First Officer’s Log

Stardate:  20-18-09-12

Here’s a quick recap of the trip so far. 

First, the objective of the trip was to attend our granddaughter’s wedding and to grovel for great grandchildren. 

The First Officer arrived in Arrowstar's Shuttlecraft with a BIG sign pointing the way to the venue, which was otherwise undiscoverable by GPS 

or other methods such as street signs.

Our granddaughter the bride - Madison

At first we couldn’t figure out why she chose Forks, Washington for the venue but when we got there we realized that although it’s so far back in the woods they have to pipe in sunlight, and so close to Canada we were actually operating on Canadian cell service, and even though Forks is known as the rain capitol of the world, the wedding site was absolutely beautiful. 

 And, although there were four solid days of rain bracketing the wedding date when the time came for the ceremony the clouds parted, the sun shone, and a great booming voice cried out, “Go thee and become one my children!”

OK, the voice was me, but you get the idea.

Our grandchildren plus one - Nick Pearson, the groom in tux

Anyway, everything came off without a hitch and they are now honeymooning in Cabo where I’m told the crime rate is tolerable. 

Oh BTW, we are in Long Beach, Washington for a couple of decompression days. 

* * *

To continue the recap of our voyage so far:

We left Starfleet HQ on Earthdate August 20^th, a full four days earlier than planned.  Frankly, we looked around, decided we didn’t have anything pending and just pulled up stakes and left. 

Leaving early let us spend a few days at some of the places we camped and that allowed us to do some touristy stuff and while walking around I mentally designed a T-shirt that would say “Touri$t” on the back so the natives would know we have some value to them.

Cheryl and I are both Museum enthusiasts and we visited several that far outreached our expectations.  We also visited the Tillamook, WW2 Blimp Hanger which in its day could hold 6 fully inflated blimps.  BTW, do you know where the word “Blimp” comes from?  Dirigible airships have a rigid frame work while blimps are just fabric bags full of helium.  So not being rigid they were termed to be “Limp.”  The prototypes were the “A-Limp”, and the production models were the “B-Limp”, hence, “Blimp.”  At least that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Also in Tillamook we toured the Tillamook cheese factory and had one of the best dinners in their restaurant that we’ve ever eaten.  Interestingly the factory is huge, the parking lot huger, and there were probably a thousand other tourists in there with us.  I know that touring a cheese factory sounds dumb, but it was actually one of the neatest things I’ve ever done.

On August 31^st our refrigerator died for a day.  Seriously, for one full day it did not produce cold.  We had to toss out a bunch of food and put the rest in a cooler we carry “just in case.”  I pulled out the thermostat and jumpered it to no avail.  This was about 9 o’clock at night and I just gave up and went to bed.  The next morning the d$%@ thing was humming along just fine and making more cold than we needed.  I un-jumpered the thermostat and put all the innards back in place and it has run fine since then.  I suspect the defrost timer got stuck and put it on eternal defrost and have ordered a new timer which I will carry with us from now on.

Once we arrived in Forks, WA we had a few days to explore it so we took a few hours and explored it.  Yeah, all of it!  All mile and a half.  The highlight was to drive out to Cape Flattery which is the most north-west point in the lower 48 states.  Once there we hiked the “one-half mile, moderate difficulty” trail out to the actual last point.  Let me tell you, the sign lies.  It was at least 5 miles of rocky, bumpy, uneven, trail that was uphill both ways.  We just about died of exertion while jumping out of the way of the spandex clad 20-somthings who were jogging the trail both up and down.  Darn show-offs!