Emerald City and Beyond

Things have been pretty busy at the Newmaforma Service Corsa lately. More boatbiking than blogging. Priorities.

Last weekend we decided to make a visit to our friends Cass at their new home and shop on Whidbey Island. Beyond seeing their new digs, it was a chance to test Gavin on a car trip longer than 2 hours. So far he has cross country ski trips of 3 hours and boat bike rides of 2.5 hours under his belt as well as numerous 2 hour drives and airline flights. I was optimistic.

The drive was ideal with G's napping and A and I catching up on conversation until we hit Seattle. Maybe the stop-and-go traffic, maybe the crappy sub sandwich we had for lunch or the chocolate Graham Crackers for dessert, brought on disaster. Or maybe the belly-button book he was reading instigated his troubles. Maybe all of it or none of it; regardless, ALL OF IT came up and ALL OVER his shirt, pants and car seat.

I cut through traffic from the far left lane to the far right lane just in time to see the next exit was a lefty to Mercer St. Oh, well. The following exit some 1/2 mile beyond seemed much, much further as all the windows were opened to ventilate. The road noise did little to muffle G's screaming.

We made it off the freeway and stumbled through a seemingly nice neighborhood to a Chevron station with a mini mart. Glorious relief as there is a parking spot right by the door and no waiting behind cars needing gas.



A jumped out and around to G who sits behind the driver seat and stripped him down, while I went inside to buy some water for rinsing and came back to find G naked and covered head to toe in vomit. (at this point I was not allowed to take photos)

A and G raced into the bathroom and the Korean guy behind the counter was very nice to them. He opened the bathroom door and commented how it was too cold out for a kid to be naked.

Meanwhile I'm scooping barf out of G's seat with an Auto Trader and trying to unhook the straps and remove the fabric from the seat itself. It was a situation of trying to maintain forward momentum but not having a frigging clue what my next step was going to be. And despite the nastiness, I was kinda into the moment.

As A and G came back out with wet hair and clean clothes on G, she tells me how nice the guy inside is and how she has kid barf in her hair and on her shirt. The stream of folks walking past staring at me and my pile of saturated Auto Traders at my feet increased into an afternoon rush of refueling.

Finally having the barf saturated straps and fabric of the car seat removed, I race inside to rinse it all in the bathroom. Just inside the door is the line, and people immediately smell what I am holding and turn away in disgust allowing me to pass through to the bathroom door only to find resistance from the Angry Korean Mini-Mart (AKM-M)lady.

The lady's about 4'8" and has a finger up in my face yelling, "You can't come in here with that. You can't be in my bathroom with that. That no good, you go way!"

I'm totally shocked. A's compliment of the man still in my ears. I look at her in disbelief and retort, "You're ridiculous! You'd let me shit in your toilet but you won't let me rinse off a baby seat?"

She repeated herself as people in line joined my cause. Emphasizing my point, I fanned the pungent pile of car seat padding with every exclamation and the whole Mini Mart began to reek. Finally AKM-M Lady conceded and I continued my momentum of cleaning.

Back at the car A was chasing G around the driver seat while he practiced re-telling his story.




I managed to get the straps back in the baby seat and used his blankie for him to sit on. The rest of the tainted padding went in a plastic bag deep in the back of the car.



We bid farewell to the Angry Korean Mini Mart and pushed on toward the Mukitilo ferry.

While waiting for the ferry A asked if I'd check the gift shop for a t-shirt as hers was rank with barf. I ran across the street to see what I could find and came back with coffee and a bumper sticker.



When asked, "What am I supposed to do with a bumper sticker?" I answered with the obvious, "Get some."

G went nuts on the ferry. He honestly thought he was driving, and ran around all the windows yelling and pointing "Water, water!"



The rest of the trip went well. Never enough time with friends.

The Rain Test

With temperatures on the rise even if it is still raining, Gavin and I have been getting out for some rides again. Recently, as we sped down the hill toward the river, the rain pelting in our faces, Gavin cried out for over a mile, "Agua, Agua!" Once home, he begged for fish sticks...in English.

