Seattle Sidetrips

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Geo: 47.6353, -122.302

The contract work I do is an example of document assembly. It's like the online programs you can use to do your taxes, where you type in your name and address and all of the information from your W2s and other tax forms, and then it spits out the 1040 for you. But instead of tax forms, I create court forms. For people needing a divorce, protection order, court fee waiver form, and many others, I create online interviews that people can walk through and enter all of the necessary information, and it will create Word forms for them that they can simply print and file in court. This helps guarantee that the forms are up to date, complete, and done properly, and save the person the need to learn the associated law or pay a lawyer $200 an hour to fill the forms out for them.

The agency I work with in Texas contacted me a couple weeks ago to see if I wanted to come down and do a 2-day training for a few of their employees. The work I've been doing has been paid through a grant. Well, the grant is about to expire, so they want to go ahead and use as much of the grant money as possible, and also won't be able to afford a contractor once the funds are no longer available, so they want to know how to make small changes inhouse, if needed. Of course, who is going to turn down a paid and all expense paid trip to Austin?

Tuesday morning in Seattle was cool and cloudy, not quite drizzy yet. I had gone to Ross the night before to pick up some simple dress shoes, pants, belt, and a couple nice shirts (I figured I shouldn't be training in jeans, a t-shirt, and flip flops...possibly my cowboy boots, but not flip flops). A woman with some luggage was waiting at the bus stop near Jered's house. "I bet I know where you're going," she said as I walked up, also toating a carry-on bag. The bus dropped us off downtown and we walked a half block down to the underground terminal, where she was meeting a coworker (they were going to a conference in Phoenix). From there we all got on the light rail. Even though I had plenty of time and would have been able to figure it out, it was nice to be with someone who had done the trip before.

Tuesday evening in Austin was hot as hell. Lucky for me, they are in a drought, so although it was pretty humid, it was not nearly as bad as I was expecting for Austin in late July. They put me up in the Omni hotel downtown, right across the street from their office. When I checked in, the man told me about breakfast and all the amenities. "And since you're staying two nights, you should know that from 5 to 7 on the 14th floor we offer free hors d'oeuvres and there is an open bar." "Um...," thinking that perhaps an open bar in Texas meant something different than in Colorado, "you mean open bar as in free drinks?" "Yes sir." Hot dog! I checked in, jumped on the king sized bed a few times, approved, admired the view, took a shower, worked on my lesson plan a bit, ironed some clothes, went out to get some Thai food, tried the duck dish, discovered that I don't like duck, and finally headed to Shiner's Saloon for a quick drink.

I had been to Austin twice before in the past for work. 6th Street is where all the action is. Literally every other door, perhaps more often, is a bar. One of my first nights there I wandered just a couple blocks off the main drag and heard some acoustic music coming from upstairs. Time to investigate. It was a good sized bar with not too many people. Couple guitarists and a harp (harmonica, not a real harp) player on stage. A few groups of people scattered. I could tell that I was about the only non-local person in the joint. I sat down and quickly started talking with a few people at the bar. We talked about the music and the musicians, with whom they were friends. Talking, laughing, taking turns buying rounds. At about 1:30, Dallas Seely, the head musician, thanked everyone for coming and was about to start packing up. I approached him and asked if it would be cool if I played a few songs. "Sure thing!" So, I played a few, being accompanied on a few by possibly the best harmonica player I've ever heard. When I was done, I found a shot waiting for me at the bar. Someone else took the stage and played a few songs. Then someone else. Then Dallas closed it out with a few more. It wasn't until about 3am that things finally closed down and I made my way back to the hotel (this may have been the night I almost got arrested in Austin, but that's another story).

