The leader was tall, snide, and slim–he looked like a gay Captain Morgan

September 25, 2007 10 Comments read Attractions, Oregon, Pacific, Projects, Travel, USA, West

On Sunday, I drove to Portland to check out the Portland Pirate Festival. I’d spent Friday night and most of the day on Saturday sewing a new pirate costume, as much as I love the old one, it’s incredibly costumey and less ‘working pirate’. It seems like a large portion of my time lately has been devoted to costume work–in addition to this pirate thing, I’ve been working pretty feverishly on my Halloween costume. Mock me for my early preparation if you must, but I’m tired of having a costume that’s not as awesome as it COULD be if only I hadn’t procrastinated–last year’s Dark Helmet, for example. That, and my October weekends are filling up rapidly, and I have a feeling that if I don’t start wrapping this up now, I won’t have time later and I’ll have another halfassed attempt on my hands. I think it turned out fairly decent; all it needs is a hat that doesn’t suck, and unfortunately, I don’t have millinery skills. I really should keep an eye out for a cheap sewing machine, though, as hand-stitching takes forever and a day. You can also see the most recent addition to the pirate bathroom–I found one of those hanging hippy-esque door curtain things, took it apart, and attached each piece individually to the glass doors–I quite like the look! I drew a lot of strange looks on the trip down, but my favorite is when I stopped at a rest stop near Castle Rock; an older man (mid to late 60s) asked me what I was up to, and then told me the last time he was in Seattle, some outraged busybody asked him if he knew that an animal had to die to make his coat. His response? ‘Oh no! I didn’t think there were any witnesses…now I’m going to have to kill you, too!’. Too cool. I ended up talking with him for far, far longer than I intended to be at the rest stop; I’d just meant to grab some of the free coffee and keep going, but he was one of those cool grandfatherly types who knows something about EVERYTHING–we talked animals, biology, history, politics, religion, car engine builds and manufacturers–I was fascinated, and suddenly two and a half hours had passed. Shortly before I left, he mentioned that his wife had been dead for fourteen years, and I felt badly for leaving because he just seemed so desperately lonely, like he hadn’t had anyone to talk to for years. I suppose that’s part of life, but it doesn’t seem right to me. Still, I needed to get back on the road if I was going to have time to do both the festival and meet up with hallucinas, so after the gentleman at the rest stop explained to me how the flintlock on my dagger/pistol worked, I bid him farewell and continued on my way to Portland. This piratical stilt-walker is Heather Pearl; she says she figures that she has logged a few thousand miles on her stilts over the eleven years she has been working fairs! I’m pretty sure that just one mile would feel like a thousand miles to me, although if I picked a good pair of stilts, it would be fucking awesome to finally be height-weight proportionate. HAR HAR! This pirate wench was working as part of the Pirate Parrot show; designed to be an educational show teaching the audience not only about parrots but conservation and whatnot. Between shows, people queue to get a chance to hold a parrot, which are surprisingly friendly and even cuddly–so different from the pet store parrots that threaten to take your finger off if you so much as pass by too near to the cage! I could never be 1st mate–I’m disqualified straight off with the ‘extreme patience’ requirement. How could anyone possibly need THAT much patience? Are they dealing with the Pirate Captain (pirate_capt_log) himself? Disheartened, I went to the Rogue tavern for some rum to put me in good spirits again (see what I did there?) and was just in time to watch the pirate with ADD perform like some sort of entertaining monkey for the drunken crowd. Here he is, standing on a ladder of swords, juggling knives, and staring directly into the sun, all while cannons are being fired at uneven intervals. If he’d slipped, he’d be short at least half a foot! This character looks the part so much, I couldn’t resist taking his picture! I left the grog garden just in time to see the Pirates of Puget Sound cross blades to settle disputes–‘this one stole my banana’ ‘this one’s shiny eyepatch blinds me in bright sunlight’ ‘this one ripped my teddy bear’–serious pirate grievances. They fought with real, sharp blades, so anyone who stood too closely to the battle area was quickly shooed away as pirates, much like the amish, don’t carry insurance for that sort of thing. I’d like to take a moment to say that I wholeheartedly approve of the pirates in leather pants trend. WHOLEHEARTEDLY. Right nearby was a pirate puppet show, intending to teach children that stealing is wrong and teamwork can help save the day. Is this a pirate show or some sort of hippy festival? Seriously! I wandered around the marketplace for a while, but nothing caught my eye as a ‘must have’; some things were nice but ridiculously overpriced for something that I could make myself with enough time and inclination, and to my surprise, there wasn’t a decent pirate hat to be found! Felt pirate hats always look crummy and cheap. As I walked by, I couldn’t tell if the above skeleton was a costumed person or just a decoration outside of a stall, and really, really stared at its face to see if I could see eyes–I was so engrossed in my study as I was walking by that when the person inside wolf-whistled at me, I nearly jumped out of my skin. Congrats, skeleton guy–you are part of a select few people who have scared the bejeezus out of me, while hitting on me, even. Hats off to you! After checking out some wares, I gave hallucinas a call, and since she was free, I went over to her house so that we might eat at the Pirate Tavern, home of Portland’s vegetarian pirates. We’ve been planning on going there for approximately a year, so we were full of anticipation and excitement when we pulled into the lot…only to discover that they’re closed on Sundays. Why must you disappoint me, Pirate Tavern? Why? And whilst I was bemoaning their unfortunate hours, the owners came out, just to add a layer of awkward to the mix. Why, yes, I was just standing in your parking lot wailing ‘noooooo’ like Darth Vader, why do you ask? All was well, however, when hallucinas took me out for some super-awesome veggie pizza. Super-awesome, and free, which only serves to make the whole experience even better. While I was there, I also picked up a commission I had ordered from her for my Halloween costume, which looks fucking FANTASTIC. Have I mentioned that my friends are amazing artisans? Because they totally are.

