Seattle Trip 3-2-07 through 3-11-07

On Friday (3-2-07) morning I got to talk to my wife on the phone before she went to work. I have grown so attached to hear and was definitely looking forward to seeing her Friday evening. But, before that, there were things that had to get done. I have been out of work so long that I now qualify for social security disability benefits. One of the ways to qualify for benefits is if you have a terminal illness. I hope that I will still qualify even if I do not plan on dying. If it ends up being an issue, and they start asking questions after a 4 or 5 years, I will certainly be happy to have to deal with that problem. I guess I will just pay them back or something. Ahh, the wonders of living off the government. By the way, I just want to extend my gratitude to all of you wonderful tax payers out there. You guys rock! I hope to join you someday and believe me I will have no qualms about my tax bill in the future. Let me tell you, it is well worth it.

After my social security interview, I was off to something of an above ground recreational treatment session (flying lesson). We did some pattern work and I got to practice my landings and then I got to solo for the first time in over a year. It is pretty trippy being in the plane by yourself but the plane flew quite a bit better minus my flight instructor (he is a big guy like me). In fact on the first take off of the day, the plane seemed to struggle a bit to get any altitude. It was pretty warm on Friday, which, in combination with our heft, adversely affected the plane’s flight characteristics. When I was going solo, it seriously got airborne in about half the distance of the first takeoff. I did three landings on my own and called it a day. Pretty much just a few long flights and hours before I get ready for the check ride.

I cruised back up to my apartment and anxiously awaited my wife’s return from work. It was really good to see her. We just got dinner at home and caught up on the week and hung out. It was a wonderful evening.

On Saturday we hung out and eventually made it out for a run. I was trying to figure out a good place to watch the eclipse when I took a closer look at the times and realized that it was totally over before the moon was even visible in LA. Oh-well. I think there is another total lunar eclipse on August 28 that should be totally visible from the west coast. Sounds like another good milestone to look forward to (after my one year anniversary, of course). That evening, Eva and I went to LACMA to catch the Magritte exhibit before it finished on Sunday. It was a little crowded but still really amazing. One of my favorite paintings is Magritte’s The Son of Man. For me it sort of reminds me to get going doing things or else you will end up an anonymous businessman in a bowler hat. I try to fill my days, but these days, especially, I find I need a fair amount of down time. As crazy as it sounds, I look back with an air of nostalgia on the times when I was working 60 hours a week, playing soccer in the evening 3 times a week, and getting out of town on the weekends. We will see if I ever get back there. I think I would be just as happy working 40 hours a week and spending the remainder with the wife. Just for the record, Eva thought Magritte sort of milked the pipe thing a bit much. After Magritte, Eva and I went over to the Grove and had a wonderful dinner at Morels. We got to sit outside on the second level and enjoy the incredibly pleasant March evening in Southern California. Not that we need an excuse to go out but I guess we were sort of celebrating the 8 months since diagnosis mark, a couple days early. It is pretty amazing to think about that. So far so good. I just have to keep doing what I am doing and hopefully this will all be behind us sometime in the near future. I would even be ecstatic to eventually get on a maintenance chemo program (this is where you cannot shrink or resect the tumors but they keep you on just enough chemo to keep them from growing. Essentially, you are trying to turn a terminal illness into a chronic disease and you just have stable cancer for the rest of your life).

