Yesterday I spent the morning writing up my post about the bike ride with Dad, which I got a late start on because of the time I had to spend online renewing Shobhit's Zone 4 parking permit. We had both completely forgotten that, if you are a resident of the neighborhood, it's free; he was expecting to have to pay a fee. We've actually never paid a fee, though, which we forgot. It was just a matter of getting access to his account, remembering the password, finding the record from last year to renew. Well, now it's all taken care of.

There was no conveniently timed #11 bus downtown from my condo, so I just walked down to the bus stop at 6th and Union to catch the #101 express bus to the Renton Transit Center in downtown Renton—a 37-minute ride, so thankfully, less than half the length of the bus ride on Tuesday to the State Route 512 Park & Ride. Laney later talked about how she might have preferred taking Light Rail to Tulwila Station first, if she were me, which I never even really considered: because it would be easier just to walk from home to Capitol Hill Station, which is just half a mile away. Except, well, I just ran the Trip Planner direct from Capitol Hill Station, and it still recommends just taking Light Rail to Stadium Station and then transferring to the #101 bus. In fact, I just looked up the bus schedule from Tukwila Station to the Renton Transit Center and that alone is a 31 minute ride! That clearly wouldn't have worked, unless Laney was just to pick me up at Tukwila Station. That's a ten-minute drive . . . Jesus Christ, no wonder no one in the suburbs wants to take public transit. When transit takes triple the time it takes to get somewhere by car, that's pathetic. But also, this is how Renton itself is laid out, on the southeast corner of Lake Washington. Why anyone would choose to live there remains beyond me—well, except that in Laney's case, she found affordable senior housing there. On the upside, she should hopefully be getting on the waiting list for Pride Place, the senior housing building nearing completion of construction on Broadway between Pine and Pike—all of six blocks from me. What a dream it would be if she could live there!

Anyway I'm already off on major tangents. The point is, for my purposes and to save Laney too much driving, the 101 to downtown Renton Transit Center made the most sense. I caught the bus that had me arriving there at about noon, and she came to pick me up. I just looked it up on my Maps app and the Transit Center is all of six blocks from where Laney lives. Shit, I could have just walked to her!

But, we had a separate destination first anyway, the "Hidden Gem" I found as an online recommendation for Renton: Waterworks Gardens, where ponds and marshes clean a nearby treatment plant's stormwater. This was about two and a half miles from the transit center.

I had made the suggestion to Laney first, but she was already very familiar with the place, a favorite of hers. She even told me while we were there that she often stops to walk through there before she goes grocery shopping nearby.

We parked in a very small parking lot across the street from the Gardens, at the spot where Oaksdale Ave SW, amusingly, turns into Monster Rd SW. (Side note: Renton is rife with examples like this, with a single street changing names at different spots; one has something like five names depending where you are on it. I find that annoying as shit.) Laney had a specific reason for this: we were going to walk straight up the hill alongside the park, enter up there, then work our way back down, to "The Grotto" where we would have our Afternoon Happy Hour lunch—easily accessible by just going across the street to grab our lunches and chairs from her van, and bring them back to The Grotto.

There was one other woman in there when we set our chairs up. I figured we might drive her away with our chattiness, and she did indeed get up and leave within about twenty minutes of our settling in.

It was 12:20 when we walked into the park at the top of the hill, and I took several photos as we meandered around the very pretty trails. We spent about forty minutes doing that, and it was 1:00 by the time I managed to use my phone's timer to take a picture of us in our chairs in The Grotto. We sat and shot the shit there for about ninety minutes or so, Laney with her tumbler of wine and me with my tumbler full of a Moscow Mule with four shots of vodka in it.

Laney also gave me what was literally labeled a "Mushy Note," in lieu of a birthday card. And it was indeed mushy, in the best way: it was very sweet and touching.

Her note refers to what I have long called "The Untouchables," which historically had been applied to only three people: Danielle, Gabriel, and Barbara. These are friends I am absolutely convinced will be a part of my life until the day one of us dies. Barbara sort of entered a nebulous version of the category when she moved back to Virginia in 2010, but after she moved to Louisville, Kentucky in 2021 and I visited her there last year, we picked right up where we left off and it was as though we had never been apart. It was great to have her status confirmed like that, as none of my other friends have had their standing in my life tested in the same way.

