Vashon Island

Got up at 4:00 am. Got to the airport at 5:30 in Austin. Got to Seattle, in a misty, white fog, around 11:30 am

My rental car is so cool! I don’t have any idea what it is, some sort of boxy,silver Chrysler. Not a PT Cruiser, but a new version of it.
It holds my guitars, my sunglasses, and took me 15 minutes to find the seat adjuster cuz some designer got clever and put the lever on the DOOR. Finally! Thank you, whoever you were, for thinking of that innovation! No bendy over.

Rode the ferry over to Vashon Island, which I will not tell you how astounding it is because then everyone will move there so I will tell you it is covered in trash and very ugly. DO NOT GO TO VASHON ISLAND. ALERT! ALERT! Ooh, it is a nuclear dump. Even as I was riding the ferry through trash filled waters, I placed my face mask on so as not to inhale any of the deadly gasses emitting from said “island” (really, as I approach, I realized it is
thousands of years of beer cans and old pizza boxes stacked one on top of another, which is why they handed me rubber boots as I departed the ferry.)

Hung out with the sweet Elaine Summers and Pete Droge at their clean (i.e., no trash or waste, but,again, they are fortunate to not be
living on mounds of torn up textbooks and a junkyard of forgotten crud: really!) fairy land of magical mosiac animals (a stallion in the woods! sparkling bunnies in the bushes! even a four foot concrete slug covered in the colors of the rainbow…everywhere I look, mosiac wonder!) where I am treated to Elaine’s most delicious vegan salad of black beans and cilantro, onions, garlic and who knows what; I felt uber healthy the minute I took my first bite.
Which was good because through the monkey puzzle trees and the giant azalea bushes, the bright happy tulips and the towering firs, I could see
the sizzling sun beating down on the mountains of encroaching trash. DO NOT CALL A REALTOR ABOUT RELOCATING TO VASHON. BE GRATEFUL I CAN TRAVEL TO THESE HIDEOUS, UNFORTUNATE PLACES AND SUFFER ON YOUR BEHALF!

After lunch, I was given a tour of their awesome studio. Ok, you know where I’ll be headed when I save up some ka-ching! Then we sat and talked about the music industry. The sky was clear blue by then, and a pure white cat named Finnster was eyeing me from across the sofa. (Animals can live here amongst this devastating pollution! That was a relief to my troubled heart.)

We popped over to Iain Moore’s house, where he was installing wood floors in the midst of a very green, forested, moss covered utopia. Strange, it seems musicians can live on Vashon Island and they escape the evil advance of civilization’s residue. Anyhoo, we stood around in the living area and talked about things I can not repeat here because they were funny in conversation but would translate as vulgar on my blog, I am sure. (And you know I am just coming out of my vulgar stage (wha…?) and must recapture my southern charm, for mercy’s sake!) Met Iain’s very nice wife, and his son, Max, who was yelling down from upstairs and then disappeared. He had a nice mop of upside down hair as I stared up into the stairwell to say “hello”.

Ok. More later..I have to run to a radio interview and do a children’s show and then a big people’s show….so, later tonight I will conclude my review of the weekend!