On Sunday, Eva and I were off to the airport and on our way to Seattle to catch a conference on mass spectroscopy. The plan was to meet my parents for breakfast, then one of them would drop us off at the airport and take the car so that we could avoid the parking nazis that patrol our streets. On our way down, when we were about 10 minutes from LAX, I turned to Eva and asked, “What airline are we flying honey?” I had forgotten to check in the haste of last minute packing. She had a cute little look on her face and sort of replied, “Well, umm, I thought you were going to check the flight details.” At that moment we realized that we were on our way to the airport with no idea as to which airline we were taking or what flight number, and though we were not positive, we were pretty sure that the flight was leaving at 11am. We momentarily panicked and even thought of skipping breakfast (this was unacceptable to me), but then I had an idea. If we just found someone who had an internet connection, then they could go into our email and get the flight details. Unfortunately, it was 8:30am on a Sunday morning. My local friends would not have appreciated that call and my parents were already in route to meet us for breakfast. Luckily, a few of my friends have dispersed across the country and I ended up calling Tiana who is in Michigan working on her MFA. She had a good little chuckle at our situation but then got us the information we needed. Thanks Tiana! Because Tiana came through when we needed her, we went ahead and met my parents for breakfast at Stick and Stein. There was not all that much of a crowd there at 9am on a Sunday but we still all got good meals. I love the waffles covered in Strawberries, though I am not the eating machine I once was. The tricky part about a waffle with strawberries is being able to finish the waffle before the strawberries soak into it and make it all mushy. This sort of makes the waffle with strawberries one of the more anti-social breakfast meals, as really enjoying the waffle pretty much requires ending all conversation and inhaling what is in front of you. I may have to resort to getting the topping on the side in the future but then you miss out on that nice presentation. I guess that substance should win out over appearance (something I have learned all to well recently, thanks for sticking with me cutie). Once I finished my waffle, I returned to the conversation and had a really pleasant meal with my wife and my parents. One gem of the morning was my father thinking a lot of a particular line that he thought could be said at the end of a discussion with his wife, “Thank you for a very productive conversation.” Surprisingly, this did not go over very well with my mother, though it did draw a lot of laughs from Eva and me. It is complimentary, I guess. Anyways, it was really nice of my parents to help us out getting to the airport and taking care of the car for the week. As it turns out, it ended up working out pretty well for them as one of the cars had a bit of trouble starting later that week (and Eva wonders why we have four cars for four people here in America).

The flight up to Seattle was pleasant. I was surprised that it only takes 2 hours to get up there. We took a cab to the hotel (very exciting as the only other time we hired a car was on the brief honeymoon to San Francisco after the second wedding- Thanks Tom!). The hotel was very nice, and when I say very nice, I mean spectacular. Eva and I could certainly get used to this kind of lifestyle pretty quick. Not only were there nice furnishings and an incredible view, but I really liked the layout of the room. It seems like it would be a little awkward to arrange furniture in one slice of pie of a round tower but they did it really well. I particularly liked being able to work at the desk that was sitting in the middle of the wall of windows and gaze outside all day as well as sit on the couch and enjoy the view while lounging. Eva managed to get an action shot as I lived every eight-year-old’s dream of jumping on the bed (don’t tell the hotel manager).



We enjoyed the hotel for the early part of the afternoon and then made our way down to the Pike Place Market right on the waterfront, only about 4 blocks away. I was wishing that I had my BBQ with me as there were so many tasty meals just waiting to be thrown onto the grill. All sorts of seafood and I was, of course, especially drawn to the Alaskan salmon. We also saw some scallops that were the size of a small fist, pretty amazing. Though we did not see any flying fish, we did see the guys that apparently fling the fish and got to witness them harass some poor girl who did not seem to be that fond of fresh fish. I think her boyfriend was the likely instigator. Eva showed how brave she is by risking her cute little hand and putting it into the mouth of a monkfish (some smartass might say it is not that brave because the fish is dead, but sometimes those nerve endings just fire randomly, and then bye-bye little finger). It was a wonderful afternoon hanging out in Seattle on a gorgeous day.



Later that night, Eva and I ate at the restaurant at the hotel and, after seeing all that seafood earlier in the day, I decided on that raw bar sampler. Eva just shook her head. She could not believe that I could stomach, let alone enjoy, what was served to me. Two oysters, two clams, four mussels, two shrimp, and some crab legs. It was awesome and quite tasty if you go for that type of food. She ate a shrimp but that was about all that appealed to her. I knew I was taking a bit of a risk with the shellfish, but hey, you cannot live your life in fear and I can always just boost my steroids if needed. I was proud of myself that I impressed my wife by enjoying, while on chemo, what others will not touch while healthy.

Here is a shot of the view from our room. Pretty rough.



