Blackberries – and Other Important Technology

Seatac Airport – Olympia, Washington

I wouldn’t say that day one was that eventful, really,

The highlight for me was probably the happy realization that Washington is, I think, the biggest apple producing state in the country. But even with that, it’s not like the U.P. or anything. The U.P. is really the perfect place for enjoying apples while bike touring. Because apparently there was a time when more people lived there. I think people deluded themselves into thinking that the farming was going to be good. Must have been Norwegians or Swedes – who figured that anything would be better than it was back in the old country. They’d build a little log cabin, clear the forest (no easy task), and then start planting stuff – like apple trees. They’d send back home for a bride. And then poor little Helga or Ilsa would arrive to find 25’ snowdrifts and a three week summer – complete with hordes of mosquitoes. The important part for our story? What came next. Abandonment. Presumably Helga would be like: “Ole, there’s no way we’re staying here. All you can grow is turnips, there isn’t a single mall up here, we’re not in Prime delivery area, and the Internet is terrible!” A hundred years later we’re reaping the benefits of all this – apple trees, seemingly growing wild all over the place. A forager’s dream. 

Things are different here in Washington. Yeah, there are some apple trees around for sure. But people live here. You can’t just go pick apples randomly. That’s someone’s yard you’re picking from. 

Still, we did manage to find a few trees that we – or, rather, I – am comfortable picking from. Truth is Diana’s not that interested. If she was, she wouldn’t really care whose land it was – if she wanted the fruit, she’d just pick it . . .

But it wasn’t just apples. The blackberries here are amazing. They seem to grow like weeds. Fields and fields of them. It’s like the “mora” in Chile. So good. No day can really be bad when you have this many blackberries everywhere. Even if, say, you had to bike in the rain for three-plus hours. And it was cold. And miserable. I mean, at least you could stop and pick blackberries. Hypothetically, speaking, of course. 

I have to take a moment on blackberries. Because there are many people – who will remain nameless in order to protect the innocent – who basically call all dark-ish small fruit blackberries. I mean, come on. Those black caps, or black raspberries, as they’re sometimes called, are terrible. They give all berries a bad name. Sour. Terrible ratio of fruit to juice. And, worse, seed-flled. 

They are absolutely not the same thing as blackberries. Big. Juicy. Sweet. Easy to pick. Plentiful. 

Washington has that going for it!

Blackberries bring me to my next topic, as well. Or, at least it’s a good segue if you’re a certain age – like, at least 50 or so – old enough to know that a Blackberry was the first real breakthrough in smart phones. 

Well, today was the inaugural ride for the Blackberry of the twenties. Really, maybe the biggest thing in modern technology. You probably guessed by now, but I’ll tell you anyway: the Google Fold. 

A new acquisition for me. After surviving five or six years, and our entire trip last year – through some 43 countries – my old IPhone finally bit the dust when I dropped it one final time while doing some construction project this summer. Kind of a mercy killing really. The screen was already so shattered that I couldn’t read half of it, the facial recognition had stopped working because the camera was no good (and maybe because I’ve gotten so much older since I set it up . . .), most of the touchscreen was no longer touchable, and the battery only lasted a few hours . . .

The good news was that with my old-man eyes I needed a bigger screen anyway. And with this trip coming up I figured it was my opportunity to ditch the old IPad in favor of just one, more flexible, super-device. Together with my new foldable keyboard I’m totally in business. Seriously, it is pretty nice to have a bigger screen available for looking at maps – so you can get a little perspective. I mean, now that there are basically no paper maps left in the world, it’s time to face the reality and make the best of it . . . 

And my kids tell me that the Google Fold was featured in Spiderman. Which, I think, means that the Fold, and those who own a Fold, are pretty much on the cutting edge of coolness in the world. I know that’s what my kids think, too. 🙂 

Just don’t tell Diana. She’s already irritated that I don’t get the blue i-messages and she can’t do AirDrop and all those other annoying proprietary Apple things. 

Okay, a little about the journey thus far. 

Airport. Very little drama, except that, dismayingly, our bike boxes weighed in at 50 and 53 pounds, respectively. And that was without our four big rear panniers – which we checked separately. Upshot is that our bikes probably weigh something like 65-75 pounds when they’re fully loaded. Ouch. 

Now, you might be wondering about the 53 pound box. As you might know, officially there is a 50 pound weight limit on bike boxes. There was a brief moment last night when we thought we might have to open the box and start taking stuff out. Fortunately, somehow Diana is like a Delta superhero or something – and Delta Superheroes can have up to a 70 pound box. So, no problem. In fact, we could have piled more stuff in there . . .

(All this makes me a little nervous for our next trip. Diana’s general rule of thumb is to push all limits to the very limits. Now that she knows about the new limit, she’s likely to consider it a failure to not fill the boxes up as much as possible. I’m going to have to work on getting her Delta Superhero status revoked. Maybe I’ll turn her in for not fastening her seatbelt or not putting her phone in airplane mode . . . She is kind of a rule breaker, you know . . .)

Arrival. It might have been after midnight Minneapolis time when we collected the boxes – but we still managed to put the bikes together before riding straight from the airport over to the Red Roof Inn. 

Washington. Small sample size, but, big surprise, it’s kind of cloudy and rainy around here. It also seems like the Seattle metropolitan area is HUGE. Not sure how they count it, but it basically feels like we’ve been going through non-stop suburbs ever since we left the airport this morning. Thinking that will change tomorrow – but can’t say we were really expecting that. 

It’s also a lot like the South Bay area in California. Same vegetation. Hilly. Same vintage houses. Feels like Washington and Silicon Valley must have come of age at basically the same time, but Silicon Valley somehow managed to score the bigger allotment of sunshine – like all of it . . . 

So that’s it. On toward Astoria, Oregon tomorrow. Hopefully it’ll be dry enough that we can camp tomorrow night. We’ll see . . .