We have no plan of what to do once we're on Bainbridge Island. As they say though, the best laid plans of Mice and Men go awry. Or something. I often only remember the first part of historical phrases and trail off after using the first part of them, or discover after searching the internet what they actually mean. For instance, the other day I said, "if wishes were horses" and then trailed off, and the person to whom I was saying it, said, "What?" Which was a perfectly reasonable response because I wasn't sure what it would mean for us if wishes were horses either.
There were bikes for rent, but we hadn't planned on biking, and so we followed the crush of people moving off the ferry in the vague direction of downtown. At the street corner we made wry observations about a sign, making an older couple out for a quiet day laugh. How sweet that we improved their day just a bit as opposed to making it worse. On our left was a swath of green plants labeled as native habitat. "This is precisely the sort of trail that I'd walk on if S was here" I told my friends as we walked down the Main Street.
Bainbridge Island has some good offerings for wine, boutique stores for pets and jewelry, stationery and books. After we walk the length of the main drag someone says they need to go to the bathroom. Bainbridge looks upscale in almost every way, so naturally we wind up wandering into a Mexican restaurant with Regan era red carpet and a few lazy overhead fans swatting at flies. The bar has two older gentleman at it who look like they drink as a past time and one other table is populated by men with long beards and wind burned faces. Someone buys a round of shots, and we drink.
I wander into the dingy bathroom but can't find the light, so I start peeing in the dark. I'm doing just fine, but the lack of light leads another bar patron to think the bathroom is unlocked, and he wanders in. "The light is here," he says, flipping it on, so we can pee more companionably. He asks where we're from, and I tell him we're just visiting for a day, taking in the sights. He's one of the guys who looks 100 percent like he works on a boat. We talk for a bit as we're both peeing, which is a natural break from male tendencies, but I figure it's okay since it's clearly his island. He recommends a certain restaurant down the way if we're just stopping in. He asks if I want directions, and I say yes, and he gives me some vague collection of stops and turns that is characteristic of a person who never has to accurately give directions and would probably have made a fine navigator searching for the Orient. "You'll reach Harpo's first," he says. "Keep going. You don't want that one."
As we turn and face each other I notice that his right eye is split open, and a large black bulbous circle rises out of his cheekbone, dark as a storm cloud. He has a big beard too, but I realize in looking at his deep set blue eyes that he's younger than I thought, probably in his mid-twenties, though he gives off the feeling of being someone for whom age and time are kind of unimportant factors. As we're finishing our drinks I here him telling the lone waitress that he'd been punched the night before. The last time I was punched was in the third grade.
When we leave, I suggest that we head to the restaurant that the local recommended. Even if he did love fist fights. I trusted his judgment on where to get a good meal and nice ambiance. At the bottom of the road is Harpo's. Inside, a lonely person drinks in a large empty room. The waitress and bar tender are talking to pass the time. I want to take this opportunity to point out to my friends how unerringly right the local was, and how smart I was for trusting him. I always enjoy reminding people when I'm right about something and deserve credit. And I also enjoy reminding people when they are wrong about something and especially when they are wrong about something that I am right about. What I have never enjoyed is admitting when I am wrong. When I am wrong I will say something like, "Well, it could be worse." Or, "At least we didn't die from toxic oysters." What I will not say, sometimes for hours or even days is, "I effed up. I was wrong." As if a large part of my soul was wrapped up in being right about which restaurant we should go too, or whether a trail or cereal that I've chosen is good or not.
We take a short trek along their shore path, winding across a newly built deck that winds across the bay like a hose uncoiled across a vast stretch of green lawn. We pass a sign that warns people against eating the oysters taken from the harbor, apparently they're toxic. The scent of the water is fetid, but the harbor is full of small docks and a countless number of sailboats, white sails catching the light on a bit of water, catching that same light, and refracting bits of it back like an endless piece of glass. We pass small rock sculptures of men pulling chains, of airplanes, and of dinosaurs looking pleasantly up at us like cows.
Eventually we wind up wandering over to the Harbour Public House, which is a part of the trail that we're on. On the walk up we pass fresh blackberries growing wild, and I reach up to squeeze one between my fingers gently before eating it. The taste is muted, not the explosion that I remember from my youth, when we'd gather blackberries from our neighbors vine, which grew over the fence in late summer. Everything in childhood is sweeter though, or perhaps just memory. Those particular blackberries are irretrievable.
I'd recommend the Harbour Public House the next time you head over to Bainbridge Island, which will probably be never. We stood at the bar and grabbed a round of drinks before being seated. I got a blackberry based drink that the waitress smiled at me when I ordered. I looked around and saw the drink advertised on the chalkboard next to a stick figure drawing of a mother dropping her kids off at school in a van. It was sweet and powerfully alcoholic. I'd make a good soccer mom. Everyone's food in the place looks fantastic, giant portions of meat and potatoes would have left me mouth watering if not for the fact that we'd just eaten.
