Whidbey Island 2026 (etc)

— पाँच हज़ार नौ सौ छियानवे — Under normal circumstances I'd be filling today's post with photos from the UW Cherry Blossoms Shobhit and I saw on Friday—but the rest of the weekend was a far bigger deal, as Ivan arrived on Saturday, and he joined Shobhit and Alexia and me for a packed day of adventure on Whidbey Island yesterday. But, I should still get Friday out of the way first in the text. Shobhit and I went to the U District Art Walk on Friday, which occurs every third Thursday of the month. We got a lot of walking in, especially since Shobhit met me at work first, and we walked home together, stopping at Pacific Supply on 12th Avenue so we could buy a new part for the flushing mechanism for our toilet. We really only needed the chain, but I could not figure out how to hook that onto the plastic flap thing, so I just replaced the chain and the flap. It's not perfect now, but at least it's flushing properly again and the chain is no longer constantly disconnecting. Anyway! We had dinner, having no idea whether there would be snacks at any of the U District art venues. Boy, was that a smart play. Unlike Pioneer Square or Belltown or Capitol Hill Art Walks, no one in the U District had any snacks or drinks at all. Wait, I take that back. One of the first stops we went to had a small bowl of little soft gingerbread snap cookies. I did not partake; it was on a table of people doing crafts. That's also sometimes something participating venues do, offer crafting. Shobhit and I took Light Rail all the way up to Roosevelt Station, then walked roughly 10 blocks south of there to the Ravenna-area with a few of the northernmost venues listed on the U District Art Walk map. A majority of the locations were on University Way, so we mostly walked down that street. We did go into a few relatively interesting places, but by and large University Art Walk was a bust. SeattleArtWalks.com lists U District Art Walk as having "varying hours," and we discovered that what that really meant was most of the participating hours were during regular business hours. We were there in the evening—a reasonable time to us, since all the others take place in the evening; I figured "varying hours" meant anywhere from 5 to 9:00—and a whole bunch of the places listed were simply closed. Unlike in other neighborhoods, there were no art galleries at all; there was a couple of straight-up art museums (Burke Museum, Henry Art Gallery—I know that has "Gallery" in the name but it's actually a museum), but they both closed at 5:00. We didn't even get up there until around 6:00. To be fair, there was a couple of memorable stops, though both were rather different from the most typical thing we'd see in other neighborhoods. The first was Gargoyles Statuary, which we were surprised to find with a line of little bells stretched across and blocking the open door, with a sign that informed us someone would help us shortly and they had "limited capacity." Then a woman appeared, wearing a face mask, and handing us both face masks for entry. The place is very tightly packed with merchandise, a ton of it fascinating—I took more photos there than any of the few other places we managed to get inside—and the maybe 15 or so other people inside all had masks on too. I wore mine without complaint; to Shobhit's credit, so did he. I suppose I don't begrudge them for continuing to run their business as though it's still 2021, but I was still slightly surprised by it. You really don't see that a lot anymore. The next place was Inner Visions Posters, which sold a lot of vinyl records and a ton of posters. This place was remarkable, outside of the type of merchandise it sells, for no other reason than the custom-framed poster for Fleetwood Mac's Rumours that I was dying to buy, but I could not justify paying $60. In a reversal of his usual attitude, and I suppose just because he knows of my deep reverence for that album, he all but encouraged me to buy it. I would have loved it, but our walls are covered enough as it is and that price was just a little much. We did look to see if there was another copy of it un-framed; I likely would have paid $20 for it and then just put it into one of the poster frames I already have. But, there were none. Oh well. After that we went from venue to venue, particularly on the southern end of The Ave, finding the places closed. The whole approach to "Art Walk" in the U District seemed much more tailored to the college crowd, perhaps assuming they'd all be out partying or whatever in the evening, and sticking mostly to places that close early and perhaps assuming they'd come in earlier in the day. That said, also unlike other neighborhoods, we did not see any Art Walk flyers in the windows of a single one of the ostensibly participating venues we walked past. It became pretty clear pretty quickly that we don't need to do this one again; I took any further Third-Friday Art Walks off my calendar. But! We happened to be right by campus once we were running out of venues that turned out to be closed anyway, and the UW Cherry Blossoms happened to be in bloom right now. So we walked