Okay, back to the blog stuff. State #32 for AB1 was Washington. We camped in Poulsbo, a beautiful little seaside town overlooking Liberty Bay. On our R&B day, we leisurely walked the eight-block downtown area, then topped off the night with the entirely forgettable “Aloha” movie. The female lead was Emma Stone, our cute girl who got her theatrical start right in Scottsdale at Valley Youth Theatre. Unfortunately, even her substantial acting chops couldn’t save this one. To get the bad cinematic taste out of our mouths, we went back to the camp and watched this months installment of the “Star Wars” series: “Star Wars 2: The Attack of the Clones.” I think DK stayed awake.In addition to watching a segment of my favorite movie series, Diedre also rolled up her sleeves and made it a doubly great night by making my all-time favorite chocolate treat, toffee. I’m telling you, this stuff is REALLY good!
I pretty much thought my days of toffee-decadence had been lost to the ravages of the diabetic-diet-restrictions, but NOOOOOO! I was wrong yet once again. My clever wife somehow figured out how to make toffee with appropriate substitutes. She claims it’s “sugar-free,” so who am I, an avowed chocoholic, to disagree? Of course, if it is true what she’s saying about a “healthy toffee,” well, I can only surmise one thing:
SHE’S A WITCH!!
J’cuse!
It was not.
Oh, the ferry IS free to get to downtown Seattle. But if you’re one of those weirdos who wants to go home at the end of the day, and apparently many people do, well, that’s when they hit you up for the big bucks. Medicare card holders go for half-price, so that’s one thing good about growing old (although I’m still half a year away from such happiness). Still, it’s nice not having to worry about paying to park, and the ferry guys don’t do full-body searches unless you want them to.
As we were sitting on the ferry looking at the Seattle Mariners’ baseball stadium off in the distance, who of all people should spot us but none other than our good friend from Scottsdale, Glen Scott. I mean, this was a humongous ferry that handles 100 or more cars and a couple of hundred walk-ons, so what were the odds that Glen would not only be on the same ferry as we were, but would also spot us on this brief, 30-minute boat ride?
Glen filled us in on the tricks of the ferry trade, then we parted ways when we landed as we would be seeing Glen and wife Susan later in the week.
DK and I immediately headed off walking into a bit of Seattle history. Oh, I know you’re saying, “What wonderful place will these two zanies stumble upon next? They’ve already been to the site of the Wright Brothers first flight, they touched the oldest house in the country in St. Augustine, FL, and they’ve even stood on the spot where in 1861, the first shells flew at the start of the Civil War. Oh what, oh what do they have up their historical sleeves now?”
Well, I’ll tell you … it’s really BIG! … Yes, we made our way down to the famous Pike Place Market to see … oh, I’m so excited … the first ever … wait for it! …
STARBUCKS!!
Yay.
Okay, so although the Pike Place Market opened in 1907, the 1st Starbucks goes back even further, I think. (Uh-oh! Be careful whenever Alexx adds “I think” to a sentence. It usually means you’re off for a merry ride!—DK) Back in England during the 11th century, William the Sleepy was waging war against the Roman Legions of Julius Caesar. William, looking for a respite after a particularly tough battle, sought an area which might be free of dinosaurs. In the exact spot where we stood at that moment eating artificially made Krispy Kreme donuts was where WTS came upon a ramshackle hovel owned by a small man named “Starius Buckius” (Latin for “Expensive-brown-water-maker”)
Wow!
We had a joyful afternoon seeing the sites at the Market: Diedre found a wall made of nothing but chewed bubble-gum; I found a genealogy shop where I was able to make contact with an ancient relative and learn why I’m just so darned going at “Trivial Pursuits”; we were able to scare the heck out of all our loyal softball Facebook friends when I feigned (sort of) a heart attack walking up the incredibly steep hills of the area; and then a bonus for DK occurred when I dragged her into the Seattle Antiques Market. Normally, she hates going into these kind of places, but here, she happily stumbled upon the January 14, 1957, issue of “Life” magazine. It’s the one that has our Cave Creek, AZ, friend, Dee Dee Wood, on the cover dancing in the original Broadway production of “Li’l Abner.” Note that Dee Dee is the subject of one of my plays, “DDDancer,” a dancer’s musical, which is still waiting for some big-shot producer to snap it up (just in case any of you big-shot producers are reading this). We’ll get Dee Dee to autograph it when we get back to AZ in October.
HUZZAH!
There I am with a giant baseball glove statue with a hole in it … please don’t read anything into it as acommentary on my fielding ability. Note the Ken Griffey shirt I’m wearing. It’ll go great with my St. Louis Cardinals Stan Musial T-shirt as well as my Pittsburgh Pirates Roberto Clemente one. Note that I only get sports shirts of players who have retired so that they can’t do anything on or off the field that will prove embarrassing to me (See Diedre’s “Sammy Sosa” jersey for an object lesson here). It didn’t hurt that Griffey Junior wore number 24, since that’s the number I wore on my high school and college basketball teams and on every softball jersey I’ve worn in the past 47 years or so.In seeing the Seattle Mariners game at Safeco Field, that meant we have been to games at all 30 major league stadiums, plus eight other ones that no longer exist (No, we haven’t seen a game at the Roman Coliseum … we’re not THAT old!). And in all those games, not once were we rained out. And we knew we were good here in Seattle, because even though the city is known for its rain, its newish stadium (first game in 1999) has a retractable roof. So that guaranteed us our 30th and final major league baseball stadium.
