My annual 850-mile transition from winter to spring is now complete. I drove my car, along with a trailer full of ski equipment and a brain full of memories, onto the ferry bound for Orcas Island where my wife and I spend eight months of the year.
I climbed up the ladder to the deck where they sell fresh clam chowder that is delivered in 50-gallon drums to the galley once or twice a week. Instead of clam chowder, I opted for a salad that I know was cobbled together a week or so before. I settled down with my wilted salad and the local newspaper, ready to enjoy the hour-long ride and catch up on island news. Some of the 175 islands in the San Juan Archipelago slowly passed by on either side of the ferry and I began to sense that something was wrong with the ferry. This is typical; however, this time it sounded ominous. The propellers were vibrating so much that some people nonchalantly moved closer to where the life jackets are stowed. The shaking was so severe that it actually caused me to tip over my cup of tea, which immediately ran across the table and into my lap. Fortunately, it wasn’t McDonald’s hot, and I was simply left with an embarrassing stain across the front of my pants.
The ferry inched toward my destination with each revolution of the propellers. I could only hope that the ship would hold together until we arrived. This ferry was built 10 years before I was sunk during World War II in a hurricane in the South Pacific. I don’t have any desire to sink in 45-degree water.
The ferry ride is fun for me because I usually sit back in a corner and watch the passing parade of an interesting variety of people. There are always the health-addict walkers who stride purposely around on the outside upper deck. They are blown along by the high wind as they head from the bow to the stern and then have to lean steeply into the wind when heading forward on the other side of the 300-foot-long ferry.
On this particular trip, there was a quartet of housewives who had gone to Seattle for a three-day divorce celebration. Apparently, one of them had divorced an abusive husband who had run off in the family pickup truck with a female carpenter from his construction crew. These women had obviously done plenty of celebrating prior to boarding the ferry. Fortunately, they had a designated driver, otherwise they never would have located the ferry ramp with the car.
Over in another corner, a group of bearded men were griping about how the new Orcas Island Skateboard Park was going to cut down on the available recruits for their Little League teams. They kept talking about how dangerous skateboarding was and that it was going to attract a whole bunch of body-pierced, Rastafarian, tattooed, hippie, drug addicts to their island.
That was one conversation I couldn’t help but eavesdrop on since I was involved with the skateboard park and am a big proponent. In defense of the skateboard park, the opposite of their fears has already happened. The 22,000-square-foot park is already rated as one of the three best in the world. Best of all, the skateboard park has enabled the Seattle YMCA, which owns Camp Orkila, to offer a new kind of camping experience this summer.
Some kids go to camp and learn how to make a leather wallet, belt, or lanyard. Kids who attend the Orkila YMCA Freedom Camp can spend a week or more improving their skills skateboarding, riding mountain or BMX bikes, sailing Hobie-cats, and playing ultimate Frisbee. During the first week of July, Greg LeMond, three-time winner of the Tour de France, will be a guest coach. In addition, world champion skateboarders and sailors will also be coaching.
Kids can board the Anacortes ferry and enter a whole new world on the other end. When they finally head back to reality on the return ferryboat ride a week later, they will never be the same because they will have found the real meaning of freedom. Let’s just hope they’ve fixed those propellers on the ferry by then.