MUDDSCAPE

The Titanic thought IT had problems! We spent 3 days in Bellevue Washington on our way back south to visit with family. The first day, Tuesday, was a short travel day (mileage wise that is) from Orcas Island to Bellevue. We drove 5 miles to the ferry landing, spent 2 hours in line, drove 1 minute onto the ferry, sailed for 1 hour, drove 15 miles to Costco Gas, then added another 75 miles to get to Bellevue. Setup was a little chilly, but we got ‘er done. Wednesday we had a little snow in the morning, just enough to create an art deco Tiffany lamp atop the utility pedestal in our camping spot.

Our Tiffany Power Pedestal

So we got ourselves ready and drove to Julie and Glenn’s for dinner down in Kent. The forecast was for “some scattered snow showers”, but the weatherman had been wrong so many times we didn’t pay any attention. Besides, what’s a little snow shower when you have a big truck with big gnarly tires?

Big Gnarly Frozen Truck

Just before dinner we noticed a few small flakes start to wander down, and by the time we were eating they were getting really big and piling up. It was quite pretty, the kind of stuff that makes for great postcards. We visited for a while (also waiting for our laundry to finish) but eventually the time came to head for the barn. Now, Julie and Glenn neighborhood is in a small “hollow” at the top of a large hill, so you go up and then down to get there. Actually, you have to go up and then down a couple of times to get there. So, of course you have to go up and then down to get out. This was no issue getting there, but by the time we left there was about 4 inches of snow on the ground. We had great confidence in the truck, and the big gnarly tires. On our third try to get up the hill on their street, that confidence was wearing noticeably thin. And this was just the TINY hill we needed to climb in order to get the BIG hill. Luckily there was a very long flat stretch that allowed us to get up a good head of steam, and we slipped and spun our way to the top of that one as well. It was all relatively smooth sailing from there, although it did take us a little over an hour to go less than 20 miles. We arrived home safe (obviously), and it kept snowing, adding another 5 inches during the night.

It don't melt where the sun don't shine

Thursday dawned clear but cold. Clear is good because the sun melts the snow on the roads quickly. Cold is not because it freezes the stuff the sun doesn’t reach. So let’s get back to the Titanic part (I know you are dying to hear). On Friday we were scheduled to transit to McMinnville Oregon. From the INSIDE of the rig, everything looked dandy. Sunny, clear, roads plowed and looking dry. So let’s get ready and go! At 9AM I started the prep work outside to pack up, only to discover that the snow banks on the top of our slide-out rooms were really icebergs, and they had to be removed before folding up the rig. 2 hours later, me shoveling and chipping from the outside (has anyone seen The Deadliest Catch on The Discovery Channel where they crack the ice off of the boat with sledge hammers?), and Wendy using a spatula to remove the parts that managed to slip inside. So here we are chipping our rig out of an iceberg, or thawing it with a heat gun, and freezing in the process.

Melting open hatches with my new heat gun

But we got ‘er done (again) and hit the road. After that it was smooth sailing, and we arrived in McMinnville safely (and grungy from the road melt) hoping that the next 3 days would bring a nice big thaw and maybe even a little rain to rinse the rig down. Stay tuned as we migrate south in search of warm weather!

Here’s Tippy!

View from our door at Jimmy's Place

 It’s not what you think so get your head outta the gutter! I’m talking about a little cardio and resistance workout. Really, we used to be so good about getting in some kind of exercise at least 5 days a week. It’s been a challenge just waking up early with the sun not coming up until 7 am and freezing temperatures up here in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. Even hiking becomes a challenge when it’s raining nearly every day…like it is right now! I really miss our 24 Hour Fit Lite workout because it was so effortless.

The big green ball at rest.

 A couple of weeks ago we bought a large green exercise ball because I left the silver one in storage thinking it was too big for the rig. The green ball found a place wedged between the side of the shower and the dresser and just over the cat’s water dish. It stays put until we start moving. We also bought two sets of resistance bands that each came with a workout DVD so now we have no excuse. Warren and I found that we can use the kitchen floor with my yoga mat and his kitchen mat and only bump into each other occasionally. Not perfect but we can get in some cardio and a pretty decent core workout in about 30 minutes with our new buff video partner, Mia. We still have discussions about whether Mia is POST transsexual operation or PRE. But that’s another story.

