Deception Pass

I guess i did have an eventful weekend.
well, my personal weekend.
tuesday i had off and decided to go spend some of it with my sifu, arturo, who had recently moved to Whidbey Island to work as a chef at a place called the Pot Belly Deli.

We met at the local walmart and went down to the nearest beach where we practiced our kung fu.
we had a nice view to practice by and it was good weather.
i hadn't worked with arturo in a while, and i actually picked up a lot this time around.
i was very greatful for coming up. i doubt i'll be able to work with him when he comes down to seattle on sunday. stupid work.

after we finished that, we went and saw his new place.
he rents a room in a house with two other people.
his room was rather large and had its own bathroom.
actually there was a lot of space. his bed was twin sized, and a la-z-boy sat in one corner, with a tv and dresser on the other side of the wall.
we could have almost practiced kung fu in there.
i watched a video he had of my set 'kung gee fook fu kuen'.
the showing of it didn't help, but what did help was the showing of the application of the moves.

so i watched this while arturo showered.
then we went down to the deli where i had a damn tasty philly cheesesteak sandwich.
very good, very large.
arturo had a turkey sandwich that was even larger than my sandwich. when he sent me off, he left me with half. he also left me with some good pork ribs he'd made earlier.

after eating we had an hour or so before he had to work.
arturo had never been south of Oak Harbor, so we decided to check it out.
we made it a bit past coupeville (which was amazingly founded in 1853), which was where we found some navy planes circling a runway.
damn it was loud but exciting to watch.
many passer-byers would stop and wait for the pair of fighters to fly in and out of the field.
i think seeing them sparked something in arturo, who used to be a pilot himself.
he said that he wants to take one of those puddle jumpers out with me where i can take pictures of all the san juans below.
now that would be a cool trip!

after catching a few rounds of the touch and go's, it was time to head back to drop arturo off at work. we hung out for a bit and he got paid to BS for a half hour with me.
only a few hundred more hours and he'd catch up to all the time he's spent talking to me while i was "working".

so at 2:30 i left him and headed back to Deception Pass.
i parked and paid the stupid $5 to not get a ticket and headed off to the bridge.
i took a couple of shots from the bridge like all the other tourists, but then i decided to do my own thing.

on that small island on highway 20 between the two larger islands, Fidalgo (north) and Whidbey (south), i took the stairs down below the bridge, to a path still well worn.
more photos were taken.
then came the tricky part where i hopped down a small cliff and made my way to the water below.

that's where i spent the most time, on the west side of the island.
seaweed, other maritime plant life, and shelled creatures abound.
i was really glad i brought my underwater camera case, so i can take a few shots of what i couldn't really see underwater. all i could do was hold the camera underwater and snap.
a few pictures actually came out well.

heading to the north side of the island i ran into a cliff with no rocks at its base to make my way around.
this is where i found a slope of maybe 25 degrees that i thought i could climb.
for the most part there were enough places to grab to get to the next height.
i have a very basic rule where i need to have at least one good hand and foot hold before i continue upward. i guess this is a good thing, as it keeps me from falling to my death.
it seems like a really simple rule, but sometimes it's hard to comply with.
at the spot in the photos where i found that small cave, the cliff above it kind of sloped back toward me and turned more into a dirt landscape than grippable rocks, which made for an interesting predicament.

while trying to figure out what i was going to do (down might have been an option, but i huge set back and possibly also dangerous) i took some pictures.
after doing this a bee decided to keep me company.
normally bees at a picnic will come around and bother you, but if you have no food it will soon lose interest.
this bee was not like that. maybe this guy had never seen a human before, or maybe my ass was extra-specially attractive due to its sweaty nature, but he would not leave me alone.
and it wasn't really like i had room to move around or swat at him.
so all i could do was cover my ear so he wouldn't have the chance to land in there.
he did land on me a few times, my hand and in my hair.
he wasn't very aggressive, just curious.
he left after what seemed like 10 minutes of me stuck in the same footing.

this is where i had to really put my mind to how i was going to get out of this small platform that barely held my feet.
i tried putting my backpack on my chest, turning backward and backing up the hill.
too scary, couldn't see where i was going.