over there to check them out. I only took 9 photos of the U District Art Walk (10 if you count the exterior shot I took later of the Burke Museum); I took 16 of the cherry blossoms—the latter being the only one of the two I posted photos of to my socials. I did combine them all, though, plus several other photos I took Friday evening, into one photo album for "U District Art Walk / UW Cherry Blossoms at Dusk 2026." So this one album is cross-posted to two collections, for both "Misc Seattle Art Walks" (this'll be the only album for U District Art Walk, unless they change their appoach in the future) and Cherry Blossoms at UW (three albums now: 2017, 2025, and 2026). Maybe some other year we should go back and find cherry blossoms also around the rest of the neighborhood and not just that one section of trees on the UW campus. — पाँच हज़ार नौ सौ छियानवे — So Saturday was sort of a mix of a notable day yet a relatively uneventful day. We didn't go out on any social engagements, but it was the day Ivan arrived. I spent the morning doing laundry, and some housework and light cleaning, tidying up the guest room so it was livable for Ivan for a few nights. He's scheduled to go back to Pennsylvania tomorrow, and he's spending today going to meet up with the people who run a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center in Edmonds where he is considering taking a job. He has another job offer in Vermont, apparently, and he's trying to decide between the two. If he moves to Seattle, I was totally assuming he'd have zero desire to live at our place again and commute that far by transit, especially as Light Rail only gets within 4 miles of Edmonds. But, even though he has not said anything at all about renting the guest room, he also keeps saying he's "keeping all his options open" even when I ask if he plans to live in Edmonds, so suddenly it feels a little like the possibility is more open than I thought. That said, I also have a feeling Shobhit will want to charge a ridiculous amount for rent, which may be technically a fair market rate but which could easily make Ivan think he might as well find somewhere else to live. The housing market is not exactly tight right now, so it probably would not be difficult for him. But this is all getting way ahead of ourselves; Ivan hasn't even looked at the facility in Edmonds or met the people who run it yet. So I'm still not counting on anything in particular at all, or even getting my hopes up. Anyway, I just about got all the needed things done right in time, and Ivan arrived shortly after noon, just as he said he would. Actually he had said "Think I will be arriving around noon today," and looking again at our message history, he texted me he was downstairs at 12:00 on the dot. That seems suspiciously precise, honestly, and I wonder if he killed some time nearby so he could come to the door right at noon. I wouldn't put it past him. He refused my offer to come pick him up at the airport too, which I found odd; he was all good with it when he came to visit last summer. But this time, he insisted he could just ride the Light Rail, and still said he'd manage on transit even when I noted to him that Light Rail was closed for maintenance Saturday between Sodo and Capitol Hill Stations and he would need to transfer to a shuttle bus. I can't really account for this, except that maybe he simply accepted the lifts when he had heavier luggage? He's only here three nights this visit, so he just had a large backpack and, oddly, a second pair of shoes he was just carrying by themselves. I mean, he was here for five nights last summer so maybe the two-day difference is what makes the difference, or maybe it was just his mood. With Ivan, it could very easy just be his mood. He was very cagey about his travel itinerary too, never providing any details over Messenger; after he arrived, though, he did reveal he flew out of Philadelphia at 5 in the morning after staying the night in that city (he'd been staying for a short while again with his parents in Lancaster), and that he'd had a layover in Los Angeles. He seemed very happy to see us both, and when he noted that he was pretty tired and Shobhit suggested he go take a nap, Ivan said, "Oh I think I'll stay here and socialize for a bit." He was still nursing the chai I had made for us all as well. Shobhit had a Seattle Men in Leather event to go to, and not long after he left, Ivan did excuse himself to go sleep for a while. And boy, did he: it was early evening before he was up and about again. In the meantime, I took the car downtown to pick up a bunch of samples I grabbed from the kitchen on Friday and took to my desk but were too heavy to carry home on foot. I was back home with Ivan being none the wiser that I'd even left, and also before Shobhit was back from his event. He called me very soon after that, though, and I then went to get the car yet again so I could drive and meet him at the Broadway Market QFC and we could do some grocery shopping, and Ivan was still sleeping when we got back. And now I can't even remember how we spent Saturday evening. Oh, Shobhit and I watched the