Midwest2Westcoast

  I completed the WAVE Seafarer Readiness Program. To say it was a pleasure would be an understatement. I feel privileged/blessed/lucky to have had the opportunity to participate. I learned a lot in these three weeks. Scott Clendenin was an excellent instructor and first mate. He packed up with practical information in short order, and made it fun every day. Things I learned will make me a better recreational boater, and will be very helpful if I end up getting a maritime job. Vernon Moore is a captain I would trust to take me anywhere. I’m confident he could have easily scooped up OSCAR with the Jason’s Cradle  in the man overboard drills without us snagging him with the shepherd’s hook. Kudos to Karina Martija-Harris for making a good pitch at the Worksource Career Fair that got us all there. Karina did a great job coordinating the class and keeping things organized. To recap, this was a Monday through Friday, 9-3 class that was sponsored by the Washington Department of Tran...

We left Washington today. Just for a few hours, though. We crossed the river into Oregon and journeyed to Astoria. Our last time here was in late August of 2012. You can read about that visit on my other blog at https://woodstofood.blogspot.com/2012/08/ . Astoria is a magical place. I give it a “Highly recommend, would visit again.” It’s where the Columbia River meets the Pacific Ocean. There’s a big old bay there, and today there were several freighters, very nicely aligned, in the bay. There’s a big antique store district if you’re into that kind of thing, and some waterfront restaurants. On my previous trip, I visited the Rogue Pier 39 Public House, where I met and became enamored with Dead Guy Ale. I thought I would stop back in today, but found the taproom had abruptly and permanently closed last November. So abruptly, in fact, that their website is still up and says they are open. Apparently, there was bankruptcy involved, and employees weren’t informed of the closure until the...

  In the land from whence I came, each spring youngsters are gathered, paired with partners of the opposing gender, dressed in matching pastel colors and then perform a sort of dance where they skip around a pole while weaving it in a rainbow of ribbons. No, no one thought it was gay, unless by gay you mean happy, in which case, yes, it was a very gay night indeed. These were simpler times. We did this just as generations before us had. We assumed it was a standard rite of passage for every fourth grader in the world. At different times, we all were shocked to learn that the May Day program, and the winding of the May poles, were not an official requirements by the Department of Education. Others in the world had never heard of our little pagan ritual, including people as close as the next town over. But to this day, if you say May Day to a Maries R-2 School District Tiger, they will start hearing that little piano ditty in their head that sent them skipping around a large wooden p...

  His name is Oscar, and he can’t swim. Fortunately, he can float, or we would have had a heck of a time retrieving him. The Doolin Rogers is equipped with a nifty device called a Jason’s Cradle, which is basically a big sling mounted to the upper deck that you can deploy while standing high and dry on the main deck, right down to the surface of the water. Just use a shepherd’s hook to steer old Oscar into the cradle, head first or feet first, it doesn’t matter, and then hoist him up using the magic of running a rope over a couple of pulleys, which makes raising even a water-logged dummy a piece of cake. It sure beats trying to grab someone off of the dive platform and heave-hoing him aboard. It also helped that the Doolin Rogers is very maneuverable, and we had an exceptional captain at the helm that got us right alongside of Oscar in no time flat.  https://www.tacomaymf.org/wave-seafarerprogram

  Allow me to pause from complaining about job hunting to tell you about something I’ve been doing this past week that I could not have done were I not unemployed: The Seafarer Readiness Program. I learned about this opportunity at a recent Worksource Job Fair. Worksource is the Washington version of Missouri’s Employment Security, which I suppose is still a thing. The Seafarer Readiness Program is a Monday through Friday, 9 – 3 class, for three weeks. The entire class is on a boat, and for 40 hours of class time the boat is underway. Upon successful competition of the class, you come away from it with the Merchant Mariner Credential (MMC) and a Transportation Worker Identification Credential (TWIC card). These credentials are generally required for any job on the water, and to get them you also have to pass a physical, background check (complete with fingerprinting) and drug test, so that’s of value to land-based, non-transportation jobs as well. Getting these credentials would co...

  One of the many things I miss about Missouri is the 5:30 a.m. Tuesday/Thursday running group. I ran with the group for something close to 20 years. Numerous routes, route options on those routes, but most importantly, a great group of people kept it fun. Getting up at 5 a.m. to run in the cold and dark was hard initially, but it wasn’t long before I wouldn’t miss it for anything. Ann was injured during her training for the Boston Marathon last year, and recovery has been slow. But by the time we moved out here last September, she was doing physical therapy that was up to running a few miles. We kept that up for most of our first month in Tacoma and our month in Elbe, but have slacked off since moving to Salmon Beach. I blame it on the 212 stairs we have to go up to begin our run. From there, it’s still uphill whichever way you go for at least another half mile. I hope my Tuesday/Thursday 5:30 a.m. Runners understand, but Ann and I have met someone new. It’s not you – it was us. W...

  Messiah is too strong of a word to pin to my friend Lucas. I am, however, counting on him to save the world. Lucas isn’t on Facebook, so his mind hasn’t been warped by the AI-enhanced billionaire oligarchs that are controlling the rest of the populace. We need Lucas to stay pure so he can guide us. When I told Lucas I would be writing a blog rather than posting on Facebook, he said, “Good, I’m sure whatever you are up to in Washington will be more interesting to read than people posting pictures of what they are having for dinner.” My apologies to Lucas, but this blog post is going to be entirely about what we’ve been having for dinner. I just realized that I’ve been remiss for the last month or two in providing my dear readers with a dining guide to the greater Tacoma-area. I think my last mention of the restaurant was the Italian place over in Gig Harbor. Lest you think Ann and I have been living on Ramen since then, I’ll go ahead and give up some of our dining experiences....

  When Ann’s parents were visiting, we made a trip to the beach. It wasn’t clamming season that week, but we thought we would look and see if there was any show. What we found amazed us. There was more show than we had ever seen – dramatically more. Hundreds of times more. It was everywhere. But it wasn’t season, so we dug not. Last weekend it was season again, so we headed back out to that very spot. We got there a bit early, around three hours before low tide instead of the recommended two. Again, the show was everywhere. We quickly dug the first donut – nothing. We dug another. Again, nothing. The third time Ann dug, I shoved my arm in the hole, and I felt something, and something felt me, so I grabbed it and pulled it up. It was a tiny shrimp. “Oh, it’s a sand shrimp,” Ann said. “I read about these.” What we thought was going to be a motherlode of clams was nothing more than a sand shrimp party. Reportedly, they make good bait, but we weren’t fishing. So we headed further out t...