Next up … all 450 or so minor league ballparks.At that night’s game, they gave out bobblehead dolls of Mariners’ third-baseman Kyle Seager. This gift, which now proudly takes its place on AB1’s dashboard along with the bobbleheads of Cincinnati’s Pete Rose and the Colorado Rockies’ star Dante Bichette as well as a statue of Diedre favorite cartoon actress, Betty Boop.
It was yet another wonderful stadium (Actually, the Tampa Rays ballpark was the only one of the 30 to disappoint). It boasted the major leagues’ largest video scoreboard at a whopping 11,425 square feet. That almost assuaged the pain of a Mariner 5-3 loss to the always hated New York Yankees in 11 innings. The Mariners center-fielder Austin Jackson was an island of efficiency in a Mariner sea of ineptitude. He reached base all five times while getting 40% of his team’s hits. It was not good enough.
A baseball aside here: we’ve noticed in the last few ballparks that the concessionaires selling product in the stands are often not yelling out what they’re selling, but are instead holding up pictures of what they have to eat. It makes for a much quieter, gentler ball game.
The next day after recovering from our “30-stadium baseball tour” hangover, we headed to the lovely seaside town of Port Townsend to meet up with longtime friends, Dyanne Sheldon and Jean (yes, another Jean-see Portland, OR, blog for this reference). I initially met Dyanne at our first parks and recreation jobs in the early 1970’s in St. Louis Park, MN. I was the knot-head city athletic director and she was Park’s first ever naturalist. The city had taken an old abandoned golf course, one where I used to play as a youngster for 50-cents per nine holes, and with Dyanne’s capable administration, had turned it into a class A nature center.
Port Townsend is mainly a fishing town, but we were there for the camaraderie. We lunched at the intimate Ichikawa Sushi Bar where the pleasant but somewhat pushy waitress wormed her way into our team picture. The last we saw of Dy and Jean, they were off and running to catch their soon-to-depart ferry, the last one of the day.
Glen Scott, whom you met earlier on the ferry in this tome laughingly called a “blog,” would be celebrating his 68th birthday tomorrow, so we were meeting Glen and wife Susan for dinner that night. I first met Glen in 1997 at his 50th birthday party; DK had become friends with Susan Scott at their mutual jobs in Scottsdale (they were both either high-powered executive educational software sales vice-presidents or they worked at Denny’s … I forget which) and had wangled an invite to the massive soiree at Pinnacle Peak Patio (That’s the famous western restaurant where if you wear a tie in, it promptly gets cut off. They’ve got about 10,000 severed ties hanging from the beams). Along with my St. Louis Park pal Randy “R.J.” Johnson, we had just driven 1,750 miles in two days in a rented truck transporting DK and my life-goods to our new home in Scottsdale. So of course, the first thing we did when we got to town back in ’97 was to write a birthday song for a man we had never met. A groggy RJ and I quickly penned “Sweet Neat Glen” to the tune of “Big John.” The gist of the song was that Glen is a bit of a neat freak … he even has his canned vegetables alphabetized in the cupboard.
Glen is more or less a benevolent despot, although he does refer to his HOA neighbors as “my loyal minions.” Once a month, the HOA has a clean-up day where they pick up bottles, cans, and old copies of “Popular Mechanics” polluting their area. Reportedly, Glen stands high above the workers on a stand as he paces with his shotgun while wearing mirrored sunglasses and munching on hard-boiled eggs. Occasionally, he can be heard to announce, “What we have here is a failure to communicate!”
We enjoyed a wine-infused walking tour of their home and neighborhood by the water. Then it was off to dinner at a lovely seaside restaurant where the waiters actually wore shoes. Pretty classy!
In the evening, trying to keep the balance between baseball parks and theatres close, we made our way to the Jewel Box Theatre in Poulsbo. Now in their 14th season, the company presented “The Red Velvet Cake War,” promoted as a “southern baked comedy.” It was just one step up from the murder-mystery drivel I write. Still, fun was had by all.
Okay, it’s Saturday, June 6, our last day in the greater Poulsbo, WA, area. Being very excited about yet another horse making a run for the Triple Crown of Horse Racing (Kentucky Derby, the Preakness, and the Belmont Stakes), Diedre Kaye dragged me off to “The Plate and Pint Bar” to watch the Triple Crown finale; I, as you might surmise, had wanted to stay home and watch “Downton Abbey,” but sometimes you just go along to get along. At least they had the world’s best jalapeno poppers.
Yeah, you just knew I had to get baseball in there somewhere.
Next up on our globe-trotting menu: Coeur, d’ Alene, Idaho.
Keep your spuds up!
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