Embracing The Savage - Part 7
Driving alone through the arrival of winter in the coldest regions of the US is a race against the night. As a culmination of the changing seasons and my northerly direction, sunlight gives way to darkness a bit earlier each passing day. Planned, curated, comfortable. None of these would describe this road-trip. Testament to that is the vehicle I’m using. A 2008 Mazda 3 sedan with no snow tires, no luggage rack, no leather seats and standard issue air conditioner and heater.
Entering Washington state after a few pit-stops for fast food, my resting place for the night is Spokane. I've been in touch with a university classmate, David, and catch up with him and his partner for dinner. They graciously invite me to stay with them. He's a mechanical engineer who like me had become disenchanted with that particular career path, worked as a bike mechanic - his passion and has now enrolled in medical school to become a surgeon.
Thrift stores have been a fun part of this trip proving both fashionable and practical. Here I pick up some multi-coloured tights as you do.
It's a bit strange to meet people from your past when you're on a journey into the unknown. After hanging with them for a couple of days, it's clear that I've overstayed my welcome. Polite goodbyes and I'm on the way to Seattle. Seattle was the tentative destination for this road-trip but now it might just be a longer pit stop.
I find cheap accommodation in a shared AirBnb with other transients & the odd backpacker. Most are here looking for a job in the tech industry. I had already turned down one job offer in Chicago while on the road, but play around with my resume. I start preparing for a Graduate Record Examination (GRE) in the three weeks I plan to be in Seattle while waiting for a cousin to arrive.
One of the aforementioned travellers is a teenage German girl named Sophie. She isn't exactly backpacking nor is she a transient though. Something between volunteering and an internship. In any case, she's got plenty of free-time. So, along with an Argentine artist and an unstable Dominican from Florida we drive onto a ferry to Bainbridge Island.
Staying at this sort of halfway-house I keep bumping into interesting people. A Ghanian man shares his wisdom about having stability. A sex-positive Oregonian. And a Persian-American with a last name that certain people would really appreciate: Malekzadehvakilabadi. If you know, you know.
He's a riot and offers me the exact opposite viewpoint of the Ghanian uncle. Arian is going against family pressure to pursue a livelihood as an electrical inspector, lives out his work van most of the time and is based out of Bend, Oregon with his girlfriend April. Like many people I meet, he laments not having bought bitcoin when it was a few hundred dollars.
My cousin eventually rolls into town with her husband. She invites me to stay at her friends place in the suburbs. Her friend's husband works at Amazon and narrates to me the stresses of his high-pressure job and how it led to him having an accident. We even visit the Amazon HQ on a weekend where his colleague reminds me of why I find myself going further away from corporate. How did these people come to the conclusion that enterprise is the apex of human evolution?
Speaking of which, rather than study for the GRE, I spend time on a knock-off Eames lounger reading many of the thrift treasures from earlier in my road trip.
Alfred Russel Wallace, Darwin's contemporary, perceived that with the emergence of the human brain, man had, to a previously inconceivable degree, passed out of the domain of the particulate evolution of biological organs and had entered upon what we may call history. - Loren Eiseley, The Invisible Pyramid
It's not all sitting and talking though. Seattle's parks fittingly offer me a chance to practice my half-assed parkour. I climb and jump off some structures so high that it's a surprise I only sprain my ankle once. Accompanying me on these adventures is a young drifter from California.
Time to bid adieu to Seattle and head to Oregon. The hipster homeland.