we are killing a fish
I wish I could say
we will gain something by it
we could eat the fish
but it is very small
this would result in
a net caloric loss
we could learn something
possibly by dissection or experiment
so far the fish has not consented
I’ve heard the fish is vegan
it would not harm us
you and I are in a race
to save a fish
from the killing
we will each perpetrate upon it
On Saturday (2/17/08) I and 10 other people rode from Seattle to Bellingham.
Here is the forum thread planning the trip.
The route was 110 miles, including the trip from my house to the Starbucks meeting point.
Amanda had a flat tire when she got to Starbucks, but that didn’t count for the ride, which had no flat tires.
Brandon and Bob rode a recumbent tandem that Brandon had finished putting together the day before. The tandem lost its chain a few times, and Brandon had some excruciating knee pain, but that was the worst of it.
At this point five of us were already trying to get a table at Boundary Bay.
The weather was good. There was a little soft rain before the sun came up, but the fog cleared after it was densest in Snohomish.
We had dinner and a few beers at Boundary Bay, after waiting seemingly forever to get a table. Admittedly there were 11 of us.
Then we figured out who was sleeping where. Bob and his brother Joe were staying with a computer science professor that Bob knew from college. Miles was sleeping in a hammock in the forest, and I got to sleep in Sean’s friend Derek’s apartment.
Sean and Derek wanted to go to some bars, so we went to both of the bars on the lower level of the apartment building Derek lived in. First we went to some bar with a thin rastafarian theme. Then we went to the Up & Up tavern, which was just next door, and had a much better beer selection and a more interesting clientele. Sean ineptly played some pickup game. I chatted with an off-duty bartender named (Awesome) Autumn and another friend of Derek’s whose name I forget. We then went to a bar called Wild Buffalo just long enough to see it was empty and leave. Then to a dumpling place for a stack of styrafoam boxes of potato dumplings. Derek, Sean, and a girl that Derek went to prom with in high school and some other guy she or they knew from school, I think, came back to Derek’s apartment. The guy played classical guitar and the girl sang a song. It was good.
Four hours later at 7 AM I couldn’t decide if it was worth the hangover and not being able to finish my breakfast at Little Cheerful. I ordered the eggs Benedict special with capacolla and asparagus. It was really good, but my stomach was not up to it.
Then we rode to the train station and got on the train. The ticket machine was broken, but the train left on time.
Once we were on the train a man came around to collect our tickets. When one of us handed him a ticket he said that it needed to be signed. We had all signed them earlier in the station, but there were two tickets stapled together and the top ticket had been torn off when we put our bikes in the bike car. We attempted to explain this to him, but he didn’t seem to understand. He just told us that we needed to sign on the line. We didn’t have any pens, so we asked him if we might borrow a pen. He didn’t seem to understand this either, and said that we needed to sign next to the “X”. After asking him a few more times for a pen he gave us a pen and we got that over with.
Then he asked us if we were going to Tacoma. Everyone except Sean said, “no, we’re going to Seattle.” Sean was going to Tacoma. This took a couple more askings back and forth about who was going where. Then this guy wrote “TAC” on some little yellow cards and stuck them in a plastic clip on the baggage bins overhead.
Later this same guy walked into our car and bent over conspiratorially and talked to us in a low tone, almost whispering. He asked us if we were aware that we could be kicked off the train for odor. It was hard to hear what he’d said, but we confirmed with each other that we’d heard correctly. We had ridden more than a hundred miles the day before, and hadn’t taken showers since then, but what a rude and passive-aggressive thing to say. Later on another train guy came around and asked us if we were going to Tacoma. We said that only Sean was going to Tacoma. The man looked puzzled and changed around the yellow cards on the baggage rack. Brandon asked the man if we seemed smelly to him. He said no. We told him about the guy who had messed up the tags and told us we could get kicked off the train for odor.
The ride home from the train station was sunny and pleasant, except that I lost a cookie out of my pocket after taking only one bite.
More pictures of the trip are on Pete’s flickr set