Back home

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I made it back home today. My cats were briefly happy to see me, then insistent that what they really missed was going outside. Okay, then.

A thing occurred to me the other day: driving in a Nissan Leaf, especially on the highway, feels less like driving and more like piloting. It’s a very different feeling for me. And I like it.

Also ProPILOT made the whole thing way less stressful and I never want a car without at least level 2 self-driving ever again.

Port Angeles II, day 4

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The weather forecast for today was pretty dismal, but it was also wrong. I took a drive out to the Madison Creek Falls to have a nice low-intensity hike. It turns out the Falls trail is incredibly short, but there’s another longer set of trails (service roads, actually) that follow the Elwha river quite some ways. And that was a lovely walk.

A funny thing happened when I went back to my car, though: I went up to what I thought was my car but then had a “wait what’s going on?” moment when its interior was beige fabric instead of black leather. For several seconds I was actually thinking that maybe I’d forgotten what the upholstery on my car looked like… and then I realized that it was someone else’s black, second-generation Leaf. Oops.

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Port Angeles II, day 2

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Last night I didn’t sleep very well because of asthma issues due to the fabric softener the AirBnB host used. So this morning I did a load of laundry and sent a suggestion to the host about not using fragrant fabric softener; she apologized for it and said that normally she gets fragrance-free but her wife had picked up the wrong stuff and she didn’t want to waste it. Not a huge deal, at least.

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Back in Seattle

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This morning I decided to leave the AirBnB at around 9:30, and I got home at around noon. My new iPhone 12 mini was waiting for me (along with an extremely needy Fiona, who needed a couple hours of lap time), and after getting the iPhone set up I went for a nice long walk, and ironically got more exercise today than I did the whole time I was in Port Angeles (a city I ostensibly went to in order to get plenty of outdoor exercise). Oh well.

After dinner I realized I’d left my fancy Nalgene bottle in the fridge at the AirBnB. Dangit. Not really worth trying to get it back (shipping probably would cost more than just getting a new one, I think?), although I let the hosts know in case they want to figure out how much it would cost to ship it or if they just want to keep it for themselves. It’s mostly frustrating because it was a gift from someone around 10 years ago (when my major health issues were starting up and it seemed like better hydration would be the key), but they gave me two of them and I still have the other one. Plus a pile of other water bottles I’ve picked up over the years. Mostly I hate accidentally losing thoughtful gifts.

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Port Angeles day 4

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My last full day in Port Angeles was just like… okay I guess. I went out for breakfast and got a decent eggs benedict at a café in the industrial district. The weather was pretty nice so I started looking into other hikes I could do but all of the trails that were both open and not expert-level were a two-hour drive away, and I was feeling pretty tired, so I took a nap to mull it over.

When I woke up it was raining, so I just stayed at the AirBnB and worked on some more music and just generally hung out and relaxed. Then for dinner I went to a barbecue place (the one I had planned on going to turns out to be only open for lunch) which was pretty decent. There was also a huge print of their “mascot” on the wall, which looked suspiciously furry. I posted a photo of it to my Discord and right away a friend recognized the original art. (Update: For once, it turns out it was properly licensed. Good on them!)

Anyway. Tomorrow I check out and head back to Seattle. I’m not sure I feel substantially better than when I left, but at least it was nice to get away for the first time in well over a year, and to have my first actual not-actually-an-unpaid-job-in-disguise, not-a-family-disaster vacation in a long time.

Port Angeles day 3

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Today the weather cleared up so I finally went hiking for an hour or so. Only one trailhead I could find was open from the Port Angeles side of the forest (most of the roads into the forest were closed due to snow), and when I got there the parking lot was filling up. I wandered around a bit and took a bunch of photos and audio recordings, but quickly found that my camera’s battery did not like the cold (or maybe it’s just getting old and needs to be replaced). According to the trail map I made it maybe a third of the way up before my legs were telling me that I was in no way fit enough to keep going, and then after I turned back I found that the parking lot was overflowing and a whole bunch of people were now on the trail. Oh well, it was nice while it lasted.

Hopefully tomorrow I can go to a different trailhead but the weather report is saying it’s going to be raining again, so my last day here might be like all the others.

Also I really should have worn thicker socks, as my feet were pretty cold the whole time. If it isn’t raining I’ll definitely bring the thick pair I brought for this very reason.

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Port Angeles, day 2

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Last night I couldn’t fall to sleep until 4 AM due to how much my ears were ringing (plus the bedroom got really cold), and at 7 I woke up with very cold feet due to the thermostat in the bedroom automatically going to 62°F. I found some warm fuzzy blankets and doodled some music until I fell back to sleep and didn’t get up again until like… 11. And I was still heckin' tired.

It was also raining all day, so I didn’t end up going hiking at all. Instead I just worked on music for most of the day, and had a late lunch wherein I went to the grocery store and bought some bread and cheese, which was pretty good. When the rain cleared up a bit at around 4:30 PM I decided to walk around the neighborhood, but I quickly ran out of sidewalk. Oh well, at least I got 20 minutes of exercise-ish in.

For dinner I got some rather underwhelming sushi and a pile of constant misgendering. Now I’m back at the AirBnB and will just work on some more music.

Tomorrow I’m going to check out some more local restaurants; I have rough plans to go to a steakhouse for dinner, and probably a sandwich place for lunch, and hopefully get some actual hiking in during the hours between. I mean, that is why I came here, right?

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Port Angeles, day 1

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Today I drove out to Port Angeles, which was pretty uneventful. I’d been deliberating whether to deal with the stress of driving South on I-5 through Tacoma or the stress of dealing with the ferry to Bainbridge, and decided to just go whichever route Siri put me on. She ended up doing a third option, using the Kingston ferry, which ended up being both a very pleasant drive to the terminal (aside from a couple of near misses due to construction changing the lanes in unanticipated ways) and a much faster option. I guess Apple Maps knows the ferry schedule and is able to just like… figure out what’s the best at any given time? Neat.

The Kingston ferry is also a lot shorter than the Bainbridge one, and I got lucky enough to have a very good view of the trip from my car; the whole thing got recorded on my dashcam, as well, which is perfect for a music video (and cover song) I’m going to be making over the next few days for Song Fight!.

Anyway I guess it turns out that it’s not that I’m bad with driving, I just don’t do well in downtown or South Seattle.

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