually happening during my Birth Week).
— पांच हजार दो सौ छह —
I actually did two other things over the weekend, both of them with Laney: Friday after work was our
May Happy Hour, her choice of location being Volunteer Park, largely due to her still-injured knee.
Whole Foods has returned their cheese-pizza Fridays deal, which I believe used to be $6 for what is usually a $12 pizza and is now $8 for what is usually $13, still a great deal. I left work early to get to Whole Foods and order said pizza, which the girl said would take 20 minutes and that was annoying as even transit could not be timed well enough for me to get there sooner than probably 4:35, after leaving work at 4:00. Luckily she under-promised and over-delivered, getting me my pizza in about 13 minutes. I hoped to get on a bus from there to home to save me some time, but there were not 12s coming anytime soon, so I walked the rest of the way, pizza box in hand. I then fried up some veggie pepperoni to put on my two slices; heated them up for a minute in the microwave; made myself a margarita; and put all of that, along with an extra jacket I was very glad I brought, into an insulated carrier bag.
Laney was at my place about 10 minutes earlier than the planned 5:30 but it still took me until 5:30 to get down to her. I had to take a minute to
post about the lady at Whole Foods who rang me up and told me I was handsome.
Anyway, aside from
the fucking squirrels, and the fact that Laney was only up for hanging out for a couple of hours, the dinner Friday was quite lovely and pleasant. The weather was also iffy on Friday, but the evening turned out to be dry enough, if a little cool; we both dressed in layers and it was not long before I did pull out my UNFI jacket to wear over my hoodie. It wasn't the weather that deterred Laney after two hours, but rather that she was "fading." She had given me a ride out there, and gave me a ride home again too, which was nice. And although I'd have preferred more than two hours, I got another couple of hours yesterday anyway.
Because, and this was the biggest reason why I went for the 11:10 ferry back to Seattle, Laney came back yesterday afternoon, for a long-planned movie watch, of the original
Paddington, which we both found delightful. The second one is even better, and the one I wanted her to see most, but I did feel we should watch the first one first, being a completist and all. I forgot how funny that movie really is.
Laney had gone to Safeway on her way over, and found a 2/$4 deal on cheddar popcorn so she got me one too. I ate way too much all weekend, breaking 167 lbs yet again this morning. It's time for me to get my shit together.
Anyway! We had a great time watching the movie, and she left probably around 4:30, giving me time to edit, upload and tag all my photos from the weekend. Then Shobhit got home from work, and not long thereafter Sachin came over. He was going to come with his mother but she opted not to come in the end. She did send Sachin with a dish of some kind she had made, and Shobhit poured it into a pot, somehow dropped it, and it splattered truly all over the kitchen. Mostly on the floor, but some on the refrigerator and cupboards and even a fair bit onto the carpet just outside the kitchen linoleum. I always think about how things would be if the rolls were reversed, like if I had dropped it, and how truly ballistic he'd go. I was annoyed but mostly held it in, and just got to work on helping clean it up. On the upside, our kitchen floor is now cleaner than it has been in ages.
Shobhit did feel really bad about it, I could tell, especially because it was the dish Sachin's mother had made. Sachin said he wouldn't tell her he dropped it. There was a little left in the pot and so Shobhit was still able to taste it.
He then heated some Indian packets and toasted some bread rolls and we all had that for dinner, which wasn't bad. I was also doing laundry and otherwise retired to the bedroom long before Sachin left, as they got into long debates about world economics and global national policies that was boring me to tears. Well, at least the laundry is done.
— पांच हजार दो सौ छह —
[posted 12:11 pm]