And the thing is, I think Laney would almost certainly be the same. I'm pretty sure I even told her a while back she's likely now in the same standing as those other three. I know it's sort of shitty to rank my friends, although I don't really think that's what I'm doing. It's just a sort of category of friendship, and a rare club indeed. None of these people hang out with each other, as they all come from wildly disparate origins in the history of my life. The greatest distinction with Laney is that she's really the only friend who has achieved this sort of status who I did not meet until after the turn of the century. Laney's a 21st Century Untouchable! This is also kind of funny because she's 19 years older than me and yet the most recent person to achieve Untouchable Status.

Maybe I should make some Untouchable Status badges. We'll just have to make sure they don't wear them in India. It means something very different there. Kind of the opposite, actually. Hindus also wear white at funerals, it's like Opposite Land! Fascinating stuff. Am I going off on a tangent again?

Anyway, it's tempting to say the only real difference between Laney and the original three "Untouchables" is length of time: I've known Danielle 36 years; I've known Gabriel 28; I've known Barbara 26. But as I noted to Laney yesterday, I've technically known her 23 years now, which is hardly some huge difference. Granted, our friendship as we know it did not really occur until the fallout of "Boobgate" in the Seattle Lesbian and Gay Chorus in 2004. Even that's 19 years ago! And in 2004, Laney was 46 years old. That's the age I am now! Okay, I'll be 47 on Sunday. Stop bringing it up it's so annoying!

Okay I'm going to go on a tangent deliberately now. I've found rather distinct phases of aging, in my own personal experience of life. Like, for ages I tended to be the youngest person in the room. The days of that being a reliable scenario are long gone. As I reached my late twenties, I was conscious of the fact that my being categorized as "youth" faded out of recency. Through my thirties, I was very conscious of a particular transition: I was hardly "old," but neither was I "young" exactly—particularly in my late thirties, which transitioned me well into middle age. I struggled with turning thirty in a way that ironically I had no issue with turning 40. But, being only three years from 50 now is weirding me out a little. Maybe by the time that birthday actually comes around, I'll care as little as when I turned 40. One can only hope!

Also, I am now distinctly middle-aged. People could argue the semantics when I was in my late thirties, but certainly not in my late forties. In fact, nearly all of my thirties people assumed I was in my twenties because I looked so young, something that delighted me to no end. I never get shock at how old I am anymore; I seem to have gotten to a point where I am finally starting to look my age. (My allowing my hair to go solid gray probably is part of that, although it's also a color I now regularly get complimented on.) Strangely, even in the absence of looking far younger anymore, lately I have been getting complimented on how good I look anyway. Like Andy at Gabriel's party: "You're aging so well!"

There are regularly fun conversations about these things with Laney, who as I already noted, as about two decades older than I am. I'd say that my observations or complaints might seen quaint to her, but she tends to have a different response, like "Welcome to aging!" And I have to say, knowing I almost certainly have less life ahead of me than I have behind me is not my favorite thing either. Neither is knowing that is far more the case with generations ahead of me, like my parents. Luckily for me with Laney, she comes from long-living stock, a father who lived well into his nineties. If she lives to be 95 years old, at that time I'll be 76!

I'd say we've got plenty of time, except when Laney and I spend time together we always have so much fun the time flies by. Dammit!

Shobhit was meeting up with a printer for his campaign materials in Tukwila in the late afternoon, so while we got back to her place to hang out—and use a previously unavailable bathroom now desperately needed—at about 3:00, it was time to go about half an hour later. Laney very kindly offered to drive me to him there (a 12-minute drive which, on transit, would have necessitated 2 buses and taken 66 minutes!). Hell, to my pleasant shock, she was even willing to drive me all the way home before I told her Shobhit would be in Tukwila! That really wouldn't have been necessary but, lucky for everyone involved, Shobhit was much closer anyway. The directions even took us along some side roads Laney had never driven and which were pretty scenic and she rather enjoyed, so there was also that.

Right before we left The Grotto, Laney pointed out the mossy ledge behind where we had seated ourselves. She said she wanted to put little toy dinosaurs up there because it looked so "primordial." Naturally I took a photo of it. Then, later after I got home, I searched for images of dinosaurs online, which I could then crop out and paste onto my photo and send to her. I used the Pixlr photo editor online and it involved a lot of erasing the background of the overlaid dinosaur photo, so the Grotto photo was all you see around the dinosaurs.

I then texted this image to Laney with the additional text, I spent way too much time on this

She replied: Oh my goodness this is my new favorite thing!!

[posted 10:10 am]

[24-shot full photo album on Flickr]