We sat outside, where certain of the wooden tables have had their middle hollowed out to make room for a small fireplace that burns during the meal. It is a seductively charming place. In the distance is the harbor and the boats, but we're removed a bit from the smell, and to our right the trail continues on, an avenue of trees that lead down to the water. While we wait for our appetizers and drinks I step outside and walk back down to the blackberry bush while I call S. The sun is unattenuated and brilliant. I look up in the window of the restaurant at a couple, who, finishing their drinks, are looking down at me plucking blackberries from someone's yard. The husband makes eye contact with me and gives me the thumbs up. The two of them look at each other and laugh. Oh, to bring pleasure to others.
By the time I get back most of the Poutine has been eaten, which makes me sad because it is french fries, gravy, cheese and bacon, all parts of the healthy plate initiative. And if it's one thing I always worry about on trips, it's what I'm eating and how I'll look when I get back. Or I don't worry about that at all and only regret things after they've happened.
In the distance, we hear the tolling of the ferry calling everyone to board soon. It's too far to go back, so we decide to do a wine tasting instead. We throw ourselves back through the same streets though they are familiar now, and by their familiarity removed a bit of their charm. Rather, the charm or pleasure now is the feeling of being together that is growing up between the four of us. Of being the four people who went on this guy's trip that so many other people bailed out on for one reason or another. And sitting outside while enjoying a good drink, and unhealthy food, while the sun washes the boats and the harbor clean in the distance, it is not easy to imagine not wanting to be exactly where we are. Soon we'll be back into our lives, back into our phones, on a schedule to get summer or meet with someone, but for a moment, or an hour or two, I loved being on an island.
The winery was full, and the large, curly-haired, middle-aged waitress, who reminded me of an old teacher, was loudly telling everyone in the place that it'd be a while before she got to a tasting. We sat at a table, four bar stools pushed together around a cork barrel. A waiter, or the owner shows up and talks us out of the tasting. We get three caraffes of wine instead, briefly debating the finer points of Tempranillo, Syrah, Pinot Grigio, and Merlot before making our choice. It is at moments like this that I know that my friends must live extravagant lines on the other 362 days of the year that I don't see them. Days in which they learn to discuss the finer points of a Tempranillo or the low profile goodness of a Pinot Noir. Who the hell are these people? I'm possibly also wondering that and feeling good-natured because I washed the afternoon down with three glasses of wine.
In this pleasant state we ambled back down towards the ferry. Not quite walking in a perfectly straight line, but not stumbling either. Just in a pleasant enough mood to stop for a moment by the heritage trail and look at the flowers, or to take a picture of the sign that we saw when we first arrived. Ah, for the pleasure of such afternoons. The bees, if you looked closely enough at them as they swung between the stamen and pistils of flowers, the bees were drunk too.
There were bikes for rent, but we hadn't planned on biking, and so we followed the crush of people moving off the ferry in the vague direction of downtown. At the street corner we made wry observations about a sign, making an older couple out for a quiet day laugh. How sweet that we improved their day just a bit as opposed to making it worse. On our left was a swath of green plants labeled as native habitat. "This is precisely the sort of trail that I'd walk on if S was here" I told my friends as we walked down the Main Street.
Bainbridge Island has some good offerings for wine, boutique stores for pets and jewelry, stationery and books. After we walk the length of the main drag someone says they need to go to the bathroom. Bainbridge looks upscale in almost every way, so naturally we wind up wandering into a Mexican restaurant with Regan era red carpet and a few lazy overhead fans swatting at flies. The bar has two older gentleman at it who look like they drink as a past time and one other table is populated by men with long beards and wind burned faces. Someone buys a round of shots, and we drink.
I wander into the dingy bathroom but can't find the light, so I start peeing in the dark. I'm doing just fine, but the lack of light leads another bar patron to think the bathroom is unlocked, and he wanders in. "The light is here," he says, flipping it on, so we can pee more companionably. He asks where we're from, and I tell him we're just visiting for a day, taking in the sights. He's one of the guys who looks 100 percent like he works on a boat. We talk for a bit as we're both peeing, which is a natural break from male tendencies, but I figure it's okay since it's clearly his island. He recommends a certain restaurant down the way if we're just stopping in. He asks if I want directions, and I say yes, and he gives me some vague collection of stops and turns that is characteristic of a person who never has to accurately give directions and would probably have made a fine navigator searching for the Orient. "You'll reach Harpo's first," he says. "Keep going. You don't want that one."
As we turn and face each other I notice that his right eye is split open, and a large black bulbous circle rises out of his cheekbone, dark as a storm cloud. He has a big beard too, but I realize in looking at his deep set blue eyes that he's younger than I thought, probably in his mid-twenties, though he gives off the feeling of being someone for whom age and time are kind of unimportant factors. As we're finishing our drinks I here him telling the lone waitress that he'd been punched the night before. The last time I was punched was in the third grade.
