a. Thursday
i. Wake
up early, eat a breakfast of bagels and (at my urging) s’mores.
ii. Pack
everything up, say goodbye to Maryhill, and hit the road. Mostly reading on the
way back; finish Armageddon Rag. Heartily
recommended—the characters are crazy, like actual humans, unlike, though it
pains me to say it, Greg Egan’s cookie-cutter, rational-and-clever, free-will-neurotic characters.
iii. Arrive
in Ellensburg. Stop at this neat sandwich place/truck; get into a conversation with
the entrepreneur who runs it, very friendly.
iv. Rendezvous
with Daniel, my ride out to Big Sky, and say goodbye to the physics gang.
Daniel’s an older fellow, super nice, understated and chill. Works for the city
of seattle and runs some real estate on the side, married to a woman born in
Japan who was his neighbor out of college. One of those rogue individuals that
could be called a loser in Venkat’s loser-clueless-sociopath trichotomy, a
person who dropped off th’ escalator to live a life with fewer reasons and more
sense. (A more entrepreneurial loser than Venkat’s office-worker archetype, to
be sure, but still a man who could have been a careerist but chose not to try.)
His house in Seattle, which I saw later, is roomy, decked-out with electric
towel dispensers and industrial kitchen appliances, but utter chaos
reigns—hallways overflow with storage, the refrigerator resembles a bag more
than any more ornate data structure in its organization. A house, and life,
predicated on the mild suspicion that nothing really makes sense, and the accompanying
license to individualistic hackage and chaotic dissipation.
v. We
drive to Spokane, hop out at a campground. I hold the campsite, doing
calisthenics and trying to shinny up pine trees with surprising success. We decide
to make spaghetti for dinner; in keeping with Daniel’s style, it is a plate of
glorious hackage. Chunky tomatoes + canned sardines, plus a random zucchini
Daniel’s wife had packed from the fridge and that we sliced thin and sautéed in
butter. Really good.
vi. We
take a hike, get into a discussion of politics. Turns out Daniel decided to run
for the state legislature just for kicks. He had an interesting experience
fundraising; turns out door-to-door soliciting is the way to go.
vii. Get
back, shower, and head to downtown Spokane for a dance! Catch the end of a
complicated lesson; the teachers do a video recap that everyone takes down on
their phones, a neat idea that I later discovered is industry standard for
swing teachers.
viii.
Dancing is initially stressful for no good
reason, but towards the end it loses its edge and becomes fun. Get a sense of
the social topology of the group—a lot of them are from various church groups.
ix. Head
back to the campsite and hit the hay.
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