Marshawn Never Flynches

There is a palpable excited tension everywhere I go the last couple days. It’s like the entire Northwest decided they can be the best of friends for a little while. (Having one team to share across many miles does help.)

But man – I am genuinely excited for this Super Bowl. I’m kind of regretting not making a blue & green paper chain countdown.

This picture was taken at a 2011 Monday Night Football game where the Seahawks beat the Rams. It was the week after the Eagles game where Marshawn Lynch was shown eating Skittles on the sidelines, and the world found out his mom had been giving him these incentive candy “power pellets” since he was a kid. So at this Rams game in the fourth quarter, Lynch made a touchdown then shot the ball through the uprights like a basketball as Skittles rained down on him from the stands. Something about this powerful mega-athlete being showered in teeny rainbow candies made me extra happy.

He doesn’t have Wilson’s charm or Sherman’s flashiness, but he’s my favorite. He’s not good with the cameras, and I kind of cringe to think what his Skittles promo stuff will look like if they try to make him act.

But he IS a fantastic football player, and it’s incredible to watch him play every week. I can not wait to see him in Beast Mode this Sunday.

In conclusion, I believe it goes without saying at this point, but GO SEAHAWKS!! 💙💚

 

I Love Passport

I Like Big Boats.

Oh hello. You’ve caught me here exploring this Seattle wharf on a fish shipping adventure.

Ain’t she a beaut?

Starving. Hysterical. Naked.

Today I knew I had to write.
I tried my new method of choosing  a picture at random from my travels
and writing that story in a couple hundred words, but I realized I had
forgotten how to even start. My heart broke a little and two snotty
little tears fell out. I had so neglected my craft that I didn’t know
how to approach it anymore.
So I turned to the Internet. I searched around on some award-winning
travel writing sites. I read nothing that inspired me.
I decided, if nothing else, I had my shitty journal writing scraps of
observations and emotions usually written on a two-beer-empty-stomach
burst of sentimentality while traveling. I checked for it in two bookcases with
no luck. Finally I found my the notebook in a piled-up box in my closet,
tucked in next to a sweet little mirror bordered in Guatemalan
embroidery – a gift from a good friend who spent Peace Corp time
there.
I felt something twinge. Some rusty, neglected cog in a creative motor
that seizes up during the long right-brained season of fisheries.
But I saw that journal with its silver letters embossed on the black
cover.

Mainard said she bought it for me for two reasons:
1. I’m a writer, and writers need something to write in.
2. Something about the Ginsberg quote on the front caught her eye and
reminded her of me.

“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness.
Starving. Hysterical. Naked.”
She wrote an explanation in the front cover – “…maybe because you
like to live your life with passion and intensity…”
And more movement from that rust-seized cog of creativity.
A feeling of relief in my chest.
A sense of return to self and skill and left brain.
I flipped to pages with scribbles from the same trip as the picture I
wanted to write about originally. I read my words in the pages, and I
liked them. I felt inspired.

{And hey – thanks again to Maire for the word holder and to T-Pain Handsome for encouraging me to write something…}

Fish in a box, fish in a van

Greetings from a semi-sunny loading dock in Salinas, California.

San Francisco Dock Walk

Wood dock, sunshine, fishing boats, diesel, secondhand smoke, fishy salty air, xtra tufs, cute fisher boys. I’ve never seen this side of you, San Francy, but it makes me love you even more.

Merry Christmas from Idaho

There really is nothing like waking up to a thick blanket of snow on Christmas morning to instantly turn you into a giddy kid.

I Totally Have a Boner for the Washington Monument!

I won’t tell you how I feel about the Capitol Building.

And greetings from Washington D.C. (in real time for once)!

Greetings From: A Shipyard in Belfast, Ireland

We took a really good guided tour of Belfast city on a double-decker bus starting downtown. We first stopped by the Titanic Quarter which, at that time, they were still developing with plans to capitalize on Belfast port being the building site of the doomed behemoth. A couple of rusty cranes used in Titanic creation still stand. As our very charming Irish tour guide explained to us (in his seeexxxxyyy accent) – the Irish may have built it, but there was an Englishman driving. Heh.

Originally written about here (before the days of Instagram):

Of ancient pubs and hooligans…

Greetings From: Tombstone, Arizona

Home of cowboy actors and Birdman Patches. The American Southwest is a bizarre and beautiful place.