Yesterday, I went to visit Claire Adele at Camp Orkila on Orcas Island. I started out the day in a bad mood, mostly because of myself. The night before I left, I checked Google Maps to see how long it would take me to get there. I've been there before multiple times and I know how to get there, but I wanted to double check. I saw that it was eighty miles to the ferry from my house, so I figured it would me about an hour and twenty minutes to get there since it is mostly highway.
Question #1: How fast (average speed) would Lauren have drive to get to the Anacortes Ferry in 80 minutes?
Answer #1: 60 miles an hour.
Question #2: The ferry leaves Anacortes at 10:20 a.m.. If Lauren leaves at 8:00 a.m., what time would she arrive in Anacortes?
Answer #2: 9:20 a.m.
Question #3: Lauren is going to walk on the ferry. She has to park, pay for parking and walk to the ferry terminal. She might also have to buy her ticket, since when she asked Jack if she should purchase her ticket ahead of time online, he said, "You can get a ticket at the terminal." Also, it will be Sunday morning so she imagines most of the weekend parking spots will be gone. Plus, she hurt her back, her knee is acting up and she still can't run/jog. How much buffer time would Lauren have between arriving in Anacortes to when the ferry leaves?
Question #3: One hour. This should be enough even if everything goes completely wrong.
Question #4: While Lauren is reasonably organized, she likes to have a "target leave time" and a "must leave now leave time." What is latest Lauren should leave for her must leave now time given her unreliable mobility?
Question #4: 8:20, to be safe.
I get up, get dressed, finish slicing the brownies I baked Saturday for Claire Adele and pack them into a box. I packed the rest of her goodie bag the night before. At 8:06, I still have time. I ask Jack to get me a ferry ticket.
"It says you should be at the ferry terminal twenty minutes before the boat leaves," Jack says.
"Okay," I say. I knew I had to be there early, but I didn't know they had a recommended time for walk on passengers.
"It says it may take an hour to process the payment for the ticket," Jack said.
"What?" This is the internet. It is supposed to be faster than anything else. That is why it exists.
I finish getting ready, but I stall as I wait for the ticket. I am now approaching my "must leave now time." I'll have to decide if I am going to leave before my $13.95 ticket prints.
"It is printing," Jack says. I grab it and walk down the twenty three steps to my car. When I get there, I realize I've forgotten my phone. My car has a GPS, and I think about going without my phone. My motherhood brain kicks in and says "Bring in just in case." Motherhood brains are very good at looking at all possible disaster scenarios. I go up the stairs, get my phone, and then back down. If I had forgotten anything else, I would called Jack or the Boy and asked them to bring it to me. Since it was my phone, I couldn't do it.
At 8:22 a.m., I get in the car and program my GPS to the ferry terminal.
"You will arrive in one hour, thirty six minutes," my GPS tells me.
"What!?!" I scream at my GPS. I panic. I wish I could rewind time back to 7:50 a.m. to tell myself to leave at 8:00 a.m. exactly.
Question #5: If Lauren has to be at the ferry terminal twenty minutes before the boat leaves and her GPS is correct, how much buffer time does Lauren have between arriving in Anacortes and having her butt in the boat line?
Answer #5: I am too freaked out to figure this out. I figure I have about twelve minutes of buffer time and I'll get there at 9:48. I'll have to drive fast.
When I calculate this for my blog, I realize I only had a two minute buffer. What happened in my brain? It lied to me so I wouldn't freak out and sob about missing my daughter. I pull out of my street and get on to leafy Ravenna Blvd. It twists and turns and is a beautiful street. Today, at 8:23 a.m., there is a driving school car in front of me that is going--I swear to god--9 miles an hour. I scream and swear and cry for this kid who is probably fifteen and a half years old to MOVE IT NOW!!!! I would lean on the horn, but it is likely that my daughter goes to school with this new driver. Plus, the car has a sign that reads "Taught by police officers!" Getting a ticket would set me back.
The car goes straight, and I turn left. I need to get away from this car and I find a different way to the highway.
