10 April 2003

You haven't lived until you've done it on a ferry boat. With the floor sort of rumbling under your feet, and the terrifyingly vast amount of bitter-cold water all around you, and this sort of primal knowledge that you might sink, or fall overboard, or accidentally crash very hard into the shore... hoo-yeah!

Hell, I'd only ever been ON one ferry boat until last Sunday night. ...But we'll get to that...

Jake and I had nothing better to do in the world than drive around. So we drove to Shelton, WA...

I got my first taste of Shelton, WA the night my Greyhound pulled into Olympia for the first time. As I waited for a cab to bring me and my luggage to my new home, this scruffy, yucky, generally nasty kid of about 18, asked me if I "needed anything." I told him no, I was fine, I was just waiting for my cab. He asked again if I needed anything, and I told him if he felt it necessary to do something for me, he might get me a soda... Yeah, yeah... so I'm stupid and don't recognize a meth dealer when I see one... Duh... Anyway, the kid spent the next half hour telling me all about how he lived in Shelton, WA, and how he had the biggest drug business in the world, just in Shelton.

What particularly worried me about seeing Shelton, WA, for the first time, was that, by moonlight, it looked exactly like the north side of Main Street, Binghamton. Ugh... wonder if people in Binghamton have discovered meth yet? From my understanding, it's made out of like, battery acid and Dimetapp, or something like that. You could get those ingredients by the barrel-full, for FREE, if only you're willing to find a pathway down to the Susquehanna River...

So Jake and I went to Bremerton, WA. Bremerton is sort of non-descript. I wasn't paying much attention to it, really. Bremerton is in Pierce County, and for some reason (which I will never understand), people born and raised in Pierce County tend to be fucked up in one way or another. Read up on your serial killers, and I guarantee a disproportiate number of them are from Pierce County. Ted Bundy and the Washington D.C. snipers were. And Courtney Love was within fifty miles. Additionally, those Pierce County people who do not grow up to be insane serial killers, have tendencies toward various social abnormalities, such as singing Irish drinking songs from rooftops, and screaming, "STOP!!! YER GONNA HIT THAT CAR!" from the backseat, in the middle of intersections.

I firmly believe that, within county limits, it's best to avoid too much contact. Bremerton, from inside the car, appeared to be a pretty neutral place. Oh, except for the jackass in front of our car who drove at about four miles an hour for approximately thirty miles. I'm quite sure he was a native. Probably out driving around to enjoy the scenery -- at night.

Who knows.

We took the ferry from Bremerton to Seattle. Just for the hell of it. Ferries kick my ass. Imagine a boat big enough to carry a car! MANY cars, for that matter! Growing up landbound, these things are exciting.

So Jake and I did it in the bathroom on the ferry. For the same reason we were on the ferry in the first place: just for the hell of it, and because it kicked ass.

We drove back from Seattle in Jake's car... We stopped at a truck stop someplace, where we were served the world's largest lemonade and Coke, and the world's largest piece of chocolate cake.

Life generally ruled for quite awhile afterwards.

I have to go do homework. I'm slacking right now because I know I haven't written an entry in awhile, so I thought I'd update... That's that, and I'm going to the homework now...

~Helena*