Space saving cardio.

 Yesterday we took off on a drive to see Doe Bay on the other side of the Island. It was sprinkling but not too wet. After driving around and exploring a part of the Island we had never been to, we ended up near Obstruction Pass State Park and decided that starting at 3:45 pm gave us just enough time to hike out to the ocean for a round trip of about 1.25 miles.  It’s a beautiful camping area with a large beach and an easy hike in and out. After spending some time combing the beach, we headed back to the truck just before the rain started. We know that we have to take advantage of opportunities like this to get in a little exercise while taking in the sights.

Check out the green stuff at the trailhead.

On our way back to town we stopped to take a photo of the big waves crashing on the shore at Crescent Beach. This is not a sight we see when we’re here in July. The wind was so strong that I took this photo standing next to the truck to keep me from blowing away. I tried to protect the lens from the rain but the picture reveals the drop that got to it.

You won't see Crescent Beach like this in July!

After seeing the huge surf on the shore next to Vern’s, a local hangout, we just had to stop for a snack so we could watch the storm from a great vantage point while filling our bellies and keeping warm. This is just one of the many shots I took of splashing waves. It was unreal!  Oh well, I guess we’ll just have to go on another hike after the rain stops to work off this meal.

Patio closed due to strong surf!

 We are looking forward to moving south soon to warmer weather and less rain. In preparation for some great hiking and since our sneakers are worn smooth, we just ordered new hiking shoes online. It’s all about getting rid of the excuses and finding new ways to get the old bods moving. We’re hoping that the late spring weather in the Rockies is pleasant enough to take in some great hiking around the Tetons. Until then, we’ll hike in the moist Northwest, and be careful to keep moving so moss doesn’t grow on our North sides!

My niece Pearl’s mother, Dorothy, passed away on Saturday. Dorothy was my brother Jimmy’s ex-wife .She had a long battle with breast cancer, and it finally got the better of her. She leaves Pearl and a half-sister (somewhere in Colorado), a tangled mess of trust fund issues, scattered properties and possessions, and an often-questioned legacy of Island Preservation that will linger on for many years. 

Pearl and Dorothy

Jimmy and Pearl

Many, if not all, of the people on Orcas either knew her directly or knew of her. She was simultaneously a source of inspiration and aggravation, depending on who you were and what your relationship was with her. She lived her entire life under the toxic influence of immense wealth that was used, in her younger years, to isolate her from the world, and in her later years to create situations that were both enviable and disastrous. It was that same fountain of wealth that sustained her after her parents died. She drew from a large trust fund that granted her a generous annual allowance in January. This made, in many years, for a feast at the beginning of Spring that became a famine at the close of Fall. She lived her life on a giant financial yo-yo, so to speak.

For most of us, childhood is a pretty straightforward thing. You are born, you sometimes get brothers and sisters, you grow up with pets and problems. You go to school with tons of other kids pretty much like you, you graduate and go on to college, and you then find a path and live your life and pay your bills. Not so much for Dorothy. She was born all right. But it all pretty much went off the standard life path from that moment on. I’ve been told she was raised by nannies and boarding schools, and knew little if anything about a normal childhood. It brings to my mind the story of Romulus and Remus, and the lessons they learned from being raised not by natural parents but by wolves. She was sent abroad for her college years to Florence, Italy to study art history. While this is probably one of the epicenters of art history in the world, it also represents the degree to which her life differed from most of those around her on the island. She had many privileges of the upper crust, but they didn’t necessarily serve her well.

Dorothy and my brother Jim were married in May of 1999 in a wild, sweeping ceremony in a hayfield in Deer Harbor on Orcas. A good deal of the island’s tourist housing was taken over for the guests that came from far and wide, and an elaborate feast was set up in a tent constructed over a temporary wood floor.

