Since we’ve all been (rather) homebound these last two+ years, flying on an airplane and going somewhere new feels like a big adventure. I’m on my way home after spending 5 days with an old tai chi friend on Whidbey Island, offshore Seattle. Getting there, and back, was the most complex part of the trip.
Paine Field Airport, the closest to the island, opened as a commercial airport just before the pandemic hit. It’s an upscale joint, more like a fancy hotel lobby than an airport with three gates, serving one airline, and restricted in the number of flights/day it can process. Since it is a small, almost elite, airport, customer services are limited.
I arrived five days ago. After waiting 90-minutes, I caught the shuttle to the island, and my friend turned up on the same ferry. She’d finished her dentist appointment in Seattle early, and hurried home. She texted me as the ferry departed the dock, asking if I was in the shuttle bus on the ferry. When I replied affirmatively, she said she was in line just a few cars behind us. After the ferry got underway and we were free to move about the ferry, she came up and sprang me and my belongings from the shuttle. We stopped at Rocket Tacos (Freeland WA) for a spicy lunch of street tacos, the local variation of charro beans, and a locally made ginger beer as we made our way to her beautiful waterfront home.
That first afternoon we walked 3+ miles (round trip) across one of the narrow parts of Whidbey Island, from her home on Penn Cove to the campground closest to Fort Ebey State Park on Puget Sound. It was a glorious introduction, really a reminder, of the rich, damp, evergreen forests of the pacific northwest, and a cold, grey, drizzly reminder of why the vegetation is so rich. I brought home a tender spot that would blossom the next day into a blister on one heel from walking in my new boots. A quick stop by Walgreens for blister care pads and moleskin and I was good to go again. I did spend a day in my wooly socks, without shoes, as the blister settled back down.
We balanced out touring the sights around the island with her necessary work tasks, most of which were zoom calls with clients. I read, and sat in front of the fireplace, watching the water and the sky, and the birds. On her deck, she has 3 seed feeders, one suet feeder and one hummingbird feeder. We were constantly entertained by a variety of birdlife. Bald eagles, Canada geese, ravens, and herons also visited the Cove, trees and green space around, and in front of, her home. I’m sure there were owls too, we just didn’t see them.
I also learned the rudiments of the game of Euchre, and played a couple games with two of her card-playing friends. We also watched a little Netflix – some of Brene’ Brown’s Atlas of the Heart sessions, and the two Hannah Gadsby shows. Both memorable for different reasons.
My one uncertainty was getting back home. I had a reservation at the hotel closest to the airport that had a restaurant. None of the hotels had shuttle service to the airport. It was a customer service that disappeared with Covid and isn’t likely to return. As a customer, I miss the easy convenience of it.
Last night when I arrived on the shuttle, I called a taxi. The young woman driver had a baby stroller in the trunk. We chatted on the way over to the hotel. She was a young mom with two kids at home, and was saving to buy a car of her own. When I called to request a taxi to return to the airport this morning, I complimented the young woman to the dispatcher. She informed me that she had fired the woman last night because she’d taken ‘her’ taxi home, rather than returning it to the base. The next driver had been unable to make his runs without a car. This was not the first time this had happened. Her firing was not ‘bad luck’. We do get what we create.