The fun for Eva began on Monday as she had two mini-courses during the day and then the opening presentation in the evening. Let me tell you, the life of the accompanying spouse is a sweet one. I enjoyed breakfast with Eva and then saw her off and then just got to hang out all day. Not that it was all that much different than my usual day but it was exciting being in a new location. I enjoyed the hotel room and also hung out quite a bit by the pool. The pool and jacuzzi were indoors beneath a glass ceiling and surrounded by glass walls. It was something like 60 degrees outside and about 80 degrees inside by the pool. Awesome.

On Tuesday, I tried to make everything as easy as possible for Eva so I went down, picked up some Starbucks, and brought it back up to the room. We enjoyed our breakfast on the couch while looking out over downtown Seattle. I wanted to see a bit of the city, so I decided to head over to the Space Needle after Eva was off to her morning sessions. It was a little pricey to go up ($15) but the view was pretty incredible from the top. It was another clear day and you could see the Olympic Mountains, Mt. Rainier behind downtown Seattle, and even Mt. Baker. The tour guide at the top told me you can only see Mt. Baker around 50 days a year so I felt pretty fortunate. I figured to get my monies’ worth, I had better hang out up there for a while, fortunately I had brought my laptop, and ended up spending a few hours playing on my computer and enjoying the view. I got to see a few seaplanes land and takeoff, which served to get the wheels in my head turning. OK, just focus on the private pilot license for now, think about the floatplane rating later.



On my way back to the hotel, Eva called and we arranged to meet for lunch with another one of her colleagues, Kian. He was a new addition to her group, was also attending the conference in Seattle, and was a really funny and pleasant person to spend time with. Lunch was really nice, though, like the Space Needle, a little pricey. I guess that is pretty typical in downtowns all across America.

One of my little quirks, that has certainly been exaggerated since diagnosis, is that once I get an idea into my head, I pursue it until I feel I that I have accomplished what I set out to do. This can be a really positive thing or a really negative thing. Sometimes, I try to realize these ideas without regard to the amount of money or time necessary and then sort of look back at the cost and shake my head. Usually they end up working out decently well and I am incredibly grateful that my wonderful wife puts up with this behavior. An early example of this was my Alpacka raft (small inflatable boat). I sort of got the idea into my head, became obsessed with it, and, sure enough, a couple weeks later was picking it up at REI. The idea that got into my head in Seattle was to install Boot Camp onto my Macbook so that I could run Windows Xp natively (essentially, so that I could run 3D games like flight simulator on my laptop). There were a few hurdles like the fact that I did not have a bootable Windows Xp disc with me, nor an Xp serial number with me, or that my hard drive was fairly full already, or that even after clearing out the hard drive I needed to reformat the empty memory in order for Boot Camp to partition the drive correctly. I did, however, have internet access, and it seems, these days, that is really all that you need. It took almost 2 days of effort and I did need to pick up an external hard drive but I got it to work. Why I decided that I needed to do this while on vacation in Seattle, I do not know. Eva just pats me on my head and smiles at my enthusiasm. She also was very perceptive when I described what I had done and she commented, “So basically you just did all this so that you could play games?” “Uhh, yes honey.” I replied. She is always so supportive. And just for the record, I am very pleased with my computer now as I can run OSX or Win Xp natively or run Win 2000 from within OSX using parallels. The intel based Macbooks can basically do anything you ask of them.

Eva worked very hard and was very busy throughout the conference. Both Tuesday and Wednesday, her day began at 8 or 8:30 in the morning and ended after 10 at night. We would meet up here and there during her lunch or dinner hour and even worked out during dinner one night. Treadmills and stationary bikes are not so bad if you have a TV mounted right in front of you. One day I got to ride while watching Koala bears get busy. What a world.

On Wednesday, Eva and I went back to the Pike Place market for lunch and enjoyed some fresh seafood while overlooking the water. Seattle does seem like a cool place to live. The city is very alive and is a really good mix of residential, commercial, and corporate space. I just get excited at all the boating opportunities. After the day’s activities, Eva and I enjoyed a stiff drink (Cranberry on the rocks) with Kian down in the hotel bar/ lounge area. Eva and I do not go out all that much so it was pretty fun to sit and talk a bit and then just be able to take the elevator back up to our room. It was way easier than the 1 and 1/2 blocks we have to walk to get to our local bar.