When we leave, I suggest that we head to the restaurant that the local recommended. Even if he did love fist fights. I trusted his judgment on where to get a good meal and nice ambiance. At the bottom of the road is Harpo's. Inside, a lonely person drinks in a large empty room. The waitress and bar tender are talking to pass the time. I want to take this opportunity to point out to my friends how unerringly right the local was, and how smart I was for trusting him. I always enjoy reminding people when I'm right about something and deserve credit. And I also enjoy reminding people when they are wrong about something and especially when they are wrong about something that I am right about. What I have never enjoyed is admitting when I am wrong. When I am wrong I will say something like, "Well, it could be worse." Or, "At least we didn't die from toxic oysters." What I will not say, sometimes for hours or even days is, "I effed up. I was wrong." As if a large part of my soul was wrapped up in being right about which restaurant we should go too, or whether a trail or cereal that I've chosen is good or not.
We take a short trek along their shore path, winding across a newly built deck that winds across the bay like a hose uncoiled across a vast stretch of green lawn. We pass a sign that warns people against eating the oysters taken from the harbor, apparently they're toxic. The scent of the water is fetid, but the harbor is full of small docks and a countless number of sailboats, white sails catching the light on a bit of water, catching that same light, and refracting bits of it back like an endless piece of glass. We pass small rock sculptures of men pulling chains, of airplanes, and of dinosaurs looking pleasantly up at us like cows.
Eventually we wind up wandering over to the Harbour Public House, which is a part of the trail that we're on. On the walk up we pass fresh blackberries growing wild, and I reach up to squeeze one between my fingers gently before eating it. The taste is muted, not the explosion that I remember from my youth, when we'd gather blackberries from our neighbors vine, which grew over the fence in late summer. Everything in childhood is sweeter though, or perhaps just memory. Those particular blackberries are irretrievable.
I'd recommend the Harbour Public House the next time you head over to Bainbridge Island, which will probably be never. We stood at the bar and grabbed a round of drinks before being seated. I got a blackberry based drink that the waitress smiled at me when I ordered. I looked around and saw the drink advertised on the chalkboard next to a stick figure drawing of a mother dropping her kids off at school in a van. It was sweet and powerfully alcoholic. I'd make a good soccer mom. Everyone's food in the place looks fantastic, giant portions of meat and potatoes would have left me mouth watering if not for the fact that we'd just eaten.
We sat outside, where certain of the wooden tables have had their middle hollowed out to make room for a small fireplace that burns during the meal. It is a seductively charming place. In the distance is the harbor and the boats, but we're removed a bit from the smell, and to our right the trail continues on, an avenue of trees that lead down to the water. While we wait for our appetizers and drinks I step outside and walk back down to the blackberry bush while I call S. The sun is unattenuated and brilliant. I look up in the window of the restaurant at a couple, who, finishing their drinks, are looking down at me plucking blackberries from someone's yard. The husband makes eye contact with me and gives me the thumbs up. The two of them look at each other and laugh. Oh, to bring pleasure to others.
By the time I get back most of the Poutine has been eaten, which makes me sad because it is french fries, gravy, cheese and bacon, all parts of the healthy plate initiative. And if it's one thing I always worry about on trips, it's what I'm eating and how I'll look when I get back. Or I don't worry about that at all and only regret things after they've happened.
In the distance, we hear the tolling of the ferry calling everyone to board soon. It's too far to go back, so we decide to do a wine tasting instead. We throw ourselves back through the same streets though they are familiar now, and by their familiarity removed a bit of their charm. Rather, the charm or pleasure now is the feeling of being together that is growing up between the four of us. Of being the four people who went on this guy's trip that so many other people bailed out on for one reason or another. And sitting outside while enjoying a good drink, and unhealthy food, while the sun washes the boats and the harbor clean in the distance, it is not easy to imagine not wanting to be exactly where we are. Soon we'll be back into our lives, back into our phones, on a schedule to get summer or meet with someone, but for a moment, or an hour or two, I loved being on an island.
The winery was full, and the large, curly-haired, middle-aged waitress, who reminded me of an old teacher, was loudly telling everyone in the place that it'd be a while before she got to a tasting. We sat at a table, four bar stools pushed together around a cork barrel. A waiter, or the owner shows up and talks us out of the tasting. We get three caraffes of wine instead, briefly debating the finer points of Tempranillo, Syrah, Pinot Grigio, and Merlot before making our choice. It is at moments like this that I know that my friends must live extravagant lines on the other 362 days of the year that I don't see them. Days in which they learn to discuss the finer points of a Tempranillo or the low profile goodness of a Pinot Noir. Who the hell are these people? I'm possibly also wondering that and feeling good-natured because I washed the afternoon down with three glasses of wine.
In this pleasant state we ambled back down towards the ferry. Not quite walking in a perfectly straight line, but not stumbling either. Just in a pleasant enough mood to stop for a moment by the heritage trail and look at the flowers, or to take a picture of the sign that we saw when we first arrived. Ah, for the pleasure of such afternoons. The bees, if you looked closely enough at them as they swung between the stamen and pistils of flowers, the bees were drunk too.
the sea can make young men old..
ReplyDeletelove means never having to say you were sorry
or wrong for that matter
thst looks like Canadian poutine..grease on fries!