05 Last Wash

The guest laundry opens at seven, so it’s a surprise to get there as the motel manager unlocks the door and see that I’ve been beaten to it. An Out Of Order sign sits on one washer and the other is full of clothes.

The manager is apologetic. “Probably left from last night,” she says. “It closes at ten but some guests ignore the sign on the door and get locked out.”

She empties the machine into a basket, then my own clothes go in and I return to my room to begin packing for leaving town. After half an hour I go back and switch everything to the drier but nothing happens when I push in the money slide.

The second machine works but now I have to go back to the front desk for a refund. “Not your day is it?” the manager jokes as she hands over $1.25. “I thought that broken drier got reported already.”

When I go back to collect the dry clothes, I find her in the middle of a spirited argument with a very angry and very large woman wearing a coat so long it touches the floor. Two small children cling to her legs with their heads protruding as if sprouting from her knees and the trio looks like the Ghost of Christmas Present.

It was her washing in the machine overnight and she’s very unhappy. She seems not to care who witnesses her outburst, so I fold my clothes slowly, listening to see what happens. Ellensburg’s not the entertainment capital of the world, so this is as good as it gets.

She'd started a wash just before ten, then decided to do a second load. She moved the Out Of Order sign from the drier to the other washer so that “No one could take my machine” then went to her room to get the rest of the laundry, but the door was locked when she got back. “Had to deal with my babies,” she said, looking down at the urchins glued to her legs.

The night clerk told her the previous guy had locked up and taken the key with him, but she didn't believe it. “That desk boy lied to me,” she yelled, shooting flecks of spit towards the manager. “He abused my rights.”

I can only imagine what discourse occurred. He's probably in a padded room now, wearing a long-sleeved white jacket. The kind that buttons up at the back.

Their argument escalates, although it’s really more of a tantrum. The manager rarely squeezes out any more than a hurried “but…” as the woman gets more agitated, gesticulating and hollering about her “touching her privates” and how badly she was treated last night.

No doubt it would continue until she ran out of spit or the manager fled, shrieking. A small part of me wants to see the end, but the plot of this story was thinning and it didn’t really matter.

You can only have so much of a good thing and I believe I’ve exhausted the Ellensburg limit.

04 Sunrise

The cold is what wakes me. It’s still dark and there's nothing I can do to get warm except run naked across the room and turn on the heater. I'd use it through the night, but it's so loud it puts a road drill to shame.

There's no point even thinking about more sleep with this noise and I can feel the pull of pancakes, so I pull on a sweatshirt and jeans, grab the car keys and head out to the IHOP by the interstate exit.

The sun starts to rise on the way and it's not often that I'm up to see it, so I pull over and stare at a spectacular red sky dotted by low-hanging, silver-edged clouds. Mist rising from a nearby lake takes on an eerie pink glow and the scene is framed by imposing silhouettes of bare trees. This must be what the vampires see as they scurry back to their coffins.

MUST TAKE PICTURES!!

I'm suddenly in a flurry of crazed activity. Forgetting about my minimalist clothing, I open the car door to encounter the temperature of deep space. My first surprised, "Fuuuuuck!!" shoots out and hangs in the air like a snow cloud.

Despite the crap covering the back seat there's no jacket or gloves lurking there so it's now a race to find the tripod, mount the camera and take some pictures of this wondrous sky before I die of frostbite. But where is it?

Tomorrow I'll be more organized but today - it is what it is. It's not in the passenger seat well and not in the storage tubs behind the front seats. Everything in the back has to come out, so I pile the hiking tub, the cycling tub, the snow gear and the hand-truck onto the frosty ground, hoping the tripod is wedged somewhere between. It's not.

I look in each tub, pulling out boots, poles, bike shoes, helmet, snow shoes, ski gloves, camelbacks, boxes of nutrition bars - nothing.

My fingers feel like they're turning to ice by the time I find it, squeezed beside the spare wheel, under the floor with the jack and tools. How fucking sensible. Isn't that where every photographer would store his tripod? I'm going to write this down as a NEVER DO note to self.

How long does it take to get for skin and human tissue to die at this temperature?

A police car prowls by as my numb fingers are struggling to release the tripod's leg clasps and stand it up. Is he going to stop? Does it look like I’m planning to blow something up?

There's no sign that says I can't take pictures - but then there's none that says I can, either. Maybe this lake's private - but the road's not. I pay my taxes.

All that's left is to mount the camera. Fortunately the quick-release is always attached to the bottom so it’ll slide in with no fuss. Let’s hope there's enough feeling in my hands to set up a long exposure and work the shutter button.

That’s when my hasty and ill-prepared mission hits a snag.

There is no camera.

It's on the table back at the motel. Sunrise won’t last long enough to go back and collect it, so I just have to sit and watch.

I feel cheated. My shutter finger is redundant. It’s like having too much to drink with a new girlfriend and there’s no Viagra.

Luckily there’s still IHOP.

…and pancakes.

03 Bad Neighbors

Ellensburg’s attractive during the daytime, in a historic country town kind of way, but the bars close late at the weekend and it’s a drunk fest that gives the police something to do.