Question #6: How fast does Lauren need to drive to make it to Anacortes in time?
Answer #6: Very fast.
Normally when I drive, I sit in the middle lane and drive the same speed as the car in front of me. This time, I shift to the left lane and try to go about ten to fifteen miles above the speed limit. I don't want to go too fast and get a ticket. Jack said if I got ticket, I could have unzipped the front of my dress and flashed some cleavage to get out of a ticket. I don't think I would have done that. I think I would have burst into tears and cried "I need to catch the ferry so I can see my daughter who I haven't seen in a month!!!" Plus, the cop might have wondered why I was dressed like a ho to visit my daughter at camp.
The faster I drove, the more time I shaved of the total time to get to the ferry. There is one part in Skagit County which has a speed limit of 70 miles per hour, which is bad because my GPS had already calculated this into my travel time. Fuck. I drive a 2004 Lexus 300 ES. (Don't get excited. We bought it used with 45,000 miles on it.) While this is a nice and comfortable car, it is not fast. The New York Times in its car reviews compared it to driving a Buick. Seventy-five was about as fast as I wanted to go for fear of something going wrong with the car.
I made it to the ferry at 9:38 a.m.. It was a miracle. I grabbed the first spot to the park. It was far away, but I had time to walk. I went to pay for parking, and the only way to park was to pay by phone! My motherhood "worst case scenario" brain had earned its keep for today.
I had to cross several lanes of traffic to make it to the ferry waiting room for walk-ons. There was a large fence keeping the pedestrians separate from the traffic, but I could figure out how to get to the other side. The ferry was coming in and cars would need to disembark. When they disembark, it is like rats coming off a sinking ship. There is no slow--just get off and away from this boat as fast as possible. I did not want to be pinned against the wrong side of the fence when the cars were released.
So I ran. Yes, you read that correctly: I ran. I ran about twenty yards to the end of the fence so I could get out of the way of the cars. I didn't fall. I didn't trip. It wasn't a pretty run, nor was it fast, but it was running.
I made it to the ferry on time, but I was a little stressed and feeling mildly melancholy. Jack and the Boy stayed home, which was fine. It was nice to have time to myself on the ferry and in the car. After all of that hassle, I worried that Claire Adele might not want me there. I know I missed her, but would she miss me? The hard part about parenting is that it is often an unrequited love--you love your kids more than they love you, and that is expected to be part of the bargain.
At camp, Claire Adele lives in a little bubble where she (and no one else) had parents or siblings. She loves that bubble, and even though this was "Family and Friends Weekend," she might not have wanted me contaminating her pure environment. But I did. I showed up with a bag of brownies, Goldfish crackers, dried cranberries, and apricots from the Farmers' Market. Claire Adele isn't into hugs, and she kind of winced when she saw me. She didn't know if I was coming or not, but my offering of food softened my arrival. We walked and talked and she told me about camp. I got to see the other Counselors in Training, which was nice. We both teared up during the CIT Family and Friends camp fire circle where the staff and CITs talked about previous weeks.
She asked if could take the later ferry at 8:45 p.m. instead of 5:15 p.m. so we could go out to dinner in town. Part of me knows she was motivated by food, but I wasn't so awful that she'd rather eat camp food instead of being seen with me. She introduced me to her gossip magazine loving friend. They shared reading People and talked about the Karadashians. We got ice cream and I bought her a croissant from a bakery and a sandwich from Island Market, the local grocery store. She told me stories about her campers, whom she loved. All was good, and I got back on the ferry. On the ride back to Anacortes, I got up and wandered around. I went on the upper deck in the sunshine and looked out at the view. One of Claire Adele's jobs at camp was to greet campers at Anacortes, so she had to take the ferry a few times back and forth from Orcas to the mainland.
As I rode home, I thought about the Kurt Vonnegut quote: "I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point 'If this isn't nice, then I don't know what is.'" There are times in life where getting places is a hassle, but rarely has the hassle been so counter to what I experienced when I arrived.
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