• Location: The Home Office In Seattle
• Mood: accomplished
• Music: It's Five O'clock Somewhere - Alan Jackson

Another Year Gone

Another Legislative Session is in the books.  It ran right up to, and a bit over, the deadline of midnight on April 26/27.  It was my 20th.  I'm not sure how many more I'll be able to endure.  It's May 1 as I write this, and it's been a year since I started this LJ.  My first entry is May 6, 2008.  I started this journal as I was about to embark on a solo motorcycle trip to help me sort out some things in my life.  As you know, my life has taken many turns this past year, a few for the better, but most of the time the road has been a rocky one.  As I sit here this morning, about to head off again on another solo motorcycle trip next week, I can't help but wonder what my life will be like a year from now.

Yesterday I packed up the Olympia condo and moved the clothes and food back up to Seattle, and was able to get the Nightster back up as well.  It was a glorious day -- made for a motorcycle road trip.  I was fortunate to have my friend Garlandgarlandj  in town who was able to come with me and drive the Hummer back home while I road the bike.  I decided to head up the West side of Puget Sound, away from the traffic and congestion of Interstate 5 between Olympia and Seattle. 

Highway 101 from Olympia and up the West sound has always been one of my stress relieving roads, whether it's in the truck or on a bike.  I'd often drive it back from Olympia after a particularly hard day there.  It is much quieter than the blasted I-5, and goes through small towns and winds along the Sound, and because it's on the West side, you have to take a ferry back across the water to end up in Seattle.  Nothing caps off a trip like a ferry ride home.

 

The only major town along the way is Shelton, Washington -- a small town who's major reason for existence is a large plywood mill and other logging related industries.  Like all Washington small logging towns, it has on display a slice of some ancient huge log with markings on it like "Middle Ages Ended", and "Columbus Discovers America", and various pieces of large logging equipment residing in a local small park or "Welcome To" display on the edge of town.  I'd often thought it would be fun to travel through the Northwest and document these little displays of logs and logging floatsam and jetsam into a coffee table book of some sort.  Maybe I'll add that to the list of "uncompleted books" I'm considering writing if I ever make the decision to get off my fat ass and start writing them.

We stopped and ate lunch outside of Shelton in the town of Alyn at one of my favorite little roadside burger joints -- Big Bubba's Burgers, and ate outside in the sunshine before racing another 15 miles just barely miss the 2:55pm ferry back to West Seattle.  We sat for an hour on the dock and then took the next boat back home.  

I've got a number of bills waiting on the Governor's desk for her to sign -- and I usually attend the Bill Signing and have my picture taken and get a pen from her.  But I have enough of those already, and I'm not looking forward to, nor do I have a reason to head back to Olympia any time soon.  I used to have a button that said "Happiness is Olympia in Your Rear -View Mirror."  To have it in the rear-view of the bike is even better.