day 26 -- portland to seattle

after a day spent mostly borrowing wireless on office park medians and a 7-11 sidewalk waiting for the tire to arrive, for the service dept to mount it, and then slow slow pre-rush hour traffic across portland (even after I figured out that 'motorcycles OK' was appended to the HOV lane signage), I gave up on the secondary road thing and headed north on I-5. scenic enough, but I missed mt st helens again -- the first time I visited washington the summit road was closed due to snow. anyway, zipped into watery seattle and checked into the george and dragon, which advertised itself as a 'british pub' in the nonsensical chain-pub way, but this was a very local joint. the seattle sounders were a few blocks down at qwest field playing some mexican club in the CONCACAF champions league (who knew that existed?), but plenty of the faithful were outfitted in green and watching at the pub. and then the indisputably one-of-a-kind cap'n casey jones showed up. the kid who cajoled a handful of weirdly matched semi-athletes into competing like contenders, the kid who submarined authority at every turn but got teammates to follow his lead without question, the kid who messed around when it didn't count and toed the line hard when it did, the kid who alternated casually nasty barbs with fierce (if gruff) support for friends, the kid who put 'casey jones' on an endless loop at cross-country camp and had the bus driver blare 'freebird' incessantly, instilling a vaguely rebellious (but not hippie) streak in at least one straight arrow band geek. crude, moody, doggedly independent...but dripping charisma. we spent the year after he graduated trying to out-casey each other.

casey headed for the coast fifteen years ago and I'm not sure I've seen him since (though I swear he ambled out of the shadows at a the hershey texaco some time back). but it's no surprise that he's the same guy, despite some rough breaks. and I know that's what everyone says about long lost friends, but sometimes it's true. he looks the seattle part now, a little grunge, a little shaggy. we compared notes on lost hershey denizens...he had a lot more juice on that score, including the unlikeliest multimillionaire porn star ever. (and I just looked him up under his stage name to confirm. still speechless.) we traded my bike for a buddy's SUV to tow the captain's boat the next day and turned in.