Emerald City

Seattle... I came into this city with a head full of hopes, pockets filled with dreams...and next to nothing else to my name. I left my trailer on Bangor Base with my dear friend Erin, and took the ferry back across the Puget Sound with literally nothing but the goods on my back and the bike beneath my butt. I spent a couple weeks with my cousin in Lynwood while part busing, part biking a near 40 mile roundtrip to the Seattle Bartending College each day, trying to crash course my way to what I hoped would be an employable skill. From there, without a clue where to go or what to do, I had the marvelous fortune to meet a wonderful fellow in Wallingford who not only took me in for a couple days, but provided me with yard work on his property to make funds I desperately needed. After which I came to couchsurf with, then rent from, some folks in a wretchedly inconvenient region just south of the city limits, who were nice...a little nuts...and whose place had cockroaches in the utensil drawers and mold in the bathroom. There I spent more than a month, grossed out, weirded out, homesick, speaking about the conditions in whispered conversations to my friends and family, frantic to find a job, and generally entirely unsure what I was doing. I was lucky to get some day labor from the neighbor doing construction work to keep me mostly in the financial clear, while all the while applying hopelessly to one job after another, feeling like I'd never find steady work.

Until finally, I got an interview to be a bartender at a bowling alley/billiards/bar/restaurant in Tukwilla. ...I flubbed that interview and got hired as a waiter instead. ...Then I turned out to be a terrible waiter and within the week was working as a busser. But I had a job. And as soon as I possibly could, I got out of that horrible house to move into a vastly cleaner, surprisingly cheaper, and far less crazy house with two really great roommates. And there, in my strange little suburb of Skyway, still outside the city proper, in a no-man's land south of Seattle, north of Renton, where people could apparently legally have roosters, at the top of a very tall hill, in a neighborhood with a weird aversion to sidewalks, and in area I was frequently informed (despite my own general feelings of safety) was not the safest of places to live, I eventually came to feel at home. There I would live for seven months, while little by little learning this city of Seattle I'd come across half the country to reach.

Now that time is done, I've said my goodbyes, currently riding the ferry to Bremerton, and I find myself looking back on it all, remembering all those hopes in my head and dreams in my pocket. I came wanting to live in the heart of the city. I ended up living outside of it, spending most days never stepping a foot inside the city proper. I set out with the ambition to work as a bartender. Instead I ended up as a busser. I originally thought I would take permanent residence here. It wasn't long before I knew that simply wasn't in me to do. In most every sense, I failed at everything I tried, at every turn I made.

And I regret nothing, not a thing. I have met crazies and kindred spirits, and an undeniably large number of folk who were both. I have gone to islands and seen orcas. I have visited nearly every museum in the city and seen most the great landmarks. I've spent time chatting with good people from around the world in coffee shops and bars throughout the city. I got to work my job with some of the best people I've ever met and who I will miss dearly. And I've learned a lot about the restaurant industry from a good place to learn it, near the bottom.

Without a doubt, my time here in Seattle has been worth every minute. My experiences here in the Emerald City have proven as marvelous and meaningful for me as my personal yellow brick road journey to get here. And just because I've decided to face the wondrous and wicked witch of the west that is Highway 101, before ultimately going to Phoenix and clicking my heels together three times to get a lift back to my home on the Midwestern plains (...did I carry that one too far?), Seattle and everyone I've met here will always be close to heart.

Goodbye Seattle. I'll miss you. Until we meet again.