Ferry Friends

So just as a little update for you all, I am moved into my apartment and I cannot tell you how glorious it is. For the past two years I have spent my life sleeping, studying, hanging out, and getting ready in a 10x10 foot box of a room with two other people. I sometimes felt that I didn't have enough air to breathe. This year however I have my own room. A big spacious and magical place with my very own closet, bookshelf, window, bed, and room to dance and frolic in; and that is in addition to the vast living room area and kitchen and the bathroom I only have to share with one other person because, surprise, there are two bathrooms!!
If you can't tell, I am really excited!!

But back to the matter for which I am writing.

So on Tuesday, the 6th of September, after countless pointless delays caused by my family's inability to plan, my dad, sister and I headed out on the road to drive me back to my home in the Emerald city. We were of course situated happily and comfortably in one of my dad's many Volks Wagon Vanagons. My dad drove while I rode shotgun and my sister almost immediately fell asleep across the back seat near all my boxes of "life essentials" for my time up here.
We had driven about as far as Pocatello, Idaho when suddenly my sister sat bolt upright in the back and started shrieking for my dad to pull over. I turned in my seat and peered through a small hole between my boxes and saw steam billowing around my sister's head as the wind from my open window rushed in.
We pulled over and soon discovered we had broken a fan belt which had then in turn broken the heater in the back of the car. The broken heater was the cause of all the steam rising up around my sister as well as the cause of her impossibly high pitched scream of panic.
With the help of a happy-go-lucky police officer, we purchased a new fan belt, installed it and hit the road again.
After that incident, we didn't hit any more metaphorical bumps in the road and we made it safely to Seattle. Once we arrived in the city, we promptly boarded a ferry to take us out to the Olympic Peninsula to visit my cousins who recently had a baby and are now packing up to move to Hawaii. My cousin Jonah took my sister and I crabbing out in the sound where my sister and I pulled up a giant commercial sized crab pot with 46 Dungeness Crabs in it. It was really heavy.
We had fresh crab for dinner and headed out the next morning for the San Juan Islands.
For those of you have have met my dad, you know that he likes to talk; to friends, acquaintances, enemies, and strangers alike. He will basically talk to anyone who will listen. The ferry, however, seems to make him more chatty than ever. We would stand out on the bow to watch the beautiful mountain scenery and whales and dolphins and as soon as someone walked up next to us, my dad would strike up a conversation. Well, it was on our way to San Juan Island when my dad started making jokes about random things and a man standing next to me leaned over and said, "Dad's are always funny and right you know."
I smiled and replied, "Maybe you are always funny and right but my dad has a tendency to be funny and wrong."
Of course then my dad stepped in and started talking to him about everything from sailing, to cars, to waterskiing, to the story of my life as a college student. Normally people don't find these topics very interesting (or maybe I just don't because I hear them so often), but this man--John was his name-- seemed very interested. And it wasn't long before I discovered why. Apparently he is very much like my dad. They are interested in the same things and they both have children who are going into their junior year of college. John's child is a boy though and apparently my dad talked him into thinking it would be a good idea for Micheal (John's son) and me to meet. So John invited us to call him the next day while we were on the island because he lives there and was planning on taking his son waterskiing for one last day before he headed back to school.
As you can imagine, that is exactly what we did.
I won't lie, Micheal was pretty attractive and he doesn't go to school far away from me so maybe something could happen in the future there; we shall see. We have each other's contact information though now so that is a step.
The point here though, was to say, I guess sometimes my dad is right. I got to go waterskiing in the San Juans because he was right. I learned my lesson. Haha