Child Labor and other things I learned from my mom

When I was four or five, my mom had a project that needed much labor power. Projects in my family often, in hindsight, should have included: building permits, maybe some chemistry or engineering schooling, or any other form of formal precursor. For example my recent boat bike would be considered a middling project. Its best qualifiers including: no plan, a complete lack of nautical knowledge and trying to use tools not suited to the task at hand.

Back to my mom...

Mom wanted carpet in the family room. The entire floor that was the kitchen/dining/family room had white linoleum with a small brick-like pattern that seemed random to the casual observer but after hours of building Lego villages or Erector Set towers one could very definitely see a repeated pattern of shapes in each square of linoleum. Much like the 3 variations of the same floor plan that made up our sub-division.

She concocted a plan to keep the linoleum in the kitchen/dining area and carpet the rest of the room. I'm guessing a 15'x 20' area from vague memory. The catch was there was no capital financing.

No problem! Mom was/is a scrapper. She liked to say, "We're turning lemons into lemon aide."

Each morning that summer she would thumb through the yellow pages then talk on the phone while I ate my Rice Crispies or Cheerios. Sometime later we would get in the family truck, pick up her friend Mary Anne and proceed to our first "stop".

Upon our arrival, mom would wake me up from my morning nap. In the beginning we would go through the front door of the carpet stores first and mom would have a conversation with the clerk...as the summer progressed, we did not go inside so much... The "nots" were usually places we had previously stopped at days before. Some of the stops were stores, some warehouses. Regardless, my job started when we drove around back and mom would pull up to the dumpster. Like a hunting dog I would respond to her pointing by leaping into the dumpster and picking up all the scrap pieces of carpet I could lift. It was exciting for me I'll admit. The small pieces I could throw as hard as I could muster and occasionally I would find a roll of carpet bigger than me that I would lift like a pole toss in Scottish Highland games.

Then the trip home for lunch and to sort the sizes, colors and textures of carpet. Being a little too young to play with knives, my brother and sister were suckered into cutting the remnants into uniform brick sized pieces. It's good to reflect now and know that their summer sucked too.

My first recollection as a kid of being sweaty and tired from hard work comes from dumpster diving for carpet remnants. The sense of accomplishment was great and all, but I was one dude with my mom and her gal-pal. I felt emasculated but wasn't old enough to know what it meant. Torn between feeling proud of being my mom's "Main Dumpster Man" and wishing I could just ditch the women and play Army with my friends (who by the way were all dudes). I soldiered on day after day not really understanding what the point was.

I hit my limit when, as usual, mom pulled the mustard colored Dodge 500 truck up next to a dumpster and I climbed out the back of the camper (that my dad built), dove in and landed on a homeless guy. I was well beyond being potty trained, but if I didn't full-on crap myself when I stepped on that guy, I would bet money I at least peed on he and I both. He yelled something at me and I jumped out of the dumpster, back into the truck and told my mom in few words, "I quit."

Perhaps for redemption or maybe to ease me off my ledge and keep me around to do her dirty work, mom and Mary Anne took me to A&W for lunch. A&W was way cooler than McDonald's for two reasons: Root beer floats and the Bear molded into the straw. See, as you sucked up the root beer in the float, it goes through the straw and just above the top of the mug the straw becomes shaped like a bear then goes back to a normal straw shaped tube. Frigging AWESOME when you're 5.

Regardless of mom and Mary Ann's bribery, they lost all credibility as we left the restaurant and walked out the emergency exit tripping the alarm and nearly making my ears bleed after a morning of soiling my pants.

Fast forward to Labor Day weekend and somehow my folks roped a house full of friends into helping glue down a million brick-sized pieces of random carpet onto a pad to make one BITCHIN' 1976-style family room rug. The bummer was that the house smelled like glue till Halloween and the carpet remained intact through the 80's when the house sold. The first condition from the new buyers? Put the carpet in a dumpster.