I’m asleep when it starts; the revving engine, full headlights raking across the motel window, slamming and re-slamming of truck doors, yelling voices. Then there's a “Wooooo” at the throat-catching volume normally used in sports bars and the obligatory TV. It drags me back to reality with all the subtlety of a mallet to the head.

For fifteen minutes I’m listening to commercials, sports commentary and channel-surfed segments of Hollywood blockbusters with plenty of explosions, only slightly muffled by their passage through the wall. After a while I try a polite knock, which has no effect, then a louder thump. Suddenly, such a pounding comes from the other side that I recoil in shock. Did my heart just stop?

What now? Physical confrontation? I’m not three hundred pounds of muscle and I'm no Chuck Norris, so I think not.

I call the front desk and the clerk asks whether I have spoken to them. He's quite mad, of course, but then he says he’ll deal with it and, within moments, the phone rings next door.

How diplomatic will he be? Can he deal with people who are toasted and wanting to party? What happens if he says the neighbor in 129 complained? I doubt that Motel 6 put their desk clerks through diplomacy classes.

What will my neighbors do when they hear they're being asked to forgo their own pleasure in the interests of everyone? Will they turn off the TV and quieten down for the good of all or will they come around to beat on my door, kick ass and take names?

I guess it depends on whether they’re Democrats or Republicans.

A part of me remembers a time when I might have been one of them.

It’s a memory that sets me drifting back towards dreamland because…

Suddenly…

All is quiet.

02 Final day

An easy last day would've been nice, but it doesn't happen, so I work like a maniac all morning, fixing things, reassuring the boss and telling people stuff they only now realize they need to know.

Once today is over, work is off the agenda for three months, so it’s with mixed feelings that I take a call from Cameron in Tek Systems’ Baltimore office.

He needs an IBM Assembler consultant and I’m the only one in their entire database with that skill. He’s so excited it’s almost cruel to disappoint him.

I tell him about the walkabout but he says the contract would take four weeks to arrange, so that could be my time off. It's all telecommuting with no on site requirement except for a one-week training course for which they’ll cover all transportation, accommodation and meal costs. The rate’s too low, but he says they can be flexible – “for the right person.”

I’ve been wanting to get back with Tek Systems for a while, so I email him my latest resume and suddenly he's like a kitten chasing a ball of wool.

My experience is more than a 100% match, he says. It would be too geeky to point out the mathematical impossibility of this, so I let it go. He’s certain that he’ll have a positive answer by the end of the day and they’ll want to speak to me tomorrow.

Talking it through over lunch, I realize that it’s too late to think about a new job, whatever Cameron says. Pissing off an agent is always a bad thing, so he has to believe it’s his decision. The problem is how to do that?

Ping!

My phone has a 202 area code, so he thinks I live in Washington DC, not Seattle. He’s not offering an air ticket from the west coast – he thinks it would be a half-hour AMTRAK ride. That's also why he said nothing about how the three-hour time difference - because he doesn't know there would be one.

He calls back sooner than expected. His manager noticed that my three most recent contracts were in Seattle and wants to confirm that I’ll be coming ‘home’. Being right starts a glow of smugness like a candle in  my tummy.

“No,” I tell him, “Not for a while. Heading south to San Diego.” Then I mention how much I look forward to working in sun-drenched public parks, or from my car, using the cellphone as a wi-fi hotspot.

Most bars have free internet so I could do a whole lot of work during the evening to leave the afternoon free for the beach and I could start early in the morning from Starbucks to make up time and overcome any communication problems caused by the 3-hour time difference with Baltimore.

He’s a lot less enthusiastic now, but I've only just got started. There’s a definite pause when I ask whether Seattle airport cab fares are included with the transportation offer. He needs to talk to his manager, he says, and he’ll get back to me.

But he never does…

01 Introduction

Life’s full; never a dull moment. Anyone who disagrees is looking through the wrong colored spectacles. (Rose is best)

At a time when the majority of people worry about their jobs and futures, I’m on a road trip to unwind.

I haven’t retired – there’ll be another contract in a few months – but the constant overhead gray that is Seattle needs a blast of blue sky to balance it.

The plan’s vague at its best – simply to travel south to the warmer weather then spend a good deal of time in the National Parks, hiking and cycling. The snow shoes are along for the ride too but I suspect they’ll not see daylight until the car’s unpacked in a few months. In any case, it's time for a new blog...

Those familiar with previous blogs will know that, although inspired by travel, they rarely contain much about it. The material comes from my perspective on circumstances that occur around me and the interactions I have with people.

Any mention of scenic beauty or interesting towns generally appears by chance, if at all, however this one will contain more than just unusual situations. Astounding - a travel-inspired blog actually mentioning travel! I suppose you could describe it as a personal splurge of creativity stimulated by a change in surroundings.

I see humor in the absurd and the irrational. Both are everywhere and humor frequently derives from the negative but how my posts are received is entirely subjective.

So – to explain the title: walkabout is an aboriginal rite of passage involving a journey and survival in the wilderness. Feenix, based on the mythical phoenix, began with my early IT career and has become, over the years, a pseudonym. I think 2013 is self-explanatory.

A gentle warning: no offense is ever intended, however we are all different and some people are more sensitive than others. If you object to political reference, sexist, racist or religious comment, tales of drunken mishap or the use of particular words – you know what to do.

Otherwise, please read on – and feel free to comment…