The wedding itself was at the incredibly small chapel in Victorian Valley that seated a fraction of the 350 or so guests, and Dorothy was literally carted away to the reception in a gypsy wagon that Jim had built for her, pulled by a stout team of horses. Fairy tale, romantic stuff. The wagon broke down less than a quarter of a mile into the 5 mile trip, perhaps an omen of the tumult that was to become their life after the birth of Pearl.

Dorothy had difficulty, to put it mildly, maintaining relationships in a manner that the rest of us would consider customary and “normal”. Her thoughts and opinions frequently starved any give-and-take in dealings with others. It wasn’t intentional, she simply hadn’t learned any of that in the dark cloud of her childhood because she didn’t need to. And so went her relationship with our family. Without going into too much detail, the mismatch between what she regarded as a normal relationship and what the rest of us would regard as normal was so great that it led to an inevitable divorce. And so, with great drama, the future of Pearl was debated. Custody was a painful issue, and in my opinion it worked out the best for all. Pearl eventually came to live with her dad, my brother, Jim. In truth, Dorothy didn’t have the skills and grip on reality that it takes to raise a child. Given the template she had been handed, the only formula she knew was comprised of money and the service of others. This was, clearly, no way to raise a daughter. The evidence of the inevitable bad outcome was glaring and overwhelming. And it certainly wouldn’t suit a Mudd. We’re apparently allergic to immense wealth; it makes us break out in foolish behavior and materialistic hoarding, and it’s likely that Pearl inherited that gene from her father.

We’ve had the unheralded pleasure of being with Jim and Pearl at this time simply because of fate. Even though Dorothy had been battling her disease since 2003, we hadn’t heard of any of it until last month. We had been planning on visiting the island for several months and when we talked with Jim to coordinate our pending arrival to his front yard, he informed us that he and Pearl would be “off island” for a week visiting her mother in Phoenix. Dorothy went there in December to be under the care of a nutritionist, but more likely just to die. Her last few months were not good, they rarely are for someone with cancer, and she was in and out of hospital with all sorts of ailments dealing with her lungs. It was in one of those hospitals, several days after Jim and Pearl returned home, that she finally slipped into a coma and passed on.

There seems to be a great deal of concern about Pearl from all of those around her. In my opinion, she is doing just fine. She’s a Mudd, a fine young woman, and people have to realize that she has been dealing with a dying mother for most of her life. She has come to terms with much of this, and will have much more to come to terms with as the years go by. But she’s pretty darn durable, and she has a great support network. I think people would do well to give her some space and just keep an ear open for her over time. While there is a cloud over the house in the last few days, I think most of it has to do with the long-winded, frequent phone calls from well-wishers and the need of some of the locals to try and express some sort of sympathy. Frankly, there is a palpable feeling of relief as well. It’s been a very long ordeal played out with some pretty strong personalities, and the sudden silence needs to be absorbed, not stirred.

So, I guess I’ll leave it at that. While it’s strange times lately, a lot of strange stuff has gone on under Jim and Pearl’s roof. And I’m sure there will be lots more to come. Pearl is on the verge of her teen years (OMG) and starts middle school next year. We wish her, and Jimmy, the best.

We’re closing in on 3 months for our stay in the Northwest. It started on the Oregon coast in Florence back in mid-November, took us to Portland for a short visit with cousins Sue and Larry (where we also visited with an early season blizzard), then up to Thanksgiving with the family at Julie and Glenn’s in Kent, Washington, from there to the Olympic Peninsula for 2 months. On the last day of January, after many snowy and freezing days, and lots of warm and beautiful ones too, we packed it up and spent the day on ferries and roads moving up to brother Jimmy’s property on Orcas Island in Puget Sound. We’re having a great time here, in spite of the mishap with electrical service.  Amazon.com did a great job of finding us great prices on replacement appliances and shipping them to us for free, and we’re back up to full strength. And thanks to Peter for his help with the installation of a new 50 amp electrical service that we can safely plug into, he’s our hero!