HBO documentary Fukushima: A Nuclear Nightmare. Some pretty gripping, stunning footage in that movie, and it ending with the idea that we're no better prepared for that kind of near-nuclear-meltdown disaster now than we were before then was a pretty sobering thought. I didn't even realize that earthquake and tsunami was 15 years ago now. Damn, time goes by fast. I had also spent some time in the bedroom at my desk, and Ivan got up and it sounded like he'd gone to get himself some dinner. When I went out to watch the movie, Ivan came out to see what we were watching but pretty quickly found he had no interest. He kind of abruptly said, "I have to go meditate" and then went back to his room. — पाँच हज़ार नौ सौ छियानवे — — पाँच हज़ार नौ सौ छियानवे — Okay, so that brings us to yesterday, the Big Day of the Weekend: our day trip through Whidbey Island, basically our "counter-programming" to what had originally been planned as the day Alexia and I would go down to Olympia to see Shobhit in The Foreigner. Alexia had insisted that we keep the day on the calendar and still do something, and include Shobhit. It was my idea to find a day trip to go to just as far from home as Olympia but just in a totally different direction, and that was how I landed on Whidbey Island, as it was simply the best option that was also roughly 60 miles away. (Okay, so Whidbey Island itself is roughly 55 miles long. Work with me.) This was all decided and established well before any of us had any idea Ivan would be visiting. I didn't even know for sure he'd be coming this weekend until Thursday. I did tell him we were all going to Whidbey Island on Sunday and he was welcome to join us, to which he replied, "That sounds lovely." I then broached this with Alexia, who I knew would be thrilled to see him, but told her that Ivan does have a long history of indicating interest and then bailing at the last minute. But, by the time he was here on Saturday, he was pretty convincingly interested in joining us, our planned departure of 7 a.m. notwithstanding. We never know how reliably he'll be ready in time for something either, especially if he's sleeping, and I messaged him yesterday morning at 6:30 that we were scheduled to leave in half an hour, as he still hadn't come out of his room. I sent that even though I saw on Facebook Messenger that he was indicated as "active," which suggested he was indeed awake; I have no idea if he'd have gotten up at 6:30 regardless or if I saw his bedroom light on through the bottom of his door right after I messaged him because I had messaged him. We were all ready on time, though; Ivan after getting up at 6:30 and Shobhit and me both getting up at 5 a.m.—Alexia was just as punctual as Ivan, and she arrived to pick us up right at 7:00 a.m., just as planned. The first photo I took was a strip of sunrise above the Cascades and below the otherwise overcast clouds, taken from the car on I-5 going through Everett, at 7:36. We arrived at the first stop on my working list for the day, at Washington Park in Anacortes (technically Fidalgo Island; our only stop not actually on Whidbey), at aound 8:45; my first photo there, taken after we discovered the "Washington Park Loop" was closed to vehicle traffic and so we parked and walked it instead, was taken at 8:55. We'd have gotten through Washinhton Park a lot faster in the car, and we'd have gotten to more of my original list otherwise, but we were all glad that, in the end, we walked that 2-mile loop, which has stunning views all around. We did that for about an hour, and this is how, in the end, I put all my photos into at least two different photo albums, the most obvious being "Whidbey Island 2026," which contains all 136 of the photos that I kept from yesterday alone. This, of course, is now part of the "Whidbey Island" collection, now being 5 visits to that island (outside of only going to Deception Pass) since 2010. I totally forgot that Shobhit and I went there for my Birth Week in 2016, indeed the day before I turned 40; also that the Merchandising Team Barbecue that happened in 2023 had been at Justine's house out on Whidbey. But! I also have a "Whidbey Island 2026" collection, counting five separate albums dedicated to the five separate stops we made over the course of the day: Washington Park Loop, Anacortes (26 shots)
Deception Pass State Park (26 shots)
Price Sculpture Forest / Coupeville (48 shots)
Fort Casey State Park (24 shots)
