The problem lies not in making bad decisions, the problem lies in other people applauding your bad decision.

As a Washingtonian, there IS a reason I dread the drive to Seattle (about three hours one way). I lie awake nights before, hands perspiring, dark dreams haunting me...

I grip the wheel, enter the lair of Shelob, and then, when my task is finally done, I flee! I simply flee! And no, it will NOT do to wait for a ferry. I floor the gas and head to the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. I stop for nothing and no one.

And then, as the city opens into suburbs, suburbs into countryside, countryside to the Hood Canal, then, and ONLY then, am I FREE! In fact, I believe that the darkness starts to wain around Port Orchard...

Highway 104 begins to heal my soul, as I wend my way through the dark, gloomy, mysterious Olympic Peninsula. Traffic drops. The pace slackens. Everything starts to appear normal again.

Then, and ONLY then, all is well. I continue my journey through a country that very few will see, and even fewer will appreciate. And in the gloom of evening, I am home.

And I can finally sigh. But I can NEVER take enough showers to rid my soul of the stench that lies in the Emerald City.

Am I to assume that they give free Starbucks at each showing?

Dan doesn't the dark start to lift at least around Gig Harbor?

Gerard painful but true: what can happen, new and exciting, in a town with an intelligencia guided by leftoid ideology of the Carter years? And proud of it. It's not that it is second rate but that it is so isolated. That is why boosters are constantly completmenting themselves as Seattleites. Myself, I believe Seattle still clings to colonial attitudes of regionalism and insecurity. Seattleites favorite question to outsiders: what do you think of us? Also why a British Hack like Jonathan Raban can dine out, for decades, on his British accent.