We plan to stay through the President’s Day weekend, then we’re off back to the mainland to begin our migration south. We plan to spend the month of April in the LA area to visit with family prior to our drive east for the remainder of the year. And here is a map of our planned itinerary to get there, for those of you who might wonder where we will be passing through, and when that will be. Remember, this is the PLAN, no guarantees!

Our PLANNED trip!

As many of you already know, Wendy and I have included “Gelato Quest” in the many activities of our nationwide RV tour. And while we are here on Orcas Island (see the previous installment dealing with the eChaos) we stumbled upon a delightful Italian deli that also has a gelato bar. Enzo’s, in downtown Eastsound (pretty much the only “downtown” on the Island) has some of the best we’ve had. Enzo, the owner, is Swiss but spent much of his younger years in Italy as well. He handcrafts the batches to suit his fancy, and also to suit the season.

Its winter here on “The Rock” as the island is known to the locals. It’s known as that as much for the fact that everything around here is rock, but also for the fact that most of the islands in the San Juan’s have Lime Kilns. In their heyday these large wood-burning stacks were built at the base of large limestone cliffs, abundant in the San Juan’s because these islands are all just huge chunks of it. Workers would blast slabs out of the cliffs which would crash down to the cliff base, and other workers with air hammers would chisel them to smaller pieces, which would then be carted off to the hoppers at the top of the kilns.

Rocks, lots of fire, and voila! Quicklime!

Lime Kilns at Roche Harbor, San Juan Island

Large chunks of wood, mostly clear cut from nearby islands and then barged over to the kiln site, would be loaded into the burn box at the bottom and the fire would generate up to 2800F, hot enough to burn the rock down to a sooty powder we know as lime. It was primarily used to make concrete or to put on crops. There was a man named John McMillin who made an enormous amount of money when he founded Roche Harbor (on San Juan Island) as a “company store” town which operated his lime kilns 24 hours a day, paying the workers in “scrip” that was redeemable at the company store and for paying rent in the company bungalows. We sometimes think OUR jobs are tough, but there were 100’s of men who worked up to 16 hours a day lifting and moving 100 lb. sacks of lime, and they didn’t even get paid in cash!

Friends Joe, Barbara, Frankie and Wally and The McMillin story

Wendy in the "Adit", where the Quicklime poured out

Anyway, when we discovered Enzo’s gelato here on The Rock, it was quite a delight. Rich, creamy, smooth, and perfectly flavored. He gets his ingredients from Italy, and it shows in the finished product. And the prices are right. On The Rock where it can cost upward of $6 to wash and dry a load of laundry, the gelato was very affordable at a total cost of $7.50 for 2 servings, including the tip!

Here’s Tippy with a touring tip!

One part of living in an RV, or even camping in one for that matter, is the constant need for maintenance. Much of the time it’s small things: I have a jar full of screws that have been found on the floor after a bumpy stretch of road and I’m clueless where they came from. But there are also the “big ticket items”, those things that either take more than just a screwdriver, more than just a few minutes of labor, or more than just a few bucks at the cash register in the local Tru-Value. It helps to have a great selection of tools on hand when these pop up, because inevitably they are the types of repairs that aren’t right out in the open. They frequently require lying on my back and looking up, getting under the rig on cold and/or wet gravel, and often reaching into dark and inaccessible spots behind a cabinet or fixture.

The biggest “big ticket” item we’ve been confronted with was actually the easiest to deal with. When we bought the rig, which was about 5 years old, there were plenty of cosmetic fixes to make but one we couldn’t ignore was the fact that the stove was shot. It functioned, but was pretty ugly, had rust spots, and rattled when you walked through the kitchen. First problem, where can we get a new one without busting the bank? Why, CampingWorld of course! Although their price was great (less than $500 for a top of the line replacement), the shipping was going to eat up the savings. However, my new BFF Victor at Ideal RV and Trailer in Redwood City, pulled a rabbit out of his hat. Victor’s store has never failed to cough up any single obscure part I’ve needed, seriously. But when it came to finding a stove to exactly replace ours I had started to have my doubts. I pulled the old one out (a simple job, undo the gas line, remove four screws and pull) and took it down to him (he’s conveniently located just 1 mile from where the rig was in temporary storage). He disappears for a few minutes and happily returns with the exact same stove, brand new and still in a crate. It was buried under a zillion other appliances in a dark corner of his storeroom. It was even the right color, black! And it made my day when he agreed to a discount that brought it down to the CampingWorld price! The whole job, from removal, to purchase, to re-installation took less than one hour. Pricey, but easy, and we’ll get years of great use out of it.