Thursday morning I checked out the Klondike Gold Rush museum. It was just a small museum but it was a pretty interesting subject and really, who is not fascinated by the idea of digging up a fortune in the shiny stuff. It is pretty amazing what people went through and how little most of them actually got. Still, what an adventure. I was basically the only one in the museum on a rainy Thursday morning and the museum was equipped with motion sensors that would trigger sound effects to add to the ambiance and really take you back to the 1890s. This got old pretty quick as I kept triggering each of the sounds at each station by merely shifting my weight while reading or turning my head to look at another part of the exhibit. It was a cool idea but I cannot imagine how annoying it would get with more than one person and the sounds basically continuously going off. We can only hope that the docents manage to stay sane.

The conference ended around noon on Thursday so Eva and I enjoyed one last workout in the hotel, one last lounge by the pool (it was really cool to hang out in this warm glass enclosure when it was raining outside), and then we were off to Orcas Island to visit my Aunt Mary and Uncle Jerry. The drive up was all right. We kept passing these casinos and were puzzled at the idea of how all these little reservations could be adjacent to the highway. Later, we learned that anyone can own a casino in Washington. Something to think about if you ever have ambitions of owning your own casino. It took a little longer than we anticipated to drive to Anacortes which was where we were going to catch the ferry to Orcas. We had about 15 minutes of anxiety as we were put on stand-by and told there was a possibility that we would not be able to get onto the 5:45 ferry. Who knew you had to be early to the ferry and that there would be so many people interested in going to Orcas on a Thursday evening? As we were parked and waiting to see if we would be able to get onto the ferry, a man started walking down the line of cars. I took a closer look and recognized this man and start waving. Eva was a bit perplexed and asked if I know someone in every little town we happen to pass through. I replied that I didn’t but that this man was my uncle. It was just a little surprising as we were not expecting to see him until we arrived at his home on Orcas. We had a good chuckle and he explained that he did not think his driving directions we going to be good enough to get us to his place (in actuality, he had gone off the island to pick up a Pre-core though Eva and I were very thankful to have someone to follow as my uncle lives a bit off the beaten path). We ended up making the ferry and joked that we would have been a little agitated if we missed it by one car as Jerry’s car could have potentially caused us to miss it. Eva, Jerry, and I sat and talked during the ferry ride and I enjoyed this little transition to island life (I do like boats). From the ferry, it was another half hour drive, deeper and deeper into the woods, to my uncle’s home. It was dark while we were driving so we did not get that good of a sense of our surroundings except for the trees that seemed to make the narrow road even narrower. The last few hundred yards were on a dirt/gravel road up to the house. Of course, Eva and I choose to visit while my aunt and uncle are remodeling and they still managed to take incredibly wonderful care of Eva and me. Nearly all of the work on the living areas of the house was complete and it came out really nicely. Mary had made a tasty minestrone soup and we had a nice little dinner upon our arrival. It is always good to catch up with family and I really enjoyed this as I had felt I did not get to spend as much time as I would have liked with my various family members at the wedding in October.

The next morning, Eva and I took a look outside and were pretty amazed. The house really is in the middle of the woods and the surroundings are just beautiful. The growth on the island is really dense and lush. There are plants growing on the trees that are growing amongst ferns that are surrounded by moss, which gives it this whole multi-layered effect that was very appealing to me. A small stream defines one side of their property and their view includes a few adjacent islands that are visible if it is not too foggy. Mary made Eva and I a wonderful breakfast with fresh eggs brought by the contractor who has made their house his personal project. Their dinning area is this small room adjacent to the kitchen of which half is made of glass to give this effect of being outside while still staying dry. It is sort of like eating in a tree house, which definitely appealed to the kid in me. After an exhausting few days at the conference in Seattle, Eva basically wanted to take it easy, exercise a bit, and just enjoy hanging out.




