Volume: 1
The final flight and one, last, impromptu wedding.
The flight unfolded as intended. I remained high, clearing airspace at Whidbey Island and flew over Rosario Strait, over the Thatcher Pass between Blakely and Decatur islands, over Lopez Island and across the San Juan Channel. I turned northwest and followed the road on San Juan Island that led to Roche Harbor. I circled above the harbor watching two seaplanes operating below. I left Roche Harbor and followed the island west to Haro Strait. I thought of April Meier and how she would have liked this tour. I headed south to False Bay where I turned east, entered a base leg for runway three-four, landed and parked. I rode my bike a few miles east out to Reef Point and followed the southern shore back to the airport. I continued to the northwest from there for nine miles to Roche Harbor.
It would have been nice to sit at a bar and rinse away the subtle but built-in flight tension and relax my muscles from the bike ride with something like a margarita, but on this Sunday there happened to be a wedding at the resort, and even at sixty-one years old, I couldn't resist. As I wondered through the main pavilion, I vowed to figure out, through my own accounting, what number to assign to this affair. I locked my bike, used the restroom to put on my long riding pants, ran my fingers through my hair, rubbed some hand soap through my armpits, wandered in, lifted a glass of champagne off of a passing tray, set my backpack on a chair at a spare, unmade table in the corner of the room and and made myself comfortable.
The highlight reel consisting of the greatest hits of all previous weddings, presented in full screen and surround sound, played out in 3D just a couple of feet from my side-row seat. Props: a sourpussed bridesmaid, annoyed at her straight-jacket dress, foisted a fake smile while dancing with the nonagenarian geezer whose detached suspenders revealed that he forgot to put on his underwear. Dapper, tux-laden men retired to the balcony to suppress coughs from the cigars thrust in their faces, while telling stories as if trying to out-do Fletcher Green in an offshore pissing contest. Aunt Hildegard passed out, head back, mouth agape in her wheelchair, the recipient of a deviled egg thrown from across the room that missed its intended target. The band's drummer played at a different tempo or maybe played a different song than the other six band members. Teen-aged delinquents, apparently from the groom's side, beheaded the swan ice sculpture. A fight broke out in the southwest corner between a couple of ten year-olds, perhaps over another bridesmaid who sat with her arms folded, weeping in the northwest corner. As mothers rushed to separate the combatants, a tall, father-like man threw a cloth napkin like a ref's flag and signaled for a personal foul and a fifteen yard penalty. The bride's father put on a game face while wincing deep inside about the rising bar tab. Four security guards monitored the entrances, obviously overpaid as they failed to keep me out.
Two glasses of champagne later, a woman, slightly older, drifted toward me. We made eye contact, a second time and then a third. She came over and introduced herself as Barbara. "No kidding." She looked like Barbara Reid, my student who couldn't land an airplane. She was small, petit, too intense and on a mission. "Are you mad at your husband?" Just a guess.