There have been other repairs, a new bathroom sink (thanks again to Victor! we got the last one he had), a new faucet for the bathroom sink, extending the bed platform to accommodate a new queen sized mattress, and most recently fixing the shower door so that Wendy didn’t get trapped inside every time she used it. That was actually one of those “small cost, lots of labor” repairs. She had the genius thought that since it was rubbing and catching on the bottom of the door frame why didn’t we just figure out how to raise it up a bit? We were able to buy a small nylon spacer for the bottom hinge (20 cents) but it took a complete disassembly and reassembly of the door to install it. The result, however,  is extremely gratifying. It works like a charm.

What doesn’t work like a charm is the forced air propane furnace. Sometimes it works  (usually when you don’t really need it) and sometimes it doesn’t. It’s a complicated thing, of course installed deep into the bowels of the rig, and my initial research into troubleshooting the problem yielded at least a dozen things that could be wrong. Most of them had “low gas pressure” as one of the causes, so my first step was to figure out if the propane gas regulator was working correctly or not. Of course, you can’t tell by just looking at it or giving it a sniff or anything. Also, to my eye, it looked way way too much like plumbing, my least favorite type of repair. So, I turned to Al Gore’s Internet. There is plenty of advice on how to determine if the regulator is delivering the right amount of gas pressure online, and virtually every commentator recommended using a manometer, a device to determine how much pressure is in a gas line. If you want to buy one, the best place is at the factory where they make the furnaces, and you better bring your checkbook. However, while researching the what’s and where’s of manometers, I came across an article on how they are calibrated for accuracy. Even the furnace manufacturer, Atwood, mentions in the Furnace Troubleshooting Guide (found online, thanks again Al Gore!) to “make sure to calibrate your Gauge Manometer with a U-Tube Manometer to ensure accuracy of the measurements”. It turns out that it costs less than $5 to actually make a U-Tube manometer, and only about another $1.50 to buy the fittings to connect it to your gas piping. So why not just use the calibrator directly to measure the pressure? Here’s what the “extremely accurate” calibration device ends up looking like ($6.50 to buy the parts, less than an hour to construct it):

A Simple U-Tube Manometer

It takes about 5 minutes to hook it up to the piping by disconnecting the stove (something I’m already very familiar with, right?), turn the gas back on, measure the “static” gas pressure, then to measure and chart the “operating” gas pressure as the heater cycles on and off. Pretty cool! And the best part, it eliminates about 10 of the 12 potential problems. Here are some pix of the hookup, and the manometer in use.

Standard 3/8" gas fittings to hook it up

Hooked onto the stove gas feed pipe

13 "inches of water column" (WC) is the static gas pressure

11 inches of WC is the operating pressure

Now, the heater isn’t fixed yet. That will, thanks to our diagnosis, require disassembly of the major components to remove and replace both the burner and the heat sensor, about $75 in parts and probably a few hours of labor. But at least we know the parts store down the street (Sonny’s RV in Chimacum, a place that nearly rivals Victor’s store in Redwood City) has those in stock. By this time a few days from now we will hopefully be prepared for the “blast of cold arctic air” that’s headed our way again before the New Year.

Tippy, of course, has some repair advice of his own.

The Bandy's have some strange quirks.

It’s a short drive, just west of Port Townsend in the little town of Gardiner. Gardiner sits on the edge of Discovery Bay and in view of Vancouver Island (Canada), and on a clear evening you can see the lights of Victoria. But even on a cloudy and rainy day, just like when we went, you can’t miss the trolls. They’re everywhere, and doing everything. Fenceposts are carved like trolls, they sit in gardens, they are framed by gates, and they even hold up a livestock barn!

