On the road again

Moving to a new city, where a job and a place to live are waiting, is an adventure; that's how Rachael and I made it to the Florida Keys.

Moving 3500 miles cross-country on a leap of faith is something else, something that may not even have a name. But that's how we came to Seattle; in our SUV, towing a trailer that contained everything we owned, hoping there would be something for us when we arrived.

We were lucky, that first Sunday here; we found an apartment we both fell in love with the instant we walked through the door. Work took a little longer, but we are paying the bills these days, with enough left over to have some fun now and again. Not bad for a couple of aging gypsies.

But the real adventure was not settling into Seattle; it was the trip here, and the high point of our travels, was our stop in Malta, Idaho.

Saturday, October 27, last year, just after midnight, we had drifted into a truck stop outside of Ogden, Utah, to nap for a couple of hours. We were back on the road by two a.m., and neither of us thought to top off the tank before we left. Ninety minutes later, on an empty stretch of Interstate 84 in southern Idaho, we were cursing our carelessness.

Desperate for gasoline, certain we didn’t have enough fuel to make it to Twin Falls, we spotted an exit sign and saw high-pressure sodium glowing like faery light; we left the interstate and headed for Malta.

The sign at the village limits said 184 souls lived there; but at 3:40 a.m., the place looked like a well-lit ghost town. On Main Street, we found the Malta Fuel Depot -- two pumps, a convenience store and a bait shop. It was closed; the sign said the place opened on Saturday at 7:30 a.m. Four hours away. We planned to cross over into Oregon about then; instead, it seemed we would be in Malta, praying that the Fuel Depot opened on time.

And then, Rachael did something that never would have occurred to me if I had considered the situation for the rest of my life.

“The light on that pump is on and it has a card reader,” she said. She opened the car door. “Let’s see if it will take my credit card.”

I tried to stop her. I worry about most everything and I have a grand imagination; not a good combination. I had visions of large policemen springing from hiding, guns drawn; I saw the two of us – who do not fit the demographic for Malta, Idaho, in any way – being led to parts unknown, our SUV pushed off a canyon rim and our two cats left to find their own kibble.

Rachael wouldn’t listen. She marched up to that pump, slid in her card – and it worked. No cops. No sirens. No worries. Five minutes later, we were back on the interstate, with a full tank of gasoline bought and paid for; giggling like a couple of first-time drunks. And by the time the Malta Fuel Depot opened for business, we were crossing the state line; thinking about breakfast and about to discover that pumping your own petrol in Oregon is against the law.

So, from a distance of seven months and seven hundred miles, I want to thank the operator of the Malta Fuel Depot. I don't know if you forgot to turn off the pumps that Friday night, or if you leave them on 24/7 for the early risers in town. Whichever, it was the difference between disaster and delight.

And that is what adventure is about, isn’t it? Taking chances, latching onto serendipity and celebrating victory -- even over such a small thing as a full tank of fuel.

Daylight comes

I was up at 4:15 a.m. this morning. Again.

Plenty of time to make coffee and toast, cut up a melon, and carry it all to the balcony; to sit at peace in the quiet morning half-dark for a time before the daylight slid over my shoulders onto Puget Sound.

Our apartment sets at latitude 47.6 N; Blaine, Washington is at latitude 48.9 N, and you can't go any further north than Blaine before you hit Canada. And so, there is a lot of daylight this time of year; fifteen hours and forty minutes today, according to the Farmers' Almanac. It will reach sixteen hours on June 21st, the summer solstice.

That's a lot of daylight. When we arrived in Seattle, last Halloween, everyone began to tell us that the short winter day -- only eight hours of daylight at winter solstice on December 21st -- combined with the usual overcast gloom of December, January and February would be wearing.

It didn't bother me, but all this light is tedious; I'm not sleeping well.

Rachael told me it's because the Seattle winter suits my melancholy spirit and sardonic sense of humor; I told her she's been spending too much time reading the dictionary. In truth, she may be right; she most often is.

I know I will sleep better when September comes along.

Mama's slide

Monday and Tuesday are Rachael's days off and so those two day have become our weekend.