I don’t want no mates, there’s too many captains on this island.

September 13, 2007 7 Comments read Pacific, Travel, USA, Washington, West

On Sunday, Jez had invited me to attend the Wooden Boat Festival in Port Townsend. On the ferry from Edmonds to Kingston, I finally became alert enough to notice my surroundings, and goosezilla‘s necklace.

With the super-sensitive sixth sense every woman has regarding when people are staring at her chest, Katy noted my drooling, early-morning half-lidded gaze, and hurriedly explained that the center bit is a toe. A TOE, damnit!

Our first stop was in Port Gamble, at the Sea and Shell Museum. The downstairs bit is one of those stores they have in every crappy, low-population, tourist-oriented town–full of stuffed animals and mugs with cutesy, treacly sayings. The upstairs, however, is pretty much the world’s most dilapidated museum.

The googly eyes totally make this fish awesome. I’m pretty sure that ANYTHING is made more awesome by the addition of googly eyes.

Here are a bunch of jars of preserved…things that haven’t been preserved super-well; I’m pretty sure that the fluid isn’t supposed to evaporate. From left to right on the bottom row, I’m guessing: Shark, fish, jellyfish, eel, The Blob.

When they ran out different kinds of shells to display, but still had extra cases left over, that’s when the magic happened. Shell handicrafts, shell stamps, things with shells embroidered on them…it goes on and on. Of course, the very best one is the CRUCIFIED JESUS SHELL.

This crab has a masturbation problem, and he’ll kindly thank you not to make fun of his one overdeveloped giant crab arm. He blames all of the scintillating material made available to him by Arrrdor, Inc.

As we left, Jez noted that one of the flags on the museum was upside down. Distress call, mistake, or prank pulled by the Masonic house across the street?

We arrived in Port Townsend just in time to board the good ship Adventuress; a historic schooner at nearly 100 years old, originally owned by ‘gentleman’s adventurer’ John Borden II, who commissioned it to travel to the Arctic to collect bowhead whale specimens. I was delighted to learn that this was a ‘working’ tour; we’d all be working together to haul the lines to raise and lower the sails.

Captain Kate, taking control of the ship when the Lady Washington challenged us with her cannons. For all the bragging in Pirates of the Caribbean–“This is the fastest ship in the Caribbean”; “There’s no real ship as can match The Interceptor”, we smoked it. That’s because with her square rig, she can’t sail into the wind the way Adventuress can.