The Troll Haven House

The Troll Haven Livestock Barn

Troll Poles to hold up the Barn

Troll Haven gate - more of a dragon really

And just in case you might be staring at the scenery as you drive….

You were warned

And, a short Crabbing Update, we tried our luck off of the much larger pier in front of the Marine Sciences Center in Port Townsend. The water there is almost 50 ft. deep, which should produce larger (and more) crabs. However, whether it just wasn’t our day or the crabs were taking the day off, all we got was a very large SeaStar, a cousin to the StarFish. This isn’t what you want to catch!

Crabbing at the MSC in Port Townsend - not a crab in sight

This Sea Star won't end up on a pizza, that's for sure!

And, to top it off, Tippy has our crabbing secret.

We finally arrived in Chimacum, Washington at 11am on Nov. 28th only to find the office closed and a note directing us to find a temporary site until they opened in the morning. With temperatures in the 30s, piles of plowed snow and threatening clouds, we were very happy to find a spot with electric hookup to run our heaters. Where were we you say? Chimacum is located on the Olympic Peninsula just 9 miles south of Port Townsend. Port Townsend, back in the late 1800’s, advertised itself as “destined to become the largest shipping port on the west coast of North America”. It missed the mark somewhat, but boasts an excellent example of a preserved Victorian Seaport, really a very charming place to visit.

Port Townsend Waterfront

The Cascades from Port Townsend Marine Sciences Center

We are staying at the Evergreen COHO SKP RV Park. The SKP designates it as part of the Escapees Co-op Park Network, of which we are members, and it isn’t as bad as the parking lot we envisioned it to be when looking ahead using Google Earth.  We’re surrounded by forest out of which 43 acres was clear cut to make room for the campground. On our first Sunday (pre-checkin) we had no cable TV or internet amenities, so we played Racko (Wendy kicked Warren’s butt) went to bed early and slept really well. Wen found the exercise room in the morning and then we went to the office to find our permanent space for the next two months. Everything was going well until we found out NOBODY has cable TV and internet access is available only by dragging your laptop to the clubhouse. This is taking the pioneering and exploring America thing a little too far!

I did find out that our internal TV antenna does work for a few network channels. We can still get Wheel of Fortune, thank God.  The big problem is the internet. Trying to run several businesses and stay in touch with family and friends makes internet access MANDATORY when you’re on the road. Not ones to give up easily, this became a challenge. We realize that this is a big part of our journey: Things don’t work, or they break, and you have to put on your thinking cap to figure it out or reinvent it. This is just the sort of challenge that is frustrating but also very rewarding. We’re feeling more like pioneers everyday! Needless to say, the internet problem was solved, it wasn’t easy and we aren’t telling how, at least not in print. Maybe for a fee….

We have traveled the 9 miles or so to Port Townsend several times. Our first day was a quick trip to explore the area and see if we could find gelato. Italian Ice was as close as we got and that dog won’t hunt!  The trip was fruitful in another way since we found a small variety store that had just what we needed, new shearling wool moccasins for Warren. His old ones were so worn out they were more like ice skates than slippers. He’d been slipping and sliding all the way up here. Tuesday’s trip found us at the DOL (Dept. of Licensing) to get our WA state driver’s licenses. Wendy finally got a picture that looks like her.  We are now official residents. We attempted to get the truck and rig registered in WA but are missing some documents (which are on their way). We ended our trip at Safeway where we bought enough to restock the rig. We will now be eating in…especially if the weather continues as it has. We keep hearing that the coldest winter ever is upon us!  Looks like we picked the wrong time to go north for the winter!  We’re sure to get plenty of pioneering in at this rate!

The Olympic Mountain Range (right next door!)

