— षट् सहस्रं एकम् —
I noted in
yesterday's post that Laney's and my exploration of the twelve new Light Rail stations (two of them new to everyone; ten of them new to us) on the 2 Line was a seven-hour affair. Well, yesterday I went over to Port Orchard to hang out of Claudia for a bit, and
that was an eight and a half-hour affair. I have 132 shots I took on Sunday, but yesterday I took, like, three. Only one of them did I take actually
while I was with Claudia.
It's probably also worth noting that I was actually
with Claudia for only about three hours. I spent
way more time just getting over there, and then getting back, than I spent with her. But, I made the very smart decision of bringing my laptop with me to use on the Seattle-Bremerton ferry; I used to be frustrated by the lack of public wifi on Washington State Ferries, until I realized I can just use my iPhone as a wifi hot spot. I brought my phone charger to counter any battery drain that might result—there weren't a lot of outlets on the ferry, but, I found one.
I also had my library book with me, which would have been a more pleasant use of my time, but bringing my laptop with me allowed me to make far more
efficient use of the time. I spent the one-hour boat ride over there tagging all the photos of public art installations at Light Rail stations from Saturday with the titles of the pieces, the names of the artists, and including them in captions with web page and website links to both. I spent the one-hour boat ride back finishing up the entire blog post, which is why I only have to update you on yesterday, rather than the entire weekend, in today's post.
The thing is, this was my first time visiting Claudia without a car but
not taking the Kitsap Transit Fast Ferry, which crosses to Bremerton in half the time (half an hour), but does not run on Sundays. And I totally would have chosen a Saturday, but before my Birth Week, when I also plan to stop by Claudia's on my way to Jennifer's as usual, yesterday was simply the only day available; every other weekend is already booked up. So, I decided, fuck it: I'll just walk on the regular ferry to Bremerton. I was still able to transfer to the Port Orchard Foot Ferry from Bremerton, which takes like 12 minutes to cross the Sinclair Inlet but takes a lot longer to get around—indeed, to my utter bafflement, Kitsap Transit offers
no bus route between Bremerton and Port Orchard. They apparenly expect that you will always take the Foot Ferry, even though, for example, the last ferry from Port Orchard to Bremerton on Sundays leaves at only 4:30 p.m. That was pretty annoying.
Anyway, I had about 15 minutes to wait for the Foot Ferry to Port Orchard after reaching the Bremerton ferry terminal, and I actually started my draft of the blog post while waiting there. I had left home at 11:30 a.m., and walked to the Seattle ferry terminal, deliberately timing it so that I would get there about 15 minutes before the boat was set to sail at 12:20. I had discovered I had $30 in funds on my spare Orca Card, which meant I did not have to add more spending to my budget for this weekend—I totally forgot I had loaded that card for when Jennifer and Matthew were supposed to visit for the Salmon Days Festival in October, but I had to cancel because Shobhit and I had covid (and Matthew himself was really sick anyway). At least, that's what I think is the reason there was $30 on it; there's no record of it on my budget spreadsheet but I can't think why there would be $30 on it otherwise. Well, now there's $18.95 on it. I actually have two spare Orca Cards that I can use for when guests visit; the other one still has $2.50 on it. In any case, I had never used an Orca Card to pay for Washington State Ferries before and wanted to be there early enough in case it didn't work and I still had to buy a ticket or whatever.
But, all I had to do was tap the Orca Card reader at the turnstyle, and it let me through. The slight bummer of this is that the annual pass I have from work does not work on Washington State Ferries—no monthly or annual pass does; you can only use a card with funds on it. This is in stark contrast to the Fast Ferries, operated by Kitsap Transit, on which I
can use my pass. So really, I still spent $11.05 yesterday. It was just already accounted for so I did not have to subtract it from my current budget balance.
Oh, and the other thing: due to one of the vessels being out of commission for maintenance, the Seattle-Bremerton route is on "Alternate schedule," which involves fewer crossings. On top of that, yesterday two of the morning crossings were canceled so the vessel they
are using could be refueled. This is why I did not reach Port Orchard until about 2:00: the latest I could have arrived otherwise was 10:30 a.m. and Claudia understandably did not want to have to be ready for a visitor that early. (I still had to leave home at 11:30 a.m. as it was.)
