7.17.01
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yeah, i was out of town again. go figure.
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in whistler (2 hours north of vancouver, B.C.).
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the occasion was my grandfather’s 85th birthday. every five years we have a family reunion on his birthday in some vacation spot of his choice.
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well, according to my calculations, i spent 25 hours traveling in order to spend 40 hours actually in whistler.
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no, i didn’t drive, i just have poor airline karma. there are no direct flights between boise and vancouver, so i had to go via seattle. everything was foggy and slow.
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well, i’ve seen a lot of the seattle airport. did you know that they have 24 hours starbucks there? and on the general airport navigation signs, in addition to the directions for restrooms, news, food, terminal D, etc, they have an entry for “espresso”, directing you to the starbucks stand nearest your gate. they’ve even created a little symbol for it on the maps, a tiny espresso cup in side a square.
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the airport has replaced their standard public service announcements with kinder, gentler ones. for example, in place of the impersonal “there is no smoking inside the terminal” message, a perky, slightly effeminate sounding young man comes on the loudspeaker every 15 minutes to say, “Greetings, fellow smokers! the bad news is, smoking is not allowed anywhere in the terminal. if you’d like to smoke you have to go outside of the baggage claim area. the good news is, i’ll be right there with you!”
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no, i didn’t really see much of whistler, or the mountain really, since only the bottom 1/3 of it’s 7000 ft peak was visible beneath the layer of summer fog.
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i get along with my relatives pretty well, so it wasn’t too brutal, particularly considering i was there for less than two days. this particular reunion was marked by the addition of a fourth generation – my cousin’s first baby.
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well, it was interesting, because it actually changed a lot of the family dynamics. suddenly my generation isn’t the grandKIDS any more, because we’re all adults, and my cousin has a baby of his own so he’s really an adult, but he’s not a real adult like my parents are, of course, and then again the aunts and uncles of my parents’ generation are now grandparents, but they’re not old grandparents like MY grandparents are…it’s all very complicated.
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only 13. luckily i have a small family. i like diagrams, but html does not, so i’ll spare you the family tree.
watching my grandmother watch her whole family, all four generations, it suddenly occurred to me that for my grandparents, we are their lifelong accomplishment. they’ve spent eighty-five years building a family. i don’t have any amazing conclusions to draw from this, it was just a thought that really struck me.
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since the drinking age is 19 in canada, i got to take my baby brother out for his first (legal) drink. we found this fabulous irish pub full of merry drunk people and a band that did vaguely-irish sounding covers of just everything that anyone can sing drunk – hey jude, american pie, etc. matt was crushed that nobody carded him all weekend long, except for the one time he forgot his id and so our mom had to vouch for his age.
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i’m tired of traveling. i’m going to try and stick around boise for a few weeks here and just let my spirit catch up with my body’s physical location. i thought for a moment i’d really had enough traveling when, on the flight from boise to seattle, i saw the grim reaper get on the plane.
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you know, it’s funny. he didn’t have a black cloak or a scythe or anything, but a deathly white face. see, i was sitting in my seat, looking at my book and glancing up at the people still boarding the plane when i caught a glimpse of this guy at the front of the plane with a perfectly white face. at first, i figured it was an albino person, and as not to be caught staring, i looked down at my book so that i could think of a way to subtly stare as he walked by. but when i glanced up again, the crowd at the front of the plane and shifted and he was gone. but then i realized that what i’d seen wasn’t actually a guy with pale skin, blond hair and blue eyes, but someone with a perfectly white face, like it was painted, and short dark hair and hollow, shadowed cheeks. it occurred to me then that maybe this would be a good time to get off the plane, but then i fell asleep, and when i woke up we were landing and nobody was dead.
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no, i swear i was awake at the time. okay, so i was more than a little short on sleep that morning, having gotten off work at 1 and returning to the airport at 5 am. i might possibly have hallucinated it, but i’m sure i didn’t dream it.
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yeah, i told you i’ve been traveling too much.
