Midwest2Westcoast

  Ann and I ran a race on Saturday, our first race in more than a year, maybe closer to two. It was a 12K, and it went right through our old neighborhood. It’s been going on since 1973, and there were three or four runners there that have run it every year, although I didn’t get a chance to meet any of them. They were probably ahead of me. If you run around Tacoma, you run hills. There are crazy-steep hills downtown that rival San Francisco, but anywhere in town there are hills. Anywhere, that is, except Ruston Way. It is a waterfront running area that is very popular, perhaps because it’s on the edge of Commencement Bay, with harbor seals, freighters, fishing boats and Mt. Rainier to look at while you run. Or perhaps because it is the only flat spot in town. But you can run down Ruston Way at any time of the day, any day of the week, and there will be runners on the trail. Those runners, myself included, were feeling the hills on the Sound to Narrows. It started with a couple ...

  We won! Ann and I went to the Thursday night run at Camp Bar, and we won! We didn’t outrun anyone, of course. We won the trivia contest that was going on at the bar that was hosting the running group. They announced the upcoming trivia game as Ann and I were standing in line for a drink. Ann saw a few fellow runners sitting at a table in the middle of the room, so she asked them if they wanted to play, since you could have six people on a team. They agreed, so it was game on. The first couple of questions were ridiculously easy, and really most of the first round wasn’t hard. The second round kicked it up a notch, as the category was slasher films, a cinematic genre of which Ann and I have not watched a single movie in our more than 30 years together. But some of the questions could be reasoned out, and a couple of teammates knew some, so we weren’t skunked. Our three teammates left at the end of the second round, which left Ann and I on our own for the final round, music. They ...

  We went back to Port Townsend. It’s just not the same without our friend Max, but Ann had a training to do there to keep up her arborist certification, and Mary and I went along for the ride. While Ann was in the training, Mary and I did the same little hike that Max took us on, but in reverse, starting at the waterfront, going up the beach, then up and over the hill and back into downtown. Port Townsend had gone from bustling to sleepy – unexpected, since I assumed some place as tourist-friendly as it is would become increasingly busy with summer coming on. At first I attributed this to the day of the week – we were there on a weekend before, and this was a Monday morning. I learned that it was the time of day. We were there at 8 a.m. Downtown was mostly quiet at that time, except for the coffee shops. There wasn’t a seat in the house at Velocity, so when Ann was in her meeting, I tried Better Living Through Coffee, which was also busy but had seats at the bar. The coffee w...

Sunday, we got out early to go to Mt. St. Helens. We recently saw a documentary about the eruption and wanted to go down and check things out for ourselves. It is conveniently located… you guessed it, about two hours from Tacoma. On our way out, we stopped at Balloon Roof Bakery, just a couple of blocks from our new residence. The bakery is named after The Balloon Roof Dance Hall, which once hosted the likes of Duke Ellington. I don’t know what the Balloon Roof Dance Hall was named after. We got a couple of ham and cheese croissants and a Macha pistachio cookie and were on our way. We also brought our coffee maker. Our truck is a hybrid, equipped with a 7.2kw generator. That generator came in handy in Missouri, as it provided power for things like air compressors on our farm that had no other source of electricity. We have used that feature much less since our move – essentially zero. We plug our laptops in a lot, but a lot of cars will power a laptop. With gas knocking around $...

  At our last place, we walked up 200+stairs to get to where the F-150 is parked. But if you wanted to keep walking instead of going for a drive, you were only about halfway up the hill. You were within walking distance of historic Fort Nisqually (complete with living history reenactors), a zoo/aquarium, and a fantastic park with giant trees. Much else would start to stretch the bounds of what most people would define as “walking distance.” Not so with the new digs. We got together with our friends (both of them!) last night. They suggested a place called Zen Sushi Burrito prior to going out to a movie. Ann asked me if it was walking distance. Not being altogether oriented with exactly where it is I am currently living in this city yet, I said, “No, I don’t think so.” Then I plugged it into Google maps. It was just barely over a mile away, or about a 20-minute walk. Roughly the same distance as walking from our house in Columbia to a downtown restaurant, which was one of our favor...

The very day after posting about the Pub quest, we went out to a pub. Unfortunately, this was not one of the pubs we need. It was a pub we had been to before. Peaks and Pints has several craft beers on tap, sells beer in cans and bottles, has great sandwiches and was the meet-up place this week for the Tacoma Runners weekly run. Each week this running group goes to a different bar, runs a 5K, and then has a drink together (or in our case, usually a meal) after. And by each week a different one, I am saying they will go an entire year without repeating the location. Did I mention there are a lot of bars in Tacoma? This running group has gotten big, now that we have 15 hours of daylight and the sun isn’t setting until after 9 p.m. There must have been close to 100 people there this week. They’ve been around something like 15 years, and have nearly 6,000 people in their Facebook group. It's so big that they pretty much take over wherever they show up. Ann did find one person to t...

Now that I’m off the water, I’m considering the next step for new, engaging blog content. I hit upon an idea: I could get a tattoo from every tattoo studio in Pierce County. This would be expensive, but perhaps they would do it for free if I let them simply tattoo their business logo on me. They could even include a web address, or a QR code. Knowing their work would be displayed right next to their competitors, they would be motivated to do a stellar job. I checked, and there are something like 80 tattoo studios in Pierce County. If I limit it to Tacoma city limits, it cuts that number in half, but it’s still a lot. I would need a bigger canvas. Perhaps I could achieve that by eating a pizza at all the restaurants in the greater Tacoma area that serve pizza. Yelp puts that number at over 200. Or I could have a few craft beers on tap – Yelp also puts that number at over 200 establishments, and I would guess the pizza and beer overlap would be in the high 90 percentile, so I could do ...

People from back home have asked me what the deal is with Bigfoot out here. It’s kind of difficult to write about. The problem is plurality. Bigfeet don’t sound right, but Bigfoots is also awkward. Sasquatch isn’t much better when you say Sasquatches. This is all important, because I’ve seen three of them. I’ll discuss them individually. The first was in Elbe, a mountain village known for its ample Bigfoot habitat. He was in a bar, sitting several bar stools down from me. The second time I saw a Bigfoot, he was stocking produce at a local grocery store in Tacoma. The third time I saw Bigfoot was deep in the forested mountains of North Cascades National Park. Although this might sound like the most likely encounter, what made it unlikely was he was leading a pack of backpacking cub scouts in a round of early morning stretching and calisthenics before starting their hike. I’m going to have to ask you to trust me on this, because I did not get pictures of any of the three. Neither t...

We had rather settled into our place on Salmon Beach, but alas, we got evicted last weekend. It was according to plan, as the owner returned from her place in Mexico. We actually squeezed a couple of extra weeks out of her, as we had moved in November 15 and were due to move out May 15, but earlier in the year we contacted her regarding if we might stay a little bit longer, and she generously extended our lease until the end of May. I spoke to her after her return, and she was a bit regretful about giving us that extension. The rest of the ex-pat community in her village in Mexico disappeared April 1, and she soon saw why. The word she used to describe the weather was “sweltering.” She then took to the road for home, but since we were occupying her space, she took the long road home from the Baja of California, which passed through the Midwest (including Missouri!), and continued on up into Canada. When we let her know when we were out of the house on Sunday, she was there later the ...