I slept well again. Rod and Dale's home reminds me of Alan and Jeremy's home in Liverpool, Woodlea. It is a haven of calm and rest. I felt warm and comforted there in a way that I hadn't at Chris's.
Not that Chris is unhospitable or unfriendly. It is simply that his living quarters are very functional. Chris sleeps there and works there. If he wants to entertain or eat, he goes out. So there are very few (what I would call) creature comforts there. Consequently, I think that I have been doing a lot of running in this first half of the holiday. From here on in, I want to kick back a little more.
That said, I'm writing this in a sea plane. Yup. I'm on my way to Victoria on Vancouver Island to see my cousin, Trevor. It worked out that the boat took just too long and was at inconvenient times, so I'm going by direct by sea plane. We've just done quick hop from a lake near Rod and Dale's to downtown - great view of a rainy Seattle as we came in to land in the middle of it on Lake Union.
I guess that this is what flying is really about. None of the sanitisation of the major airlines. It's noisy, the plane leaps about in the air turbulence, you feel frail and alone up there.
We've just taken off again and I'm feeling that I must be mad subjecting myself to this and paying a lot of money for the privilege. Exhilarating is the term used in the brochure in front of me. Controlled panic feels more appropriate.
When I was 8 or 9, I pealed off from a family group to take a flight round Blackpool Tower in a small plane. I can't believe how fearless I used to be. But then I guess I had been brought up in an atmosphere of relative safety so I didn't really understand about fear.
We're flying just under the cloud level now so there's good view of Puget Sound all round us but it's quite choppy up here.
And then suddenly there's break in the clouds and we soar. There's a stiff breeze down there whipping across the top of the water. And then we jump about a lot making me glad that I'm strapped in. We're about halfway there and I haven't had a panic attack yet.
And we're way out over the Straight of Juan de Fuca with Victoria gradually coming into sight. Somewhere up ahead and to the right would be Vancouver but it's far too cloudy to see. Over to the left are the Olympic mountains, snow and cloud capped.
Not long now. I've just found out from the leaflet that I'm in a single engine de Havilland Turbine Otter carrying ten passengers - well 7 on this occasion.
Here's Victoria. The flight has only taken 40 minutes. I remember the waterfront from the day I spent with Trevor and Florie whale watching. And then we are smoothly down. It's less of a jolt than with a plane landing on tarmac. We're docking just over from where the Victoria Clipper ties up - that's the ferry service I used last time.
Trevor was slightly late arriving and that seems to have been the pattern for this half of the holiday - I arrive somewhere new by plane some 10/15 minutes early and the person meeting me is delayed. It was good to see him again. We didn't have much time so we spent it in catch up. I told him of my last three years as detailed in the intervening 289 entries in this Journal. He told me of his life. He's going through big changes too. They've started more recently than mine so, as Trevor said, there was something given about me being there at that time - I simply had to be there to touch base with him.
We ate out splendidly a couple of times - I was royally treated to the extent that I did not have to put my hand in my pocket once whilst I was there and so to the sorrow of the Canadian economy I neither exchanged nor spent any dosh whilst I was there.
I collapsed into bed at gone the witching hour.