Last night, we ate puerco asado at a Cuban restaurant, and the hostess, with her Havana Spanish, reminded me of a woman I knew, once upon a time, in the Florida Keys.

Her name was Elena and she had come to the Keys from Havana, with a short stop in Miami's Little Havana. The experts say that cultural immersion is the best way to learn a second language. Want to become fluent in conversational French? Live a year in Montreal. Buy groceries at a neighborhood store where checkout clerks only speak French; Read Le Journal de Montreal for news and watch Peter Falk mutter, in dubbed French, through a Columbo rerun on CFCM Channel Four. You learn through necessity; sink or swim.

I watched Elena learn English that way during the first months of her year-long stay at Monroe County Detention Center in Key West, where I worked as a corrections officer. As duty officer in Bravo unit during her first week there, I watched her struggle with the language barrier; watched her frustration well into tears. I offered tissue and told her, in my broken Spanish, to have patience. Six weeks later, I was back in Bravo again, and when I came on duty, Elena trotted toward me.

"Off-i-cer," she said. "How are you?"

"I'm fine," I said. "How are you?"

"I am good. Thank you."

I could still hear Havana in her voice, but her words were English. Elena was a quick learner; Three months after arriving in Bravo, she became head trusty, in charge of a team of four, who received certain liberties in exchange for serving meals and cleaning the common areas. One afternoon, Elena came to me with a request.

"In the hall. The metal, it needs cleaned."

She was referring to an aluminum floor strip in the vestibule outside the unit, where trusties parked food carts following meals. I checked and agreed; the grooved metal needed cleaning.

"After lock down," I said. "You and I will work on it."

Five p.m. found Bravo's other residents behind secured doors and the two of us in the vestibule. Elena was armed with a mop, buckets and a green abrasive scrub pad. After the final mopping, she found spots not up to her standards, so she bent at the waist and began to polish with the green pad. She was almost done when her spread feet slipped on the still damp floor and her bottom began a descent to the tile.

I'm not certain who was more startled, her or me; it ended too soon for either of us to react. Elena just had time to glance at me, her eyes wide and her mouth a perfect 'O', before she plopped the final few inches to the floor, performing a split so perfect it would have made a gymnast proud.

"Are you okay?" I asked.

Her eyes were filling with tears; I was certain she was injured, then she laughed and I saw that all that had been injured was her pride. At first, she made little snorts, through her nose, but that dropped into full-bellied giggling. It was contagious. I couldn't hide a snicker as I pulled her to her feet. Her face was pink, but her eyes were bright and a little wild.

"Oh, boy," she said, her English still intact. "That was some surprise."

Then she looked at me. Appraising. Considering how to recapture her lost dignity. She shook a finger at me. Playfully. Slyly.

"Don't you tell no one, okay?" she said. "Don't you tell no one at all!"

And so, I held my tongue; at least until Elena's stay was complete and she returned to the world, mistress of two languages.

Well met on high

Rachael and I have only been in Seattle since last Halloween, so we still play tourist now and again; yesterday we took the elevator to the top of the Space Needle. The view was fantastic, but the coolest thing that happened had nothing to do with what we could see.

I don't care for heights and avoid edges anytime I get higher than thirty feet; the observation deck at the Needle sets at a 1/10th mile. So, there we were, doing a 360-degree stroll around that deck, and I was as far away from the edge as I could get, even though it has a waist-high rail and cable mesh above that.

We were walking counter-clockwise and I was trailing my left hand along the inside wall; just to feel attached, you know? And a husband and wife, Japanese tourists, came at us, headed clockwise. She was all over the place, pointing and talking 80 miles per hour in Japanese and taking pictures, but he was trailing his right hand along the inside wall and looking a little green. I suspect my face was the same shade.

Our eyes met and we each recognized a kindred soul; He didn't speak English and I don't speak Japanese, but I pointed to the rail and shuddered and he nodded; we both grinned and took our fingers away from the wall just long enough to pass each other.

Language and culture may be barriers to communication, but we are all brothers and sisters in our phobias.