I'm gratified, but often a little ashamed of myself when, now and again, people ask if I've put up any new blog posts. Supposedly that means they're reading and maybe even looking forward to them. Perhaps they're just making polite conversation, but then as now my response is, "No." Distractions with weekend trips and ongoing projects mean I haven't written in a while, but now that I think of it there has been a subject brewing in the back of my mind. For those of you who tire of the project descriptions I impose upon you when I don't have anything profound to say, get ready for profundity!

It was oh-dark-thirty on June 6th when I hauled in my mooring lines from the Tyee Yacht Club dock on Lake Union. There's the fun back story of my daughter's stolen, then miraculously recovered car to explain the 3:45 am departure, but just leave it to say that I was up anyway and not likely to go back to sleep, so I made a beginning to the weekend trip up to Anacortes for the Coho Ho Ho diesel engine maintenance seminar. (See my Facebook post of June 11th.)

The green flash of the channel marker south of Gasworks Park mirroring on the still waters of Lake Union promised a calm trip out the Lake Washington Ship Canal. Hovering under the Aurora Bridge that arched high above, I called out to the Freemont Bridge tender with one long and one short blast of my air horn to open up and let me through. The sound was a dagger in the night and I think I actually cringed to imagine what my friends and one-time neighbors right there at Lee's Landing Marina would think if they knew it'd been me making all that racket at such a wee hour.

A dark vacuum of quiet followed, drawing my mind into a moment's thoughtfulness. It's funny how a sluggish few seconds at four in the AM can be filled with images that shoot through your head at light speed. Without even realizing it had happened, I imagined a decade or so of firsts and lasts, beginnings and endings stretching out before me. Mostly I wondered if this would be the last time I'd transit beneath the fading blue trusses of the Freemont Bridge, ...ever?

Indeed, the sounds of the bridge had become a comfortable backdrop for my life in the winter and spring months of 2013-14, ...the horns of the waiting boats begging passage and the answering assent or rejection by the bridge tender, sighing a long-short or barking a short-short-short-short-short with his own booming horn. An affirmation is followed by warning bells that rise up in clouds around the bridge as half a dozen traffic barriers perform slow-mo karate chops that stop a couple of feet shy of shattering the road's surface. On a sunny day pedestrians and cyclists can be seen leaning over the railings, holding on to hats and sunglasses while they strain to see who has disturbed their commutes and strolls, at once both frustrated and fascinated by the waterborne miscreants below.

Back in the present, I remained drifting slowly downstream in the slight current, stilettos of light holding Mabrouka hostage on the water as we awaited the bridge keeper's response to my own inquiry. Loathe to upset the night with my horn again, I called to him via channel 13 on the VHF radio. He responded quickly, but from the Ballard Bridge half a mile west and I was reminded that he rotated between the canal's four bridges at these early hours. He predicted opening in about 15 minutes, but managed a little less than that and I had the pleasure of actually seeing him wave as I motored beneath the yawning structure. If anyone else observed Mabrouka's passage from behind the railings, the morning was not yet shedding enough light to betray their presence.

Of all the times I'd been through the canal, every bridge passage had seemed like a blind handshake, a warm exchange of service graciously performed and thankfully accepted, but anonymous. I have always been fastidious in waving a thank you as I made my way under the control towers, but never seen a response through the skies reflected off the windows above. Seeing the attendant that one time, it occurred to me at that early hour that this was both a first AND a last.

So, I'm off on a cruise of firsts and lasts. Sadly, for the near term, I know that many of my experiences will be lasts. Last time under the Freemont Bridge, last time through the Chittenden Locks, last time saying goodbye to Seattle friends. There will be new friends along the way. The cruiser's life is, I gather, a series of first time meetings, some fleeting friendships that are at once both beginnings and endings, and others that will linger into long time relationships. Some friendships will bounce along with me from port to port, others will submerge only to pop up along some distant shore. Hopefully, like my dear friends at Tyee Yacht Club, some will resist the weathering effects of time and distance.

As with most people, I think, few of the many good friendships in my life are deeply intimate ones. What's more, I've become largely a solitary person in recent years and suppose that's one reason I've chosen the cruising life. On the other hand, I am not innately adventurous and the prospect of a series of first experiences stretching out before me is as scary as it is exciting. For those of my friends that find this surprising, don't let the fact that I'm choosing this life fool you. This madness is driven more by the rejection of my naturally dull nature than it is an emergent strain of adrenaline junky-nous running through my soul.

That being said, I recognize that any life accomplishments that I look back upon with pride and pleasure are those when I've jumped off a cliff and, thankfully, learned to fly before I hit the ground. My choice to leave home for the distant east coast to begin a new college and career, the birth of my daughters, training for and then completing the STP in one day, retiring at the infantile age of 59-1/2, ...all have proven to be positive growth experiences that can hardly be explained by any vocabulary that I possess. This latest growth experience will require a long, drawn out explanation yet to be realized in this cruising blog. Stay tuned. In the end, your judgement will be required.

I leave you with this photo, not because it's relevant, but because it reminds me of some of my favorite humans. Elvis, pictured here, was one of those little nothings of a toy that the girls absolutely loved when they were little, ...like five years old. I remember watching the three of them in my rear view mirror sitting in the back seat of the Suburban as we drove across the Saudi Arabian desert, each with their ridiculous stuffed cat in their little hands doing the moves to Roxette's "Joyride". I keep that memory in a special place. The peace sign pendant was a spontaneous gift from Karyn Borcich. Elvis is now Peace Elvis. Thanks, Karyn.