not-art and not-kites, but fun anyway

Most of the Seattle trip refuses to cohere into narrative form. It's beyond episodic or picaresque and well into "fragmented." Not that that makes it a bad trip-- far from it. It just causes difficulty in the telling.

However, one episode stands out. I speak, of course, of ( the Thursday afternoon of frustration. )

it should not get to eighty degrees on the last day of september.

I went to the beach this weekend, with uilos and rislyn and effectively-LJ-less Mark and sadly no DJ.

On the way there I changed a tire for the first time. This is a basically painless process provided your donut is in good shape. (It was.) I think it took longer to find the place to buy a new tire than it did to change the flat.

I flew a kite for the first time in I don't know how long, and went swimming in the ocean. I ate "stuffed shrimp," which basically meant "crabcake with butterfly shrimp around the edges" and was really really good.

I saw the Ocean City boardwalk in daylight for pretty much the first time. It's smaller and sadder than I remember, but a block back there's a used bookstore. (Used-book store?)

We had a campfire, and made smores and mocked Nice Guys and shook our heads in disbelief at the choices our friends and acquaintances make. ("Eeww.")

The mosquitoes had all flown south for the winter. There were a handful of sandpipers, and at least one pelican, and an egret standing calmly in the marsh. And lots of nickel-sized sand-colored crabs, and a handful of beach mushrooms. (Very odd.)

I got an unpleasant sunburn and sand in my tent and didn't sleep well because sand isn't nearly as soft as you think it is and my hips seem to have become rather bony.

I should do that again sometime.