We were lucky enough to be able to borrow Chris’ (the contractor) bike and we did our usual, Eva runs while I bike, workout routine. We checked out one of the many beaches around the island and then ran/rode into the main town on the island, Eastsound. I love small towns. They usually have quite a bit of character and Eastsound was no exception. We saw 2 yarn shops. I mean honestly, only in a small town. We decided to grab a little snack (not good for Tyler to miss lunch) at a gelato/ deli in the middle of town. Eva whispered to me that the gelato guy was Swiss so, being the ostentatious American, I inquired as to his nationality. Sure enough, she was right and he happened to come from Aarau, which is only about 30 miles from the town that Eva grew up in. What a world. They spoke Swiss-German for a bit, I stood there and smiled, and then got my sandwich. The place was a little slow, weekday afternoon on an island, so we invited the man over to our table to join us while we ate. He was an interesting character and told us about the etymology of the name of his place, Enzo’s, as well as the economics of owning a gelateria on an island. Something Eva and I found amusing was that his wife was from the French part of Switzerland and that, as she was just as reluctant to speak German with him as he was to speak French with her, they have been speaking English to one another since the first day they met. Luckily for me, Eva was gracious enough to allow us to communicate using English though I still need to work on my Czech if I ever want to have a chance at communicating with my children, should we be lucky enough to have kids someday.

On our way back to my uncle’s place, Eva spotted a bald eagle flying right over the water adjacent to the road we were on. It was reminiscent of the movie Winged Migration as it was only about 20 feet from the car and flying at about the same speed we were driving at. It was such a beautiful sight and just put a smile on our faces. A few minutes after it was gone, I asked Eva if she felt patriotic after seeing such a magnificent bird. Her look answered my question and so much more. I must be in love, because I even enjoy that look.

On Friday night, we went out to dinner to a wonderful seafood restaurant on the island. Though there are no stoplights on the island, we did see the two gas stations on our way to the restaurant. My Aunt and Uncle are really entertaining people and Eva and I had a great time conversing over dinner. Whenever I have a really good meal and share it with really enjoyable company, I just feel that I am doing a good job of living life. As if I am earning my time here. I think I have always enjoyed life, but these days I just take that much more of a note of it.



On Saturday, Eva and I slept in a bit and then spent a couple hours with Mary and Jerry at the breakfast table. I was pretty spent from the workout the day before so Eva went out on a run by herself. While Eva was exploring the island a bit, Jerry and I went down the road a bit to check out the marina. I guess we both like boats. I know I keep saying this, but it was really nice talking with my uncle. We got a little lunch and ate it in “The Barge,” something of a mobile home on pontoons in the water. It was really nice to sway slightly with the occasional wave and eat while looking out onto the marina as it rained off and on. Uncle Jerry shares the same dry humor with my father and both are particularly adept at “clever” (sarcastic) remarks. I suppose, despite my intentions, I am probably proceeding down this path as well. The rest of the day, we lounged around and played with the dogs until dinner. The dogs were a couple of Australian Sheep herding dogs and were really fun. Somehow I managed to avoid having my calves nipped at by one who is not all that fond of men, especially men in hats.

We went out to dinner again on Saturday and I got a few fish tacos with the biggest chunks of halibut that I have ever seen in a taco. Again we had a wonderful meal, and somehow we would end up shutting these places down. At both dinners we would arrived when the place was packed and then be one of the last tables out of there. I hope it was because we were enjoying our meal and not because we were somehow offensive to those around us. I had showered both days, so at least I know should be in the clear (though Eva may say that one shower is not always enough for me). At this place, our waiter actually went home. We sort of wondered when we were going to get the check, and asked when they started cleaning up some of the other tables. Another waiter had a surprised look on his face, told us that our waiter had said everything was taken care of, and then proceeded to ring our bill himself.

On Sunday morning Eva and I said good-bye and begun our long journey back home. Living on Orcas Island ends up adding about four hours to your travel time to anywhere. Combine that with rental car drop off, getting to the airport early, and a two hour flight to LA, and it ends up being a full day of traveling. Doorstep to doorstep was actually only a few hours shy of a trip to Switzerland. That said, Orcas is a really special place and well worth the journey (as is Switzerland).