I had to catch the 6:40 ferry from Bremerton back to Seattle, which would have been the case no matter what. The sailing prior to that is at 4:15, and that would have meant needing to be on the 3:45 foot ferry out of Port Orchard. I'd need to leave Claudia's at least 20 minutes before that, which would have given me less than 90 minutes to actually spend any time with her. That meant sailing back to Seattle on the 6:40 ferry out of Bremerton, and with the last ferry out of Port Orchard at 4:30, I figured I would just kill a couple of hours in Bremerton. Not a big deal.
— षट् सहस्रं एकम् —
— षट् सहस्रं एकम् —
Claudia was walking her new dog, Princess Vespa (
love the name—and the reference) downtown when I arrived on the Foot Ferry. I walked with them to two stores along the main street where Vespa is already conditioned to expect treats. Claudia is still training the dog, who had to be restrained and pulled back a lot.
I thought she had walked the dog all the way down there from the house, which is about a mile, but Claudia told me she tried that and it's too difficult, with other dogs in people's yards along the way. I guess she drives downtown and then gets out to walk the dog. So, when we were done walking, we went back to her car and drove back up to her house, where we just hung out in the kind of lounge area next to the dining room and kitchen. It's right by the electric fireplace, which was nice and toasty and Vespa settled down and toasted right next to it while Claudia and I caught up.
Oh, I suppose I should mention this: as always happens, the first thing we did was a tour of all the updates to Claudia's extensive garden in her huge yard. Claudia's always kind of funny about this, self-conciously assuming I'm bored (not true) but too excited by her gardening progress not to share. It sounds like some of the flowers might be in bloom when I return in April, and she showed me photos of a few of them and they do look kind of cool. One of them looks like purple lollipops.
So I would guess we got back to her place somewhere around 2:30, and then we got up to go when 4:00 rolled around, to make sure I'd be back to the Port Orchard terminal by the time the last ferry left at 4:30. That gave us right around 90 minutes at the house. She gave me a ride back to the terminal, and even got out to walk me to the terminal from the car, so I "don't get kidnapped."
It was useful for her to have done that, though, because I mentioned that I would be killing a couple of hours in Bremerton, and she immediately said we could hang out a little while longer and she would give me a ride around the inlet to Bremerton. She said it doesn't take long, although it
is a 15-minute drive around, and thus a half-hour commitment to drive around and then back again. But, she was looking for a soil sifter and I just rode with her to Wal-Mart, which did not have it; we drove to the nursery that has the Hobbit House, thinking I had not seen it but forgetting I went there for my "Hidden Gems" Birth Week in 2023. She still wanted to go there and just resist buying too many plant starts, but we got there and they were closed anyway.
So she just drove me over to Bremerton from there, and I suggested maybe we could find a place to just buy a snack. She parked near downtown Bremerton and we went into a couple of shops. She bought some dolmas at one place, but wound up deciding just to take that home. In the second place I foubnd a $6.19 egg salad sandwich, and when I went to pay for it she insisted, just because I had come all the way out there—apparently I'm one of very few friends who will go all the way out there just to hang out with her; she totally assumed I had some other business over there (which is the case during my Birth Week, but I have gone over to visit her several other times of year in the past too). I really appreciate not having to waste my own money on that sandwich, even though I did budget $40 for
possible spending with Claudia, and in the end spent none. Anyway that sandwich really sucked, and was insanely dry, as I discovered as I ate it while waiting roughly an hour at the Bremerton terminal after Claudia dropped me off there. I opted not to tell her that, though.
There were multiple announcements about the alternative schedule, and that there was no 5:30 sailing. I was on the 6:40 ferry, and that reached Seattle at about 7:40. I caught Light Rail to Capitol Hill and walked home from there, and that got me home just after 8 p.m., just a few minutes faster than if I had waited for a RapidRide G line bus.
Shobhit made us bagel egg sandwiches for dinner which were delicious, and we spent the rest of the evening watching TV:
Rooster and
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, both on HBO Max. And that pretty much wrapped up the weekend, a quite lovely one in which I spent a lot of time on transit, both trains (light rail) and boats (ferries).
— षट् सहस्रं एकम् —
[posted 12:31pm]
