Dave's Thinking: Seattle's Best

Seattle's Best

I am doing something this week my family is eminently not good at, actually seeing each other. Like many families of the modern age we have spread to all corners of the U.S.: my mother to Virginia, my Dad to Texas or Minnesota depending on the time of year, my sister is still in my home town of Fargo, I have one brother in San Francisco and my natural-brother is in Seattle. We generally all stay in touch with the occasional phone call.

We can and should do better, period.

So, rather than whine about it I decided to be the first in some time to do something about it. I bought a ticket up to Seattle to see my brother. He called me yesterday to ask what I wanted to see when I was up there, and in a non-schmultzy moment I told him rather matter-of-factly that I was pretty much coming up there just to see him.

He then announced we are headed off to eat some Indian food (which I am not a big fan of curry so I hope the diet coke and hummus served there are pretty good), then he wants be to head out with his running group on Saturday for a jog through a slough (no, really). Ah, reminds me of being kids again. We are right back at deciding what to do, and who's preference trumps. Frankly, I am going to embrace it, if it is face-melting curry we are going to eat then so be it, and if we are going to jog in a bog let's get to it.

All this starts tomorrow, the first leg of my journey is to get to San Jose for my flight. My girlfriend is going to pick me up from my flight back so I will crawl on a bus for the first time in years. It was a humbling moment to be sure that I didn't even know how to arrange such simple transport. 15 minutes of a phone-tree later I discovered that you show up, buy your ticket and get on the bus. I figure I can manage to get from a bus-stop to a hotel once I get there, but I think there may be Las Vegas odds on that.

I booked an early flight out of San Jose and also did something I also don't normally do, actually have a realistic plan to rest before I get on the plane. Generally, I would just get a few hours of sleep and red-eye the drive to the airport and Red Bull my way through my first day of a trip. Maybe, I am growing up.

I really hope this trip does what I want it to do, I want it to re-invigorate some of those family bonds which weaken when we are all too busy. I want to start changing that rule in my family, because I think life is busy you just have to make sure family has it's place and not just an occasional or optional part of it.