Last week I celebrated my 45th birthday and my family went over the top to compensate for quarantine. Din Tai Fung delivered, scratch made cheesecake, a freakin homemade piñata and good family time. I’m a very lucky man. I have a great family, health, a career that challenges me and brings me joy. I’m basically marinating in my own privilege and well aware of how easy I have it compared to many.
That being said, COVID quarantine still sucks and it’s taking a toll on the family. We are all under a lot of pressure and there is a constant undercurrent of strong emotions right below the surface. Sometimes fear, sometimes anger, sometimes nostalgia…we are always hovering close to emotional exhaustion.
We are helping each other find ways to cope. For Meg that means things like Dance Church, Yoga and afternoons spent reading by the beach. For Gabe, it means long bike rides and finding ways to minimize his remote school load. For Shep it means lots of unstructured play time and allowing him to sleep in our bed (only for now…how long can it last right?). For me, it means getting into my car and driving someplace far away. At least as far as I can go without needing to stop for anything which for me, turns out to be around 6 hours roundtrip.
Yesterday, I jumped in the Porsche with State Route 10 in mind. You can pickup SR 10 in Cle Elum and drive the 16 mile scenic road to Ellensburg. Fortunately, pretty much the entire drive out there qualifies as scenic. Heading East on I 90 through Snoqualmie Pass is a fast, beautiful drive. With low traffic and countermeasures in place…sometimes quite fast 🙂
The first stop was in Roslyn, WA, home of Roslyns Cafe. Fans of Northern Exposure may recognize this small town as the filming location for much of the show that supposedly took place in Alaska. The Cafe is still in operation and still has the famous mural.
The skies were suppose to be clear, but I got dumped on from North Bend all the way to Cle Elum which meant my clean car was going to be filthy for any photos. That’s okay…my car looks better in black and white anyway which does a lot to hide the dirt and bad lighting 🙂
The skies cleared up before SR 10 and I had a great time. It sits above or right next to the Yakima River and the scenic views are nonstop. I didn’t spend too much time taking photographs given how dirty my car was so I mostly just enjoyed driving up and down this beautiful road.
On the way home, I came across another black 911 Turbo that is the same generation as mine, a 997. Their car was a euro spec 997.1 TT whereas mine is a US spec 997.2 TTS. It was fun to run with each other for a few miles before they took an earlier exit. I was struck by how beautiful their car was to watch move down the road, watching it change lanes and listening to the engine noise. I started to feel a bit jealous. Then I realized that I’m in an upgraded version of the same damn car!! There is a life lesson for me in there somewhere…
911 Maniac 