Well, so much for having smaller photo albums for my Birth Week this year! I mean, many of the rest may still be smaller yet, but so far at least, the 21 shots for the Sounder Commuter Train ride with Tracy is actually the anomaly. I failed to mention in yesterday morning's post that the Lake Whatcom Railway photo album for Saturday's visit with Shobhit had 46 shots (to be fair, 14 of those shots are random others from the day, including visiting a couple of shots, birthday gifts from both Alexia and Ivan, and of course the four of us going out for Ivan's and my birthday dinners, doubling as a kind of goodbye dinner for Ivan—photos specific to visiting Lake Whatcom Railway actually amounted to 32 shots). Well, yesterday I met up with Valerie for a short, scenic train ride by the Northwest Railway Museum in Snoqualmie—but boarding at the North Bend Depot—and the day yielded 62 shots. Six of those are video clips, which I finally thought to do more of after seeing Valerie herself take a video clip with her phone.

She took a ton of her own photos, incidentally, probably being the only person I spend time with all of this week who rivals me in picture taking. She even used two different devices, one of them a quite large, long-lens digital camera. She would also occasionally use her iPhone, either to take video clips or to take photos she could quickly send to family members via text. She AirDropped a few that she took to me in the moment, but I won't be surprised if she sends me a few more yet, which will just add to the size of yesterday's photo album.

There are several train departures for which you can purchase tickets, from either the main depot in Snoqualmie or the one in North Bend; we chose the 1:30 as we felt the time worked best for us both, and that one left at North Bend, so that was where we met. I suggested we meet for a picnic lunch beforehand—I am proud to say that yesterday was finally the first day in my Birth Week in which I spent no money, as we had prepurchased our train tickets weeks ago, and I finally had no plans to eat out, after going out for dinner the previous three nights in a row—and since the North Bend Depot is in a small park with a couple of its own picnic tables, we chose to meet there. I had asked if we should meet at noon or at 12:30, and she suggested we "split the difference" by saying noon but because "I have a bit of Aunt Raenae in me" (ha!), she would likely get there at 12:15.

We kind of amazingly wound up arriving right at the same time—about 12:20. In my case, it was because I had rushed to write and post yesterday's blog about the Saturday visit to Lake Whatcom Railway with Shobhit, before I had just under half an hour to make my sandwich and also make chai to bring, which Valerie was delighted to partake in. My GPS said the ETA was 12:14, but that kept inching up, eventually to 12:17, because there wa a surprising lot of traffic in North Bend, and their traffic light cycles, I discovered, take an eternity. Then, I turned to the right just where I was right in front of the train depot, but I was down nearly two full blocks before I found an available parking space. By the time I had walked from there back to the depot, Valerie had arrived, parked much closer, and we were walking toward the depot building from opposite directions at just the same time. For her part, she had gotten slightly delayed due to a slow order in front of her at line at Taco Time.

We found a picnic table in the wide grassy area behind the depot building, and proceeded to have a wonderfully pleasant chat for the next hour or so, over lunch, as we waited for the train to arrive. Auntie Rose inevitably came up in conversation, and we kind of commiserated over the loss of our mothers, which happened in the same year. (Auntie Rose died in February 2020; Mom died July 1 of the same year. Auntie Rose, at least, never experienced anything about the pandemic. Mom did, but she was a recluse already anyway, and her death of a stroke actually had nothing to do with it.)

The nicest part was when Valerie said, "I really appreciate you inviting me to be a part of your Birth Week. It gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling." She talked about how she feels increasingly disconnected to extended family now that both Grandma McQuilkin (Valerie's aunt) and Auntie Rose are gone, and not around to be focal points of family gatherings. This didn't really occur to me just now, as I was writing this, but now that Dad and Sherri are the eldest in my own immediate family, I have no shortage of extended family gatherings—it's just that the context has changed, with Dad and Sherri being the elders and gatherings now include only their direct descendants, which now includes not only ten grown grandchildren but ten great-grandchildren. This is like the "next generation family" after Grandma and Grandpa McQuilkin, but because neither Auntie Rose nor either of her children had a lot of children of their own, their own even "extended" family has never been that large.

