days 27-28 -- on the water with cap'n casey jones

the next morning it was off into the water on the captain's zodiac. rainy, blustery day...not typical seattle august, apparently, but it fit the imaginary seattle well enough. first stop...crab pots off richmond beach and a hoped-for dungeness feast later on. but no recognizable buoys despite a few passes. this was seriously bad, not just for prospective crab wontons but because these were serious traps. possibly confiscated by fish and game officers because they were out during a sunday-tuesday moratorium, but that level of enforcement looked unlikely. more probably some punk had grabbed them. we hoisted someone else's to look at the catch (and now I know how to sex crabs and what constitutes a legal catch), and I suggested that we could bait someone else's trap, head across to a planned lunch on bainbridge island and slip back for 'our' catch before the real owner returned, but there were karmic problems with that, so no go. disappointment aside, we motored over for that lunch at a great waterside joint with local beer and local food (smoked halibut and jalapeno salad sandwich for me...excellent). casey's caught between selling the boat in an effort to pare down his stuff...and listing all the improvements he was considering. a rear platform to accommodate a dual engine complex to make it more sea-worthy (redundancy), for example. I took a turn at the helm and learned the rudiments of engine plane and throttle and riding through wake. we explored a possible diving spot (casey is a PADI instructor) and mugged for photos with the skyline, then toured the yacht marina and a billion dollars of boats. some post-outing boat care and then some more great city fare, some pho accompanied by blaring muzak.

casey's other current interest is a 1989 volvo station wagon in remarkably good condition. after a series of brand new SUVs rapidly turned over, the idea now is to put energy into tuning and tinkering a machine with 200,000 miles into another 100,000 miles...not really out of necessity but out of the challenge and ownership of the project. so yuriy the russian volvo guru was consulted on repairing a broken parking brake cable, checking the moving brakes, and investigating various squeaks and rattles that kept cropping up. for all his roughshod bravado and derring-do (from skateboards to wingers to late night quarry diving), casey always had a meticulous side. running wasn't a lark fueled by raw athleticism...casey followed the sport and training closely and was borderline obsessive about thinking ahead to the next race. so for all his formidable competitive drive there was a strong intellectual slant to his running. all this makes sense for the volvo and the boat, but also for the scuba thing...adventure and risk but very carefully managed -- you can't just strap on the tanks and head for the bottom. so after it's all rehabbed, this will turn out to be one remarkable 1989 volvo -- re-upholstered roof liner, replacement leather seats, dark tinted windows.

but there's still the freewheeling casey -- we spent part of the next day attempting to find some downtown tourists to take out on the boat. casey latched onto a couple of kansans in town for a wedding, but with me-deadweight as a silent sidekick we didn't get very far. (all I had to contribute were my goofy shoes.) which was all good in the end since there were backup plans to end the evening with various brazilian friends and s.o.'s -- casey has taken to brazil and brazilians recently, speaks portugese fluently.

in and around these various events we managed to sample burritos/enchiladas from a literal hole-in-the-wall around the corner from pike street, visited pals at the hydroponic garden shop, scrabbattled latenight, and counseled a friend through a breakup-with-kid-complications situation. casey still is a pastor's son at heart...true to form his high school ambition was to start his own religion.