If You Lived Here You'd Be Home Now

Depending on where you measured and who you asked, we had somewhere between 30 and 60 straight days of rain this winter.

Seattle has somewhere between the 1st and 5th worst traffic in the country.

We are notoriously inept in public policy and decision-making at every level.

Our public schools are terrible.

The median house price in the Puget Sound area is creeping into the $300,000 range.

In the dead of winter we get about 6 total hours of daylight.

Al Bangorhard is right. Seattle sucks.

But, there are damn few places in the world where you can have a Thursday afternoon like this:

1. Classes are over for the term, so after some morning meetings I swing by a Japanese joint to grab a Bento box for the 20 minute drive to the marina.

2. Cap’n Ron is about Allegro when I arrive, and we have decided to take her out for a spin on the bay. It’s 50 degrees or so and blowing 15 from the SW.

3. We sail for a few hours in a strong breeze out to Mukilteo, down toward Hat Island, and back up to the marina with the wind freshening to almost 20 knots. We are the only ones on the water except for a couple of tugs pulling barges around. Even the USS Abraham Lincoln (of “Mission Accomplished” fame) is away from her dock out on some sort of killing spree.

4. By the time we reach the dock, most people are just getting ready to leave work and sit in some of the worst traffic in the country.

5. We put Allegro away in her slip, and I head over to my boat to change clothes.

6. By 6:00 we are at the climbing gym working on some new boulder problems and chatting with some other aging alpinists.

7. By 8:30 we are at the Woodfire Bar enjoying a local IPA and watching Oregon (literally) beat up the Huskies in the Pac 10 basketball tournament. (This turns out to be the only negative part of the day. I hate the Ducks. Who ever thought that was a good nickname for a school?)

8. I even get to watch Cap’n Ron trip over himself as we walked back to the docks at the end of the night. He claims the sidewalk moved. I think otherwise.

9. I settle in onboard with the heat up high and Sarah Vowell’s newest book as the wind blows outside.

Sure. Seattle sucks. But what a day. In a few weeks we will have enough daylight to hit the mountains after work and get some real alpine rock in. I don’t think I’m moving for a while.