Just to review: Auntie Rose was Grandma McQuilkin's little sister, but she was eight years her junior. Not only that, but Grandma and Grandpa got married at the ages of 18 and had five children by the time they were both 25. Auntie Rose, on the other hand, did not get married to Uncle Imre until she was 26; had the first of only two children at 27; and Peter, Valerie's little brother, never had children. Valerie was born in 1964, placing her "between generations" of her cousins (Dad and his four siblings) and their collective 11 children. And then, Valerie and Scott waited until they were in their thirties to have children of their own, again only having two, who have both only just recently finished college. In contrast to my family, in which there are four generations currently living and likely will for a while to come, right now the generations living in Valerie's family only amount to three, counting Uncle Imre, who is very old and likely won't be around much longer.

When I asked for a reminder of when Valerie was born, later while on the train, I figured out we are 12 years apart. Well, in calendar years anyway; her birthday is in October which means we are 11 and a half years apart. I just turned 46 on Saturday, whereas she is currently 57. The oddest thing is how fresh the fondness of my memories of Auntie Rose still feel, and how much of her I see in Valerie's face—she looks so much like her, sometimes it's almost eerie. Her personality is quite different, though, and her politics are wildly different. To Auntie Rose's credit, she was easily one of the kindest people I ever knew, one of the few who actually lived by the tenets so many other Chistians profess to believe but in practice ignore. But, she still made her beliefs clear, and they were definitively conservative. I hesitate to call Valerie a raging liberal, but she's staunchly Democrat and certainly progressive, and very much to her credit, quite open minded about being called out on anything she says or does that might be problematic, which she has told me her children have done on occasion.

Now that covid, while still very much a thing (I literally just got sick with it two weeks ago), is not the existential threat it was two years ago, I'm hoping I can make more frequent connections with Valerie, and the rest of her family (she told me her kids said hi), than just once a year during my Birth Week. She suggested not long ago that Shobhit and I come over for dinner sometime, which I would love to do.

I had to email her later last night, once I got all the day's photos uploaded to Flickr. I realized this was actually the third time she has participated in my Birth Week now, which meant it was time to create a Valerie collection—and not just keep lumping her into the Auntie Rose collection. The first two of them made sense, as the first was in 2018 when Auntie Rose was still alive and Valerie joined us for the Bellevue Botanical Garden; and last year was to Fort Worden in Port Townsend, largely in memory of Auntie Rose, as that had been where I planned to go with Auntie Rose for my Birth Week the year she died. (Valerie was going to go in her stead in 2020, but that got postponed by covid, and we went last year instead.) But, this year was the first in which I just wanted to keep Valerie part of the Birth Week tradition for her own sake. Of course, as I said, Auntie Rose inevitably came up in conversation—losing your mother is going to keep being a part of conversations for a few years at least—but Valerie also clearly appreciated just keeping maintained family connections.

I think this is a big reason Valerie is so interested in attending Uncle Paul's memorial, scheduled for August. She'll see a lot of extended family there, cousins and children of cousins, she never gets to see otherwise anymore. Unless, of course, somebody dies. I'll be attending Uncle Paul's memorial for Jennifer's sake more than anything, plus being able to see some other family. There will be other family there too who I feel like never seeing them again might be too soon, like Sarah, Uncle Paul's widow; neither she nor Uncle Paul have ever offered any validation to their trans son, who I am convinced is going to live a life of severe mental instability as a result—it's pretty clear that's already well underway. And Uncle Paul himself? He was a deeply racist, often pointedly gross man who antagonized people for sport. His death has had no effect on my dearth of any respect for him. But, I digress. The memorial will be at Mason Lake which was a place for family gatherings for years and I do still have pleasant family memories associated with it. Even in spite of Sarah walking around with a MAGA hat on there a few years ago.

Anyway, back to the Northwest Railway Museum! This train was the third I've actually boarded in as many days of my Birth Week so far, albeit only the second actual train ride I took—at Lake Whatcom Railway we could only walk through parked train cars. In fact, by the end of this week, I'll have actually ridden on between four and six trains, depending on what happens with the work event on Thursday, and whether I go ahead and take joyrides on both the Seattle Streetcar and the Seattle Monorail just to be a completist. I may do one or the other tomorrow afternoon, as the planned walk with Laney along the South Canal Trail (which uses to be a railroad) had to be postponed to sometime after my Birth Week, thanks to Laney injuring her knee yet again. The frequency with which Laney hurts her knee anymore makes her seem far more old and frail than she should be at 64, and it's kind of bumming me out. I can only imagine how she feels about it. In any case, it's freed up some time tomorrow afternoon.

