Day 14 - 23: Packing, Pizza & Perspective - 1000 Miles of Pickles.

February 20 – March 1: Seattle to Calgary and back!

Suffice it to say that the last 2 weeks have been utter madness, capped off by a week of productive insanity. To have accomplished and survived it has been a rollercoaster of emotion, not done on my own strength and reflecting on the gamut of emotion run… I’m still amazed with the people I’m privileged to have in my life supporting, encouraging, loving and making me laugh through it all.

Last Sunday Chel and I drove to Sequim to visit her family and have an Ocean Fix… the first one since being out here which was so nice, but between almost missing the ferry home and having to pack once I was, it was a full day to say the least – almost forgot the pickle so felt like cheating by eating one out of the jar… little did I know this would be the formula over the next week.

Monday, lil’ Bean was all ready to go and drove the 12 hours back to Calgary and through the ensuing week packed and sold all but 10 or so boxes of my material possessions, the remaining sole contents of my life.

It was 7 days crammed with visiting friends, house ‘dance’ party, Ducky’s karaoke night, dinner party, cleaning, ‘baby-time’ with my little niece, a wonderful spiritual boost, got silly after wine, pickles, pizza & mustachio mask, packed my little car and drove back the following Monday with my roommate, who flew out to help me, in the most incredibly insane 17+ hour trip through the worst snow storm I’ve driven in, ever! Adrenaline rushes are cool for a few minutes, however, doses exceeding 11 hours is not recommended!!! Mountain passes, chains, white out, no road… all on less than 5 hours of sleep each night.

I think the most amazing part of this entire week is that I only missed 1 day of pickles and only because we arrived too late back in Seattle... missed it by minutes even though it would have been a ‘jar-pickle-cheat!!

Highlights:
Bick’s are one of the more popular brands out there and generally good… but “Bick’s Mini-Crunch’ems Definitely Dill Pickles” do NOT taste good with Peanut Butter – (thank you adventurous friends I do hope I haven’t scarred you for life… your faces were priceless however!!) I’m going to be so bold as to say that these really don’t go well with anything or even by themselves.  (Sorry Bick’s… this is a pickle fail)

Late-night pickles with pizza, hot wings and sauce dipped in ranch dressing – pretty good. Spicy, tangy, creamy… WIN, (not so much the pizza as much as the wings), especially washed down with wine!

As much fun and as challenging as this has all been, I managed to lose sight of the simplicity of the pickle, and how when balanced correctly the perfection that is created by it. Something Chel said earlier to me finally clicked as I was eating a midnight hamburger after an evening at Ducky’s with friends. “Rather than having a ‘pickle meal’ use it as an accent…” Well finally this made sense and all because of this simple little hamburger.

I managed to forgot how good just a little tasted… how just enough of a hint of something adds to the whole in unimaginable ways bringing all these other flavors together turning the tongue into a pinball machine of taste… how it morphs each bite into something different and new, in stunning perfection.

But it’s taken until today for the greater part of that lesson to sink in… perhaps because I’ve finally had time to think and sleep. But overly focusing on any one thing blinds out everything around it even if it is amazing in and of itself. You miss the best parts when overdosed, be it people, places, or things and it loses the specialness of what it is. It’s not so much the piece itself but how that piece fits into the whole that makes it special, allowing it to shine…

One last day of cucumber pickles left and then onto vegetables!