I've always made the most of my times in Austin. Go to the morning sessions, grab a quick lunch, 20-minute power nap, go to the afternoon sessions, mingle, get dinner, power nap, shower, then out till 2. Repeat. Many other participants quickly learned of this and loved to hear stories and give me a hard time. One time, with all of he curtains closed, I didn't wake up until nearly 10:30 - two hours after sessions started. Oops. The next one started at 11, so rather than rush down, I took my time, took a shower, relaxed a little, and waltzed myself in just a few minutes before the next sessions was about to start. The ~12 participants, with whom I had been training with for a couple days, noticed me making my appearance and didn't miss a beat. "Well someone sure had fun last night!" "Where have you been?" Fire away, fire away. With no real defense, and guilty as a slug, I looked perplexed and shocked, pulled out my schedule and looking at it said, "What do you mean? My schedule says we weren't starting until 11 today! Did you guys give me a bad one?!"

Discovered an awesome reggae club my first trip there and held down the dance floor with a homeless-looking older black man for a couple hours. Dropped by a jazz club and listened to Pinetop Perkins play piano (say that five times fast). Born in 1913, one of the only, perhaps the only, remaining true blues pianists from back in the 20s when things were really going. The tiny, gray-haired black man could not even walk on his own - he needed someone at his side to hold on to and help support him. But as soon as he sat down at that piano, boy could he play. The decades melted away and he was as sharp as ever, right in his element. Of course, he wasn't jumping and slamming all over the place, but he never missed a note, never missed a beat, just let his heart and soul pour into those keys as they had been doing since World War I.

This trip, I was in bed by 11:45 the first night. A record for me, I'm sure. I wanted to be rested for my training. There were only three participants - one I had met my previous trips to Austin, and the others I had only communicated with via email, so it was interesting and fun to meet them in person, as it always is. The training went very well! I was worried I didn't have enough content to fill 2 days, but it ended up being perfect. A couple hours was spent on background and some basic development training, and the rest of the time was just going through the process together creating a sample interview and some documents, uploading them, testing, letting them get their hands dirty. They loved it! I got some very positive feedback from them and they all told me that it was very nice to have me and so worth the time.

But that's boring. My second night there, I decided to check out the in-hotel open bar, being that it was located about 50 feet from my room. I met a really fun father/son duo there, and got to know them a bit as all three of us flirted with the cute southern concierge/bartender named Lola. Eric had just spent the past few months in Alaska working on a fish boat and was taking a bit of vacation. His father, Ralphy, was driving through West Texas many years ago, stopped in at a campground, met a woman, and never left. We met up later that evening out on 6th street, watched some mechanical bull riding, picked up a stray named Jennifer who was there on work and was otherwise being accosted by sketchy foreign men, and ended up at the Blind Pig. I don't normally like cover bands, but these guys could cover just about anything, and it all sounded good and pretty damn close to the original. And I don't think there's a drink in the place over $2.50, so you can't go wrong. Ralphy bumped into his bartender from the night before - a lovely little lady named Ana and introduced her to me. We immediately hit it off, talking about travel, tattoos, music... "I came here with some friends, I've gotta go say hi to them. I'll be back." She didn't come back. I saw her a little later while I was getting a drink and said hello. We chatted briefly, but then she excused herself by saying it was nice to meet me and she was off again. Perhaps I had some spinach in my teeth? So we replaced her by picking up another stray, a long haired hippie kid names Miles. Born and raised in the deep south, he worked his way west but Austin is as far as he ever made it. "This is home," he said. There was no reason to go further.

By closing time, we got hungry, so we piled into Mile's car and drove a few miles (no pun intended) down the road to a 24-hour he knew called Magnolia's. It had kind of a rebel feel, the kind of place that bikers and chicks with tattoos would hang out at. Or drunk people at 2:30 in the morning. The plastic tablecloths were speckled with pink skulls and hearts. The food was delicious. The coffee somehow perfectly hit the spot, and did not prevent me from sleeping at by the time I finally got back to the hotel at roughly 3:30. Needless to say, training the next day was a little rough.

