All About Trey

LaConner Washington

I blog tonight from LaConner Washington. Where you might ask? LaConner Washington. Don't ask, I'll get to it in a second.

IAD. Inconvenient, Annoying, and Depressing. Can I tell you how much I hate Dulles? I had to park in like far eastern bumf&^k parking lot. Had to wait over twenty minutes in the hot sun with like 40 other people for the stupid shuttle. I fought my way onto the shuttle and while I do feel guilty about cutting off the poor family with multiple children and multiple car seats, the good news is that there are plenty of flights to Orlando and Disney World isn't going anywhere. I get to the terminal and the line at United is forever so I do the curb side check in. I swear there must have been over 500 people in the security line. It's been like 4 years since 9/11 and the security process at Dulles is still SNAFU. And then once you get to your terminal, it's dingy, dark, with low ceilings. It's just depressing. But I made it to my gate and plopped down in the cattle car section for my flight to Seattle.

Yep, it's that time. Time for the yearly vacation with Dad. My sister has given my parents granschildren, so this is the burden I must bear. After Costa Rico, Peru, Denmark, and Maui, this year we are doing the Pacific NorthWest. We're on a Backroads trip biking the San Juan Islands. We did the Backroads trip to Denmark and had a good time, so I thought this might be fun/interesting.

Dad arrived a little later and then we took to the bus to downtown. Where as I am checking us into the hotel, Dad discovers that he's lost his wallet. Yep, nothing like a little drama to start off the trip. I asked the hotel to call the bus company and amazingly enough they found it and returned it. The one weird question I have is, "So you're on a trip, you lose your wallet. How do you get on the place to go home? You have no ID, so how do you get on the plane?" An interesting question that I hope to never have to figure out the answer to.

We spent Friday night and Saturday in Seattle just walking around and doing some sightseeing and some shopping. Okay I did the shopping and it was mostly window shopping since Dad's patience for shopping is extremely limited.

We met the rest of the tour group this AM and then took a bus to beautiful LaConner where we met the tour guides. After lunch we took a short 16 mile ride around Skagit Valley. The weather was okay, and best of all, the terrain was flat. And I mean FLAT. A great warm up ride for the challenging hills to come. It really is peaceful here and quiet. Not a lot of traffic on the roads as we rode across the valley passing field after field. Fields of what you might ask? Well, I'm so glad you did ask. It seems the local farmers have caught on that a lot of us city foke come up here so they put out signs for what the crops are. Thanks, but I think I could have figured out "Corn" by myself. We also saw "Spuds", "Cabbage", and "Green Chop (Cow Feed)." It was kind of funny and weird.

Tomorrow we cross over to Fidalgo Island and then take a ferry over to Orcas Island. Should be fun. More blogging as connectivity permits.

Oh, how am I getting along with Dad? Dad's got an interesting form of ADD. It's SC-ADD. Self Centered Attention Deficit Disorder. He constantly interrupts to tell non-interesting, non-funny stories about himself. Even after asking a question to me. But he is telling me a lot of his war stories from Vietnam and Korea. So that's cool. He's never really shared that information with me before.

Oh, and he's only made one disparaging comments about homosexuals. Not too bad. And no I'm not out to him. But soon.

posted by Trey @ 12:17 AM