How I Spent My Summer Vacation: July 20: You Probably Think I Quit Already

     The schedule was to meet at Aaron's place at 9:00 am for a 10:00 a.m. departure. I was running a little late and I called Aaron to tell him so and he replied, "That's OK, nobody's here yet. Take your time. One of the guys will be here shortly with Bloody Mary mix."
     That was the beginning of a long chain of events that got us off to a very slow start. In the end, there were six of us and we did get on the road at about 11:00, but fifteen minutes later we just happened to run past another friend of the group named Barry. He yelled out, "where are you going?" and one of the guys hollered back, "We're going up into the Cascades with Tron's dad."
   "Wait up, I'm coming." It took only a few seconds to get rid of the girl he was with and about ten minutes to pack up and join us.
   We got onto a trail that runs alongside Interstate 90, across Lake Washington, to Mercer Island and we took some local roads to the other side of the island. At one point a woman driving a minivan pulled over to the right and suddenly pulled a U-turn right in front of Barry. He crashed into the car and smashed out the driver side window. His body caved in the driver side door and you could clearly see where his head put a big dent in the metal above the door. He suffered some very deep lacerations to his shoulder, a concussion and a broken jaw. He was bleeding profusely. Aaron and his friends, equipped with disposable cameras as part of a group experiment in artistic expression, took numerous pictures of one another posing with Barry. He SEEMED lucid the entire time, but the next day we learned that he remembered nothing of the crash.
     Of course we were delayed by police reports and the ambulance.  Then there were a couple of flat tires and some wrong turns. There were stops at a couple of bars and at the beautiful Snoqualmie Falls. We passed a wedding party in a park and congratulated the bride and groom while speeding past at 20 m.p.h. Late in the afternoon, two of our party turned back to Seattle.
     Finally, we made it up into the Cascade Mountains and the big climbs started.  The views were magnificent. We set up an illegal improvised campsite (camping in designated areas only, according to signs along the trail) in a very scenic setting along the Iron Horse Trail just before dark (9:30 p.m.) We made a little fire, grilled some salmon, drank beer, wine, and whiskey, and enjoyed the night.