When I booked the flight from Seattle, I booked the return to Reno. Every year my mother throws a "Life Is Good!" party. It's been going for nearly 10 years now. She observed that the only times that all of the family and friends got together were at weddings, when things are so busy and time is so short, and at funerals, when obviously people aren't feeling too chipper or outgoing. So, she thought, I'm going to start having a party once a year, for no other reason than to get everyone together to just eat and hang out and get to see each other! It's a huge deal to her. She writes a poem and sends out invites every year, spends weeks in preparation thinking of food and getting the yard impeccable and lawn chairs set up. They buy about 3000 chicken thighs and my dad bbq's them so exquisitely you never want to eat chicken again because you know you will be disappointed with anything from that point on. It goes all afternoon. People start showing up at noon (or sometimes earlier, which drives mom nuts cause she's running around like a chicken with no head), and my dad's childhood friend Pat always brings his camper out so that he and my dad can sit out back and drink beer all night and then he can just crash there. At its peak, over 100 people would trickle in and out throughout the day. Although a lot of people have moved or passed on, there were still about 80 this year.

My brother picked me up from the airport. I didn't tell anyone else I was coming, and my parents thought I would be in the depths of Canada by that time. I rode out with my brother and we walked through the back gate. As we approached dad, he got a slight look of bewilderment on his face. If he were a dog, it would have been that look where the ears go up and the head tilts slightly to the side. I cracked open a beer and started chatting with some people. My brother went inside and told out mom that he brought something for her and it's on the back lawn. She came out, clueless, rounded the corner, looked at me, and stopped dead in her tracks. Lucky I didn't give the poor thing a heart attack. She came over, hugged me, and started crying. "You're supposed to cry when I leave, not when I get here!" It was great to see people, and a lot of people were surprised to see me since my mom had been telling everyone I wouldn't be there. I got some mixed reactions when telling people what I had been up to the past few months. None negative, however. Some shocked, some just plain puzzled, but mostly, as usual, smiles and laughs and people saying, "I wish I could do that!" or "I wish I could do that again!" It's cool how many people have done something like this in their past, and I love that talking to them must bring back so many of their own wonderful memories and experiences. Assuming I don't stick to this for the rest of my life (tempting, so far), I'm sure in 30 years I'll be talking to some young whipper-snapper hitchhiking across the country or something and be taken right back to this time.

Not much else exciting in Reno happened. Wasted my time talking to a girl who was fun and seemed interested until the bro-bra jersey boy with a popped collar and stupid little hat showed up. Wasted my time and money going to a clinic to check out my eyes (which were still not completely cured) and my right foot (last year about this time it got infected and horribly red and swollen and itchy and for some reason, after Austin, was doing the same again). The worthless doctor looked at it, confirmed the redness and "some" swelling (I can't see the tendons in my foot, fucker), and told me, in these exact words, "I wouldn't worry about it." Trying not to be rude, I replied, "My foot itches so badly that I scraped the skin off and it's bleeding, it's swollen to the point I can't see the tendons, it's red, I walk with a limp because it hurts so badly, and last summer when it looked like this they almost sent me to the ER, and you say I wouldn't worry about it?" Worthless piece of shit. Needless to say, I was pretty worked up. Reluctantly, he wrote me a couple prescriptions for some "very pricy" eye drops and some kind of antibiotic. When I was leaving, he just told me to leave the same way I came in, and you all know the back of dentists and clinics - they're mazes! I took a couple wrong turns before finally finding the desk where the cute receptionist was sitting. Her pretty face calmed my nerves a bit. Went to my parents' house, my mom raided her medicine cabinet, and found me some old hefty pink eye drops and a container of penicillin. This will do. (and both are doing much better, now). Tried to convince my dad to give me his old 66 Triumph motorcycle (possibly a waste of time - his response was "well you're in line behind about a hundred people", including his friend Pat).

All in all, it was a fun, random week of side trips. Now, time to go back to the "real world". <sigh>

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Comments

[Mom]

Thanks for the glowing description of our party! It IS great fun and we are up to 13 years now (actually 18 if you include back to the graduation parties). I will work on Dad regarding the Triumph, but I think we will wait until the 3:30a
m trips have settled down a bit.