Greenbank Farm (11 shots) Now, I actually took 11 shots in Coupeville, which had been a standalone item on my checklist, and that's just as many as I took at Greenbank Farm—but, Price Sculpture Forest has Coupeville as its address, so I just combined them; 48 shots is not too large a photo album anyway. Also, I know I said I kept 136 shots from yesterday and the combined shots from the above list is 135. That's because the combined, 136-shot album for Whidbey Island 2026 includes a shot of our dinner, which was at Tandoori Flame Indian Grill on Capitol Hill after Alexia drove us all back to Seattle, via the Mukilteo ferry from Clinton on the south end of Whidbey Island. I had liked Alexia's suggestion of driving north to Anacortes via I-5 first, then working our way south on the island, so we'd be that much closer to home when we were done. I am realizing only just now that I did not take any photos where we stopped for lunch, which was in Coupeville. That place was called Sunshine Drip, and Shobhit and I shared a vegan burrito I quite liked and he was kind of neutral about; I also had a London Fog tea latte. Anyway, back to the check list. The original list I came up with was a combination of the stops Dad had recommended for Shobhit's and my scenic drive we took in 2010; plus a couple of new things we discovered upon subsequent visits. Alexia said she didn't think we needed to go to both Fort Ebey State Park and Fort Casey State Park, so we only went to the latter and I took the former off the list; I replaced it with a new place she found and suggested, the Price Sculpture Forest, which we all very much enjoyed. I also had the town of Langley on my list, and we scratched that off at the end of the day when we realized what time we'd get back to Seattle otherwise. That was last on my list anyway, and as Alexia noted it was another small town with charming shops that were still basically interchangeable with Coupeville, and we weren't going to get back to Capitol Hill before 6:00 even without going to Langley. So we scratched Langley off the list. Thus, that left the six stops represented by the five albums listed above: Washington Park in Anacortes; Deception Pass State Park; Coupeville; Price Sculpture Forest; Fort Casey State Park; and Greenbank Farm—that last one being a stop we make pretty much every time Shobhit and I are on Whidbey Island. It gradually occurred to me that it made sense Ivan would want to join us, and even seemed to look forward to it: he's an avid hiker, and we did plenty of walking at most of the places we went to yesterday, particularly at Washington Park, the very type of place he tends to frequent. Now, he usually does these hikes alone I think, and certainly not in a group of four, which I would say is not his jam. The all-day affair of it all, I suspect, wore down on him a little by the end, but he did say he was really glad he went afterward, and he really seemed sincere. That made me happy. And besides, although he's lived in Washington quite a lot, and even lived in Bellingham for a year which is not exactly far from Whidbey, he also always did it car-free. So he had actually never been to Whidbey Island before, let alone a spot as spectacularly beautiful as Deception Pass, so I think he just naturally took the opportunity. I should note the wide range of weather we had yesterday. The forecast seemed sort of perfect for our purposes over the course of the previous few days: it always showed as cloudy but no rain; highs in the upper forties throughout the island. This made it a perfect day during the perfect time of a year for a visit to Deception Pass and Whidbey Island: cold enough to keep the crowds away, by dry enough for us to have a perfectly lovely day. It was barely above freezing, literally in the mid-thirties, when Alexia picked us all up in the morning; I made the smart choice to wear my pea coat along with my scarf. By afternoon, we had sun breaks and eventually merely partly cloudy skies, and even I was rolling down my window occasionally to cool down inside the car. In short, the day just got better and better as it went along. This did mean it was quite chilly for our two-mile hike around the Washington Park Loop, but that also helped cool us after an hour of walking. It was kind of a perfect day of things done in the perfect order. I think Ivan was a little less impressed with Fort Casey State Park; its major point of interest is the old military installation built into a hillside, and Ivan kind of couldn't be bothered to care. I think he's more into the forest trails and that kind of thing. We weren't at Fort Casey that long anyway, maybe about half an hour. I took fewer photos at Greenbank Farm, but we were there for nearly an hour; Shobhit wanted to do a wine tasting, and we all sat down. Neither Alexia or Ivan ordered anything there, but they did take a bit of the slice of marionberry pie Shobhit ordered for us. The more memorable part of Greenbank Farm was running into Johanna and Roger, neither of whom had I seen in person since I left the Seattle Lesbian and Gay Chorus in 2004. (I did see Johanna briefly over Facebook Video at an SLGC reunion event in 2021.) It was kind of wild see them there, seemingly out of nowhere. Not only that, but it was Roger who called out my name first, and for several minutes I really did not remember him. I was not aware that he and Johanna were together now (along with Llyra and another guy named Sean who I don't remember if I ever met), which further muddled my attempt at memory, as I always remembered Johanna being married to a Danish man she always referred to as her "Great Dane." In fact, she was calling in from Denmark at that event in 2021, so they must have still been together as recently as that; she did not refer to him very positively when I saw her yesterday. Roger