You guys who live where it's 100 degrees or more all summer long don't have any
idea what you're missing. I'm polishing this item up a bit, and thought it
might be fun to share with folks from "inferior" climates.

Friday Harbor

I think I've finally found Friday Harbor. No, it was never really missing. It's
always been just off San Juan Channel, reasonably well protected by Brown
Island. The marina is near 48.32.39 N and 123.00.87 W. I've been going to
Friday Harbor for about forty years, and perhaps fifteen times in the last
twenty. The Friday Harbor experience has always been two dimensional, like
something projected on a screen. There has never seemed to be a warm, human
heart behind the planked facades of the tourist shops clustered around the
ferry dock. Friday Harbor is one of the most popular marine destinations in the
Pacific Northwest, so I have always suspected my failure to develop an affinity
for the commercial center of the San Juan Islands was a personal shortcoming. I
was right- I have been wrong about Friday Harbor.

Jan and I visited Friday Harbor in August of 2004. I motored up single handed
from Seattle on a Friday morning. Jan's professional obligations kept her in
Seattle for an additional day, and she planned to arrive by seaplane early on
Saturday. Just north of Edmonds the VHF crackled, "Environment Canada has
issued a gale warning for the Strait of Juan de Fuca." Although the conditions
seemed pleasant enough, the barometer was falling off and experience has taught
me that the professionals guess the weather better than I do. So much for the
outside run, and a potential arrival at Cornet Bay would be two and a half
hours prior to slack in Deception Pass. I made Friday Harbor after a ten-hour
trek through Saratoga Passage, the Swinomish Channel, Guemes Channel, and
across Rosario Strait.

The marina at Friday Harbor often fills up during July and August. It is
advisable to arrive as early in the day as practicable. When I arrived at 4:30
on a Friday afternoon, the only remaining spot was on the outside of the north
breakwater. I was too pooped to drop the hook, inflate the Zodiac, and dinghy
ashore. "Indulgence" became the breakwater's breakwater, and we bounced around
considerably until boat and ferry traffic subsided in the late evening hours.

I had heated a can of chili enroute from Seattle, certainly as much of my own
cooking as any reasonable antibodies would be able to neutralize in a single
day. I went uptown to grab a bite, and must have accidentally discovered the
worst Chinese restaurant in North America. While most of the Friday Harbor
eateries had diners' queues out the doors and onto the sidewalks, there were
perhaps ten people sprinkled around the cavernous dining hall of the Chinese
joint. The lack of attendance should have warned me off- either that or the odd
smell. The lukewarm food was, frankly, awful and the Chinese "tea" tasted like
hot dishwater. The indifferent, distracted waitress forgot to serve my soup
course, but she forsook her slothful ways when she flew across the restaurant
to snatch up the signed credit card slip. (She was checking to be sure that she
had been adequately tipped.) She was tipped appropriately, if not adequately,
and no advance math skills were required to calculate the percentage. I
remember competent service and much better food at this restaurant in previous
years. Perhaps it has changed hands.

I spent a restless night aboard. At first light, wake and wave action began
slamming "Indulgence" against her fenders at the breakwater. An impenetrable
fog had engulfed the harbor, morphing from black to silver and finally white in
the invisible sunrise. I peered out the cabin window, concerned that Jan's
seaplane might be diverted or delayed. I took the very long walk from the
breakwater to the center of town, and on that foggy Saturday morning, I finally
discovered Friday Harbor.

The majority of the shops were still closed. The first ferry full of whirlwind
tourists had not yet landed, and most of the boaters in the marina were still
aboard- breakfasting or sleeping. Autumn sends some scouts ahead of her gradual
invasion of September and unchallenged occupation of October, and such a
stealthy spy was taking the measure of Friday Harbor. The fog wafted down the
nearly vacant streets, reducing structures 100- feet away to soft suggestions
rather than angular shapes. Swirling white and yellow auras surrounded blurred
electric fixtures. A baritone fog horn churned and shook the shimmering cloud,
so far off course and come to ground in Friday harbor.

The street grid and much of the downtown energy flows down slope to Front
Street. An old man with an aromatic pipe and an impatient little dog sat on a
bench at Memorial Park. We did not speak, but we listened to the same mournful
horns warning one and all of stealthy poltergeists and ethereal ghost ships
enveloped and camouflaged by rudderless vapors.

I had breakfast at the Front Street Café, near the ferry landing. The woman and
daughter immediately ahead of me in line were out of sync with the morning
rhythm. Rude, demanding, and impatient, they must have arrived by automobile.
They gathered an order to go and seemed to flee the premises. Most of the crowd
appeared to be locals gathered for a few moments of coffee gossip before
dispersing to jobs and businesses of their own. A woman hammered out messages
on a laptop computer, while two men discussed the impending retirement of a
popular barber. (Breakfast was the "basic scramble" with toasted beer bread.
The eggs were extremely good, and the toasted beer bread nothing less than
fantastic!)