i tried so many different handholds that were either only of dirt or small plants that wouldn't hold my weight, or rocks that would come off in my hand.
it was so frustrating when you could see the next handhold, but not one to get you to it.
after what seemed like 10 minutes of experimenting with handholds, i finally devised a way of getting out of there.

i had to lay my right leg from foot to toe across the top of the cave entrance to get enough of a boost to reach the next closest handhold.
it kinda defied my hand and foot rule, cuz i really didn't have a handhold, i was just hugging the wall, and my whole lower leg was the support rather than my foot, but with a bit of effort i made it out of there.
from there on it wasn't too bad. i think i got held up once more, but only shortly.
i climbed to the top and took photos of the cliff that i conquered.
for some reason through the lens, the drop doesn't look as harrowing.
maybe it was because it couldn't get the full length of the wall, as it curved back underneath me at some points.

so from there i made my way toward the north bridge which proved to be more forested and full of brush about my height.
in this brush were a bunch of spider webs that were more like clumps than a web.
it was just like balls of cotton that had gotten caught up in the trees.
after the first few totally freaking out, i kinda got used to them.
however, when i did see some in my path, i would try to destroy them by breaking off a nearby stick and waving it around to clear the path.
just underneath the north bridge i pass through a spider web ridden area.
i came out into a clearing and started to wipe myself clean.
i started with the chest, but i then realized that i should have started with the hand.
when wiping my hands on my chest, the force pushed my fingers together, which must have had a spider between them because i felt a sharp pain.
it actually felt more like a wasp's sting than a spider bite, but i couldn't confirm the culprit, it fell or flew away before i could find it.
it's been a full day now and it's still bugging me. it itches/hurts depending on how much i mess with it. i still can't find the exact location of the bite, but there's no local swelling, so i'm assuming i just have to put up with a little discomfort and don't really have to worry about anything else going wrong.

so at this point i kinda wanted to just get back to my car, but i had another cliff facing me just to get up to the bridge alongside the supports.
this time there were no rocks.
the only thing i could use to elevate myself were the bushes themselves.
i'd pull myself up to them with my hands, then force my feet onto the same branches and repeat the process.
this had a lot more spider webs that i couldn't really fend off since i had no free hands.
more fun. yay.

but i made it through and took some pictures of the underside of the north bridge.
by this time it was easy sailing to the bridge, but i realized that i ended up on the wrong side of a chain-linked fence.
so instead of being spotted, i went deeper into the island, again along the shoreline.
this area was more well worn and actual paths were somewhat used.
there were still some spider webs around to show that the paths hadn't been used in a while, but i still made my way around. this is where i decided to circumnavigate the island.
screw the small spider bite.
if i let my hand hang idly, i could feel my finger throb, but otherwise, i was good.
so i continued forth.
after a few sparse trees, the east side of the island was fairly bare. it was more grass and small shrubs than tall trees.
so it was easy to follow the shoreline, which was also a lot smaller drop to the water than the other side of the island.

by the time i got around to the south side of the island, i could reach out and touch the water.
actually, when i got to the south side, i saw a huge swarm of small fish that i took photos of by sticking my underwater case and camera in the water without a problem.

i didn't realize how far the east side of the island jutted out until i tried to make my way back from the south side. it took a lot of walking.
by this time i was ready to be done, but all i could do was continue on.
i eventually made it and took a picture that showed the entirety of the circumnavigation.
i made my way back up the steps and to the car with only a few people staring at the dirt that happened to get on my shirt and shorts when hugging the walls and running through spider-webbed brush.

i ate arturo's half a sandwich, drank a bunch of water and headed home.
i was tired throughout the ride, but made it home safely.

i don't know why, but there's something about nearly killing myself that makes a real adventure for me.
i truely feel that i know that little-ass island more intimately than anybody who's visited it in a long while. maybe even since those bridges were built.

man, i love getting out and getting dirty for the purpose of a bit of excitement.
i think amidy was right. alaska did change me.
but not in the way she had suspected.
i've come to realize that bushwhacking is incredibly fun, and climbing even the slightest bit of slope can be very dangerous, but very satisfying if conquered.
my limbs may have been shaking when i got done with the climb, but i owned its ass.

i think the next step with this whole climbing fad might be to do it in a cave.
man, imagine that:
a partially submerged cave that requires both climbing and snorking/scuba.

heaven in a hole.