OWNED. After a while, I got to play captain for a bit, steering the ship, while deckhands goosezilla, James, and Jez hauled lines at my whim. Muahahahahaha! My turn was up all too quickly, but it was said that I wore a shiteating grin the entire time I was behind the giant wooden wheel. I’ve got soft hands, city hands, so by the end of the day, I had some twinges of rope burn on my fingers, but actually helping work on the ship was incredibly satisfying. Jez ended up giving me the cd he won in the on-ship raffle, and suggested I could have it looping continuously in the pirate bathroom. This I considered to be a fantastic idea until I actually heard the cd, at which point I determined that it’s close to, if not THE worst thing I’ve ever heard in my life. There’s a whole track of SNORING. The people singing the chanties don’t actually know them, so they screw up words. People are coughing in the background on the track that talks about the ship’s history. This is an item they SELL. WOW. …Maybe I should just loop it when I’m gone, in the hopes of driving out the upstairs neighbors.

Plane Jane

August 7, 2007 15 Comments read Attractions, Pacific, Travel, USA, Washington, West

Friday was all about large buildings and planes; on Friday morning, I drove the family to Everett to visit Boeing’s Future of Flight facilities, which is located in the largest building in the world, by volume, at 472,000,000 cubic feet. It’s the only public tour of a commercial jet assembly plant in North America, and it is, in a word, awesome. It’s a little difficult to wrap my brain around the fact that just this plant alone employs over twenty-seven THOUSAND people, even when you’re looking at the scale of this building, even when you can see an assembly line of full-size planes inside. This building is so large that Boeing keeps over 1,300 bicycles on the factory floor for employees to get around. This building is so large that it has its own fire department, hospital, water treatment plant, electrical substations, and FOUR telephone prefixes. This building is so large that it created its own weather–warm air and moisture accumulated near the ceiling, forming clouds. That is a one DAMN BIG BUILDING. Boeing has a moving assembly line, though it moves too slowly for the naked eye to discern. A plane moves through this assembly line from start to finish in about four months, so if I were to visit again three months from now, the model 777 number 666 (devil plane! devil plane!) that was in its earliest stages of construction on Friday would nearly be ready to roll off the line. We also got to see the very first 787 Dreamliner, which is awesome beyond belief. My friend Banjo works for Boeing, and she was telling me how incredible this plane was when it was still a hush-hush secret; now that I’ve actually seen and touched one, I am convinced it will change the way we fly, because, of course, my opinion about these sorts of things matters. First off, it’s constructed of nearly 50% composite materials, which makes it about 40,000 pounds lighter than airplanes constructed of conventional materials–this makes it much more fuel efficient, so…yay environment! Equally as important to passengers is the fact that the composites are stronger, which enables it to have much larger windows and a cabin pressure of lower altitude, which increases comfort/reduces jetlag.

They’ve also increased the size of the cabin, which is an incredible boon for claustrophobics. Seriously. That picture makes me excited to fly again, and I have been a VERY surly flyer lately, angrily defending my personal space bubble. I fit within the confines of my seat, and I expect that anyone sitting next to me does the same. If I wanted to be touched by strangers, I’d go to Neighbors. Last but not least, I designed my own super-sweet airplane. Come fly the Mellzah skies!

After we left the Boeing plant, we went back to Seattle where the ever-lovely Carrie escorted us to the viewing deck of the Columbia Center building, which was at one point the tallest building west of the Mississippi. As we got to the top, it turned out our timing was perfect as the Blue Angels were just starting their show over Lake Washington, which my grandparents were very, very excited about.

I only ended up getting one picture, as a certain roommate was using my camera to take pictures of herself for her Internet Boyfriend, and failed to tell me that she’d killed the (proprietary) battery. And lo, there was much gnashing of teeth. Still, even from this one picture you can get a decent idea of just how much this jet black building looms over everything else. Afterward, keeping to the trend of going somewhere and immediately turning around and going back, I took everyone to Pike Place Market, finally found/paid for a parking spot, the grandparents took a quick peek and were ready to go back. GAH.