It was one of those weekends that you would like to forget but can’t. It started off well as I had spent Father’s Day with one of my sons and his family in Boulder, Colo., and at the same time celebrated my granddaughter’s 21st birthday.
From there I flew back to Orcas Island for a couple of days and then took a floatplane back to Seattle to spend Saturday helping edit film for a friend in Shanghai.
I was up early Saturday morning, early being at 6:30 a.m., so we could get started working by 8 a.m. as the editor had to go to Hawaii the next day.
I did as much as time would allow. I had a 5:30 p.m. floatplane ride to Orcas Island via the air harbor at the north end of Lake Washington. This is when the problems began to surface. My pilot was a pretty young woman named Anna who used to teach flying in Northern Utah College and ski patrol at Alta during the winter. She has become a good friend and so she brought along an extra pair of headphones so we could chat on the flight.
Before we took off for Orcas from Lake Union she told me the weather did not look very good but she would try to get me there. About halfway, two other floatplane pilots 10 minutes ahead of us were running into really bad, bumpy weather. One of these pilots said, “It doesn’t look very good ahead. Dark, black clouds are right down to water level. A cold front is moving through, but I will try and somehow sneak through it.”
Anna said, “I’m going to make a couple of 360s and see if anything happens to the storm while I am coasting around out here out of the turbulence.”
Meanwhile, other planes were reporting flying 15 west to try to get around the storm. Anna asked me, “How important is the dinner you are supposed to be going to?” I quickly replied, “If in doubt, don’t try it.”
Anna said, “We are going back.” Just as she said that I had both hands against the ceiling to keep from breaking my seat belt, or so it seemed.
It was a gentle landing at the airline’s headquarters in Kenmore where Anna delivered me to the dock. When she offered to take me to the motel in Bothell, I accepted the invitation and arrived at the Marriot Hotel and went to check in. It was there that I discovered I had left my credit card in a restaurant in Boulder. “No credit card, no possibility of a room,” clerk told me. When I explained the lost credit card, she had to call the manager. I explained the situation as I showed her my driver’s license and all of the other important cards in my wallet.
Naturally, my wife Laurie could not be reached as she was, by then, waiting for me at the dock. And we have no cell service where we live. Next question I asked the manager was, “Can I sit in the lobby and try and reach my wife on my cell phone?” Her answer took me by surprise.
“You can only stay in the lobby for an hour and then you will be turned in to the police as an indigent transient! We will have someone remove you from the lobby when the hour is up if you are still here.”
I have slept in as many as 212 different hotels in one year. When I found out what indigent meant I was really insulted. I was dressed in a blue parka from the Blue Sky Golf Club, a pair of Levis and I had even shaved that morning. I really did not think I looked like a person who was living under an overpass in a cardboard tent and wanted a warm night and a shower in a nice hotel.
I tried reaching my wife for 55 of the allotted 60 minutes. Then I decided to walk out before an ugly confrontation ensued. I walked for four or five blocks to a Courtyard Hotel and the front desk person steered me through the necessary stops to have my wife take a photo of the credit card, enter it into her computer and email it to the front desk.
I was aboard a Kenmore plane the next morning by 8:30 a.m. headed for home in CLEAR WEATHER!
For more of Warren’s wanderings go to www.warrenmiller.net or visit him on his Facebook page at www.facebook.com/warrenmiller. For information on his Foundation, please visit the Warren Miller Freedom Foundation, at www.warrenmiller.org.