Shifting Gears

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It’s a small world after all . . .
   Here we are, twelve-hundred miles from home, and what happens when I venture into the local antique shop? I wind up talking with a lady named Joan who had a B&B on Whidbey Island and another lady named Somebody Jones, who clerks the store, about the wonders of Crest Road East as the favorite make-out venue of our youths!

   Then David takes a seminar at last week’s Trawler Fest (if you’re in Washington, there’s a festival this weekend!), and the instructor’s from Kilmarnock, a four-mile hop from the Wilshin home in Irvington, VA. PS – our favorite contest was the Quick-build boats, where contestants built floatable, ridable boats in a hurry, and solicited votes (dollar bills) from passers-by. Vote well, vote often!
   THEN, we strike up a conversation with a guy at the PCA Eastern Washington wine tour, and it ends up his dad’s living in Saluda, a mere six-miles as the birds fly from Irvington.

Six degrees is in the air!

Speaking of Porsche Club of America. . . .

   For us, last weekend’s  PCA wine tour and dinner at Columbia Crest started in Issaquah, where, along with wonderful long-time friends Liin and Lave Gustafson, we enjoyed a yummy Hawaiian-themed dinner at Dan and Marilyn Wilshin’s home in Issaquah. Good food, company and ambience! It doesn’t get any better than that, even if we didn’t get to bed until after one!

   The next morning, through driving rain, we and thirty-three other 

Porsches of varying styles and vintages headed up and over the snowy Snoqualamie Pass to the foothill farmland between Cle Elum and Ellensburg. Porsche ralliers LOVE early morning blue road drives through agricultural country while the state troopers are ostensibly still cozily nestled in their Dunkin’ Donuts seats.   

   We were pleased to know that the warnings we’d gotten about Washington PCA drivers not being speeders proved to be a myth. OF COURSE Porsche drivers love to speed, especially around things they shouldn’t, like hairpin curves. What were we thinking? (I always say it is the white knuckle passenger who is the braver on these trips!) 

      Highlights of the drive to the wineries: 1) emerging from the forested mountains to see Ellensberg sprawled out on the valley floor like a glorious picnic spread (picture above right), and 2) tracing the serpentine curves of Yakima Canyon in fourth gear.

   Once in Prosser, we hit Hogue Cellars,where our NW club met with two other Porsche Clubs for a picnic. (Yes, one can get tired of seeing eighty or ninety Porsches parked in a lot!) There, we connected with fun people before setting off to other wineries. To tell you the truth, after driving so long on so little sleep, and being a bit pickled at that, we really wanted to find our hotel and go to sleep. But we weathered the day and visited first Terra Blanca, which was pretty, but had, in our taste, bland wine, and then Kiona, from whom we bought a dappled, yet sturdy Cabernet which we’ll uncork next week to accompany a nice filet and some frites.

   We wanted in the worst way to go to Fidelitas, but got lost because the map lied, and so we did get our nap before the dinner festivities, in which I won a logo t-shirt (alas size S) and a white baseball cap, which I’ll donate to David, who will actually wear it. 
   Morning came early, and we hit the road in time to have breakfast at Mel’s Diner in Yakima. In all honesty, I do not judge towns by the people who eat at the local greasy spoon, but if I were to do so, I would say that Yakima residents pick an era and stick with it. Yesterday’s parade included an Elvis impersonator (except he was thin, sported white hair and wore impeccably polished Tony Lamas), a ZZ Top shoe-in, Janice J., and Kurt Cobain.  

   The best parts of our seven-hour blue-road trip home were: 1) driving past the old trains in Snoquomish, 2) oreo cows, 3)hunting dog trials, 4) Children’s Garden Flowers, and 5) Route 9 through Skagit County (our county).    

   OH, and we did get the garden weeded (it took three people a week to accomplish this), and now we get to buy plants to cover or distract from all the rocks that hold our home in its place on along the mountain.

A May Day, a hey day, a play day. . .

   Would it be a perfect day for a boat parade?  
   Not if you looked out our window at 6:30 a.m. The low, drizzling clouds crawling up our hill shrouded the Sound from our view.
   Nevertheless, Davy and I rose from our slumber, dressed in layers, and headed south to Lake Union to watch Seattle Yacht Club’s Opening Day parade with Dan and Marilyn Wilshin (Davy’s brother), who belong to Queen City Yacht Club.
   A kaleidoscope the day became!

   First a little history from one with dubious knowledge of such things. Seattle Yacht Club has been around since the late 1800s, and all that implies. As Seattle’s premier yacht club, it hosts the annual Opening Day parade, to which it invites a plethora of other yacht clubs, some coming from as far as Canada, and for which it provides a theme, this year’s being a rather dangerous “Out of this world”. It then stages the boats, in Portage Bay, from where they sail through the channel that dumps into Union Bay, right in view of Huskies’ stadium. From the east side of Union Bay, it looks like this (top left; photo courtesy of someone else). It’s OK to say WOW!

  Anyway, after first lubricating ourselves on a boat belonging to one of Dan and Mar’s generous maties, Dan, who served as his club’s official duty shuttle-boat driver, drove us to SYC where we parked ourselves at the channel’s start, so we could view the boats as they paraded before the judges.   Here we are at SYC, Mar looking demure, Dan ordering a Westie to stay or sit or something, and Davy and I wondering what would happen next.        First out were the fire boats, which, you guessed it, fired water into the windy air. Davy, being a Marine, put up his hood and watched. So did Dan and Mar. I fled up the hill, lest my hair frizz (I loathe looking like Einstein), but still heroically got some tough-to-get shots.
   Next came the Huskies’ band and cheer leaders, followed by clubs’ officers, cherried-out classic boats, strange hybrid vehicles, Naval Academy racers (Beat Army!), boats armed with mounted police or marines, the spinnakers-out class, and then the crazies.

   Somewhere in the middle of all this the amazing seamanship class appeared. At first, three pairs of sail boats, each with three yachties in their yachties standing at attention on the bow, quite precisely started down the channel. Then, in death-defying synchronization, each column made an eighty degree turn toward the other! OMG, they were all going to die right in front of us! I blinked hard. No way would I watch this debacle and have it be the source of a million future nightmares. But when I unblinked, I realized they knew what they were doing. Before me I could see them braiding through each other, not once, or twice, but down the whole stinking channel. Amazing. Yea Royal Victoria Yacht Club, or whomever it was! (The Royal Vancouver YC’s claim to fame were the Mounties mounted on their bows.)

  Things devolved when the novelty class appeared. With a theme like Out of This World, it was practically insured that at least one yacht club would seize the moment and display a deviant take on the theme. Ah, yes. While many boats concentrated on mainstream ideas like Star Wars, Space Odyssey: 2001, and ET, Queen City YC focused on the iPhone app Cows in Space. After all, it turns out, one of their members had a large, probably stolen, plaster cow in his front yard. (Don’t ask!)
   Upon checking SYC’s site this morning, I learned that the judges were not cowed by deviancy. SYC’s Apollo 13 won first place, followed closely by Vikings in Space. Alas. The orca Kayak lost too.

   Before leaving, we made a quick pit stop in SYC for wine and fries (great combination!!!), and made our way back to D&M’s generous mates’ boat in time to witness Super Saver out-hoof Ice Box for a Derby win.

It was a May Day. What a hey day. What a play day! Thank you, Dan and Mar!!!