Journey part 6: Seattle!

Originally, our plan was to drive all the way into Alaska, up the Alcan (Alaska-Canada) Highway. We were going to talk to people along the way, find our way to some fishing town and get jobs on either a fishing boat or in a cannery. Sharon’s plan was to set up house for us, get a job as a topless dancer and basically be Mom. Her favorite cousin (her mom’s bad girl younger sister, the black sheep) had worked as a topless dancer in the 70’s and Sharon had romanticized the idea, picturing herself making tons of money off boobie-starved fishermen in some nice, clean bar in a fishing town. Sharon had the boobies to do it too. She had visions of making dinner for us all, having it ready on the table when we came home at the end of a hard day in the factory, all slimy and fishy.

We met up with some guys in Montana, outside of Yellowstone who had actually worked in Alaska. They told us driving up into Alaska was a big waste of time – what we needed to do was find our jobs in Seattle and the fishery would get us to where the work was. Plan thus revised, we drove on, by now so road-weary and zoned that a reduction in the amount of time we all had to spend living out of my car was quite welcome.

We got into Oregon and drove to Eugene, where Amanda was from. We spent a day there, which is hazy in my recollection (I’ll leave you to figure out why) and spent the night at Amanda’s house. Eugene’s snapshot is a comfortable, unpretentious, land of VW bugs (the old ones), patchouli and friendly people. Not any place I could live (I’m far too jaded and unfriendly for that) but a nice place to visit.

We spent the night with Amanda and her mom, said our goodbyes and headed North again, towards Seattle. On arrival in Seattle, we immediately found a place to set up camp and began scouring telephone books for information on fisheries. We quickly located the section of town where most of the fisheries had their offices and planned to begin making application the next day.

Back at the campsite we set about making sandwiches and s’mores. A few campsites up from us there were a couple of German guys who had written on the back of their car “HONK WHEN YOUR HORNY” so of course we made quite a show of honking our horn every time they passed by. We found a few boys to party with, who were preparing to leave for their fishery jobs the next day. They spent a few hours with us, filled us in on the job requirements and left us with a massive bottle of Goldenseal. We all took a handful and went to bed.