It was a Dark and Stormy night, no really several

A week on the wet side was like nothing I could have planned.

First I had Hubbin with me.

2nd, on the day we arrived my friend Hope found out her brother died.  She didn’t run home. She ran to us. The next day she and her husband arrived. Oh, that guy is a prize. She said she needed the beach and he gets her there. He looked so tired but she was reeling and needed friend time and some retail therapy. They have lost 4 people and a horse this year. There is no diminishing the value of that horse in the lineup.

It’s weird to me that I took my mother to be a part of that beach. When my father died I went there. Now I went for other reasons but she followed me when she needed that place to scrub away sadness with the sea salt spray. When things are just rotten we were together and managed to have a very nice time. It was like catching lightning in a jar. You can’t plan that stuff. It happened because it needed to happen.

After two nights Hope and Ryan had some other people to see so moved down the beach and we were so tired we just crawled into bed and watched old movies. John Wayne, Gary Cooper, Humphrey Bogart, and Edward G Robinson type stuff. Hubbin and I were very tired. The emotional availability thing takes a lot out of you. No complaints. I’d do just about anything for those people.

Then the storms started. The building was slammed. It hummed and rattled all night. That was exciting. It reminded me of the storms we had when I was a kid in Oregon. The windows in that old house were much worse than that hotel but the same sensation. We got up the next morning and caught a little break to walk down on the storm-swept beach where I say hello to my mother whenever I go. Joe Creek was all over the place, no real direction just a big windy splat. Before we were utterly soaked we drove down to another beach and Hubbin spotted a net float washed up on the shore. I made a mad dash to catch it before the rollers changed direction and snatched it away again. That’s the prize of beachcombing those parts. Maybe I’ve made a half dozen journeys out there and never spotted one before. He had good eyes.

I did not get a whole lot of writing done. Maybe this year I’ve already done my share. What did happen there was important enough to put the other thing on hold.

4 am yesterday I was looking at the pass reports and thinking I might have misjudged the timeline for getting home. I was mapping a plan B that would have had us spending the night in Oregon if we had to go around. However, I had read it right and we slid through with no real issues before things got messy again. Hope and Ryan left an hour after us but somehow got through before we did.  Then we leapfrogged all the way home. Shooting text messages of our progress reports actually made the trip home a lot more fun than it usually is even if we never actually saw each other.  I hate going home.

We got a call from Pup and he chatted with us back to the lake. Wu had everything under control for the whole week without us riding his butt. It’s what you hope the young men will do when you let go of the ropes.

The Governor shut us down again while we were riding out the storm. Being on the other side of the state was kind of interesting. Our “Bubble” followed us so the only contact we had was with the 2 people we always have contact with. Compliance was a lot better over there. The problem on the east side of Washington is not just willful tRumpists, it’s the fact that we have a very fluid border with Idaho and those people are not on board. They work here, live there, won’t stick to the plan and the overflow of the tiny hospital over there gets sent here. Big mess.

To make things interesting. I have a tooth starting to do something bad. I have to tend to that soon. Holidays are special times for such things to go spectacularly wrong. I know better.

Old diary content being restored? No coal in the stocking this year for the Diary Master!