noted that he had once written me a sonnet for my birthday—I tried to find reference to this in my old LiveJournal but I could not. But when he mentioned there being something in it about "fisting Jesus," that triggered the memory of who he was. (This had to do with someone's puppet of Jesus I had found and put on my hand and I said I was fisting him.) "Ohhh," I said. "Roger!" He lookied so different, it was nuts. Or I suppose it wasn't nuts: I had not seen him in more than two decades. Ditto Johanna, whose hair is now very gray, but she has a very distinctively recognizable face. Roger also noted that he had gained and lost over 100 lbs over time; I did remember him being a bit thicker in the past than he was now. I went looking for old photos of both Johanna and Roger, and found none more recent than 2003. I was kind of stunned to find this group shot from my Birth Week Picnic Potluck Party at Golden Gardens Park that year: aside from Gabriel and Barbara and myself, the photo consists entirely of Johanna's romantic connections both past and present: Roger as at far right; Johanna is the dark-haired woman between Gabriel and me; the "Great Dane" (his name was Henrik) is behind her; Llyra is to my left, with the purpse hair; and Sean (I guess I have met him) is behind Roger. I introduced Roger and Johanna to Shobhit and Alexia and Ivan, and we all sat at a table near where they were seating in kind of more lounge-style seats along the wall in a corner (Roger had spotted me down the hallway from where they were seated). It always feels a little awkward running into people for the first time in years and years, especially when I was never that close to them even back in the day. How much do you keep chatting? To what degree do you "catch up"? How much do you basically ignore each other once the "Great to see you" pleasantries are done? It all went down relatively naturally, to be clear; it just felt a little awkward to me. But once my group of four was seated, there wasn't really any further chatting with Roger and Johanna, until we all got up to leave and there were the requisite "Nice to meet you"s and "Good to see you"s as we went on our way. It did feel kin of wild when I saw them, and I was like, "Wow this is pretty random." Johanna said, "Well it's not that random, his family has a cabin on the island." Okay, fine. That didn't make it feel any less random to me, as I had no idea about it. Besides, for them to be out at this specific venue on the only the fifth time I've been on the island in the past 15 years kind of is still pretty random. If nothing else, it was a giant blast from the past. And another fascinating bit of timing: Johanna just friended me on Facebook recently, maybe just a few months ago. She hadn't even been on my radar in years, outside of that Messenger Video call from 2021. Anyway, getting back to the rest of yesterday: we had a great, really fun day. We even established that Alexia and Shobhit and I will go to the Tulip Festival together on April 11; apparently she hasn't gone since Bram—who turns 40 this year!—was a kid. We were too early for Schu Farms, which was otherwise on the way up there yesterday morning, but we can put them on the list for the Tulip Festival, when Shobhit has a list of places he likes to stop to shop for produce and starts. So now I have started a new checklist, to which I will also add "Little Mountain," which I am sure Alexia doesn't know about. Shobhit and I went up there a couple of times, in 2020 and 2021, but haven't been up there since, and I think Alexia will dig the "Little Mountain Overlook." It would be nice to be up there when the tulips are actually in bloom, too. We went there on my birthday in 2020 and the festival wasn't even happening; no blooms then. In 2021 it was April 3 when we went and nothing appeared yet to be in bloom. This year we're going April 11, which is deeper into the festival month and hopefully the fields will be blooming. Granted, we also kind of want to hope for middling weather if we don't want to be dealing with insane crods on a beautiful Saturday. But, we have time to figure out what contingencies we want to plan for. We all took our stuff out of Alexia's car once we got to Tandoori Flame, which is on 15th Avenue E maybe only seven blocks from our condo. She snagged a parking spot right below the window we sat at in the restaurant. We told her we didn't need a ride for just those seven blocks, so we said our goodbyes after that large but delicious dinner. Then we watched a movie, which we happened to find on HBO Max, was apparently released last fall and even though Emma Thompson was the star I had never heard of it: Dead of Winter, about a grieving Minnesota widow who finds herself trying to rescue a kidnapping victim. Ivan had said he was interested, and then, per usual, he just spent the whole movie looking at his phone. Shobhit and I were pretty locked in; at least I was—Shobhit slept through maybe 20 minutes of it. He falls asleep constantly after he has his dinner. We've become such old people. Bleh. All in all a great weekend! — पाँच हज़ार नौ सौ छियानवे — [posted 12:31pm]