The fog began to clear, rather quickly. It appeared that Jan's plane would be
on time, and all would be well within the world. As I strolled on through the
relatively empty streets and considered the old man on the bench and the
breakfast crowd at the café, it occurred to me exactly how I had failed to
appreciate Friday Harbor. I had always tried to make some sense of the physical
infrastructure of the place, forgetting that here, as everywhere, the streets,
the buildings, and the geographical characteristics are like rocks in a river.
The rocks define, deflect, direct, and may even contain the course of the
river, but the fluid, dynamic energy of the river is the water. In a sense, the
people of a town are the water in the river. I had always experienced the human
dynamic through the perspective of tourists frantic to "do the San Juans"
between ferry departures, or the stressed merchants often overwhelmed by the
same. In the early morning hours, without the surging crowds, (and when people
were fed, rested, and going about the ordinary business of the day), the bricks
and sticks, the rocks and the river, and the pulse of Friday Harbor made
obvious sense.

A formation of five seaplanes splashed down in quick succession. Jan
disembarked in a crisp moment of blazing blue daylight, an atmosphere soon to
be in short supply. I was glad to see her. No Hollywood starlet ever made a
more beautiful entrance.

We relocated "Indulgence" to a freshly vacated slip inside the marina. I'd had
my fill of rock 'n roll for a while.

The rain began. A few stray drops at first, as gentle and exploratory as a
lover's hopeful foreplay. The spritz became a sprinkle, the sprinkle a drizzle,
the drizzle a shower, and soon Friday Harbor was engulfed in a soaking storm-
frenzied with passion. We got a pair of rain jackets from the hanging locker
and proceeded to do what any pair of rational humans would do when the streets
of Friday Harbor became literal rivers- we hiked half a mile to the San Juan
County Fairgrounds.

The fair runs five days every August and it is a traditional, agriculturally
oriented event. The Grange and 4-H are prominent here, while the aluminum
siding, storm window, and hot tub salespeople are nowhere in sight. In this
election year, various candidates and parties had erected tents and display
booths, all extolling the specific virtues of widely contrasting political
philosophies.

The 2004 fair was clobbered by the Saturday deluge. Small groups of dripping,
sloshing, and squishy-shoed people lingered in the indoor commercial areas and
covered animal barns. Vendors with tent space attempted to smile
philosophically as the sparse crowds literally splashed past, bolting between
one indoor venue and another. We scooted under an awning to speak briefly with
a volunteer from the Wolf Hollow Wildlife Rehabilitation Center. The Center
rescues approximately 800 injured and orphaned birds and animals each year,
restoring as many as possible to health and returning them to the wild
environment.

Rain swept the fairgrounds like a push broom clears a shop. Disappointed
carnies chain-smoked under faded red and orange-striped canopies: the ball and
bottle games, the ring toss, and the dart throw rackets all but abandoned by
the crowd.

At regular intervals, a carny would raise a push broom to dump the collected
water from the awning of his booth. The strain on the canvas would be relieved,
but the mud bog in the midway was correspondingly recharged. The Tilt-A-Whirl
neither tilted, nor whirled, but the empty passenger pods collected water like
scuffed fiberglass bowls. Raindrops sizzled, steamed, and splashed against ten
thousand circus-colored carnival bulbs.

We found the heart of Friday Harbor, once again, at the fair. Despite the
weather, the 4-H market auction was packed. 4-H rules allow every young member
to sell one animal or unit of produce per year. The proceeds are awarded to the
aspiring farmer to help offset the costs of participating in 4-H. Many of the
winning bidders immediately "resell" the animal or produce in the same auction,
with the funds from the second sale going to the4-H organization for programs
and facilities. The auction had been scheduled for an outdoor venue, but
relocated to a standing room only tent.

We watched in citified amazement as the crowd eagerly bid the first offering,
(a dozen eggs), up to $90.00. The next dozen must have been superior, somehow,
at least to the educated eye. It brought $130. Three laying hens sold for an
astonishing $150, but perhaps that's a shrewd investment in an economy where
eggs bring over ten bucks apiece. In many cases, the auctioneer would conclude
a sale by thanking King's Market, Friday Harbor Hardware, or some other local
business. It isn't every community where prominent businessmen support the
local kids by setting aside a Saturday afternoon to jam into a damp tent and
pay 100 times "too much" for eggs or several multiples of the going rates for
pork and steers. The young farmers must surely feel more appreciated when the
community turns out for an event like the market auction. It has to be more
meaningful than a businessperson simply telling the bookkeeper to write a
check.

Slogging back to town from the fairgrounds, I enjoyed my fresh perspective of
Friday Harbor. Yes, it's still that frantic tourist town with an awkward
transition between the municipal marina and the shameless hustle bucks around
the ferry dock. When one comes to appreciate Friday Harbor as a mixture of very
real people in a slightly unreal place, the focus is suddenly clarified. I had
found Friday Harbor, and appreciated that it had been there all along. The
fault was entirely mine- confusing a handful of oddball rocks with the fluid,
renewing, energy of a river.

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