We discovered a few other places in the last couple of days. Port Hadlock is literally right next door to Chimacum, and it has a very nice city dock. Especially nice because we are able to hang our crab pot off of it since the season just opened. We did just that on Friday just before lunch and got rewarded with 2 nice keeper Dungeness crabs when we pulled it just 3 hours later. Needless to say we “gave it a rebait” and set it back overnight. Check back for more crabbing reports!

At LAST! Crab! This became the crab pizza below!

Fast becoming my SECOND favorite Italian food - Crab Pizza!

Oh yeah, here’s Tippy!

Alyssa & Brian at Mangianos -what's up with Elaine?

What started out to be just a nice friendly visit and dinner, of course, had to develop into something else altogether. Mike made a lunch date with an old friend and ended up driving 30 minutes to a great restaurant in Bellevue, Mangiano’s. This sets Elaine to clock-watching when, at 4 o’clock Mike has not yet returned from lunch, and I, of course, start with the “so what’s this stripper’s name he went to lunch with anyway?” stuff. I’m getting a lot of mileage from my gleeful sarcasm because Mike is responsible for making the Thanksgiving stuffing and he is no-where-NEAR started on it yet. Then we hear that Brian and Alyssa are fighting a flood in their kitchen with frozen pipes. Oy. Mike finally arrives home and furiously starts hacking up turkey innards and other things for the stuffing. I can’t actually tell you the recipe, not because it’s a secret but I’m not sure it’s that same recipe every time. The rest of us are in the middle of our favorite card game, “Thrashing Rob”. This is ANY card game where then entire family gangs up to beat Rob. He always wins the overall contest, of course, but great satisfaction is garnered by the one who can whip him at even ONE hand. You’ve never heard such cheering, except maybe at a South American soccer match or an Irish birthday party in a Dublin Pub.

Fast forward to the restaurant. First, let me note that this is exactly the SAME restaurant that Mike had lunch at. He has spent most of his day driving icy roads back and forth between Kent and Bellevue, go figure. While it was dead at lunch time, for dinner it’s really busy as evidenced by Mort’s observation “You’d never know there was a recession, really!” which he observed at least a dozen times while we were there. All goes pretty well until our dinner finally arrives. Mike’s soup is cold and he goes a few rounds with the waiter and the manger on that issue, and we can barely get in one bite of dinner before the alarms start going off.

Don't complain about the cold soup, ever.

Have you ever been in a restaurant when the evacuation alarm goes off? Lots of people start staring at perfect strangers all around them as if one of them is going to offer the answer to “What the heck is THAT?” After a few minutes of either trying to figure out what is going to happen, or in my case jamming food down my gullet in anticipation of the inevitable, we get asked to step outside. Here’s a great shot of Mike who has the veracity to remember to take his wine with him. Actually, I’m pretty sure he didn’t even think about taking it with him, it just stuck to his hand and went along. Cold soup, bad. Cold wine, good! For this little piece of brilliance, we are declaring Mike our Person Of Interest for this Thanksgiving blog.

Mike at the outside bar at Mangiano's

Fire engines came. I love fire engines. They take me back to my childhood when Jeffrey Liu and I burned down his garage playing with matches. So we all waved at the firemen and tried to stay warm.

Wave to the nice firemen!

And all too soon they were gone and we got re-seated.

Wave GOODBYE to the nice firemen!

 They took away all our food (I also anticipated this and ate all the large cold pieces of lobster from my Lobster Carbonara before they took it away) and replaced them with fresh hot plates. Mort made sure his would be fresh by cutting an “X” across each piece of his chicken picatta, and letting the waiter know he had done this. “Don’t you just microwave this and bring it back, I’ve marked it you see”. He’s a genius. Anyway, it turns out that it was a broken pipe somewhere in the building, and now I’m suspecting it isn’t about Mike’s cold soup after all. Shoot, we’re sitting with the King and Queen of broken pipes! AAHH! There is no way we’re inviting them to see our rig until all the bad frozen-pipe mojo has worn off.

The rest of dinner went well and we all arrived home safely. And we wish Alyssa and Brian a wonderful life together!  Oh, yeah, here’s Tippy!