I'd have been able to find more regional scenic train rides to do if it were still before the pandemic, although a lot of them still only happen on weekends. Oh, and then there's the Kitsap Live Steamers mini train ride that I now can't do with Jennifer until the 14th, thanks to covid, another thing that really threw a monkey wrench into my Birth Week plans this year. I'll still make that part of my Birth Week photo album collections, though, as I also will with the walk I can hopefully do with Laney in a few weeks.

Ugh, I keep digressing! Northwest Railway Museum! Stay on topic, Matthew!

It was wonderful. Both Valerie and I had a blast. The train only runs about five and a half miles back and forth, between Snoqualmie and North Bend Depots, and also running just past Snoqualmie Falls, offering a novel view of them from above, which I had never gotten to see before, particularly from the south side of the river. The ride yielded some truly spectacular views of a valley below from what amounted to a high cliff the railroad runs alongside.

The train also passes through the main depot and museum in noqualmie, which Valerie and I returned to after the train ride was done. For some reason I had assumed the train ride was a loop, but it really just goes back and forth, and even though the route is all of five and a half miles, the train goes pretty slowly most of the time, taking about ninety minutes to complete its total 11-mile round trip. (That's an average of just over seven mph.) Most of the scenery is truly spectacular, and it was absolutely worth the very reasonable $24 we both paid for our tickets.

We spent some time chatting with a volunteer young lady while on the train, in the oldest of the three passenger cars being pulled by the diesel electric engine that was newer but still old; I had chosen the car we were in because I found it to have the most charming design, with its old wooden benches. The seats in the other cars looked like ratty old seats taken from decommissioned airplanes. The volunteer woman had to clarify "give or take" because she couldn't remember exact dates, but she said the car we were in was built in 1908 (only one year younger than the train Shobhit and I toured at Lake Whatcom Railway on Saturday); the one behind us 1926; and the one bringing up the rear 1918. They are all 80 feet long. We spoke with a very knowledgeable local later who said the diesel electric engine was about 40 feet (making the total train length about 300 feet) and from 1956. Apparently they do have a steam locomotive engine they use for special occasions that was set to be in use for Mother's Day next weekend—when, dammit, I have no train ride plans. I'm still not sure whether I'll be able to do anything Birth Week related that day as literally everyone and their mother is likely to have plans.

There was a second local who was super enthusiastic about this steam engine about to be in use next weekend, and he and the other older guy really chatted us up, until I had to tell Valerie was still needed to get to the museum depot in Snoqualmie if I was to be able to get back to Seattle and pick up Shobhit from work by 4:30. We drove over separately, and I got there about ten minutes before her because her GPS took her to a different Northwest Railway Museum spot, a garage of more train cars. I send her my pinned location so she could find the right spot, and we were together again for ten minutes, at best, before I had to get going. It was a 44 minute drive back to the Total Wine & More in Interbay. I got there right at 4:30, and let him drive us the rest of the way home.

We had leftovers for dinner—Shobhit his okra from Saffron Grill on Saturday, and me the last of the magi from several days ago—and then we invited Alexia over to watch my library DVD copy of the original 1978 version of Death on the Nile, which both Alexia and I were interested in watching after seeing the CGI-saturdated remake and learning that the original had actually been shot on location in Egypt. That did make it more entertaining, as did a lot of the humor and running gags, even if it took a while for them to actually start happening. Alexia laughed a lot at it.

When the movie was over, we split a block of Fidalgo Bay Fudge three ways, this one being the "Island Dream" flavor which was a delicious chocolate, vanilla and caramel swirl. I also got clarification on the idea of traveling to Alaska with her sometime when she goes for work: I'd get a free place to stay, which I had not realized. She may go to Anchorage this summer, and I thus might join her. The farthest north I have ever been is the 2007 train excursion from Skagway to just by the border with Northern British Columbia during the Inside Passage cruise we took with Dad and Sherri and Grandma and Grandpa (and, incidentally, Uncle Paul and Sarah), which Ivan is actually also about to do on his own Alaskan cruise in a couple of weeks. His cruise will go even further north, though, to Seward, which is just 78 miles south of Anchorage (a 126-mile drive though). If I make it to Anchorage, I'll beat him again on having gone the farthest north. Well, in the Western Hemisphere, anyway. In any case, when I found out I'd get a free place to stay, I said, "Well now it sounds even more enticing!"

I don't know how it will fit between trips I still hope to take to both Toronto and Denver, but we'll see. I'll figure something out.

[posted 8:50 am]