On Highway 2

Sunday morning following the big Georgia loss, The Girl and I are sitting in Voula's on Northlake. We're both making admirable progress through our Bailout Scrambles and drinking steaming hot coffee in the glow of the low hanging sun. As we watch the kick-off of the Packers/Bucs game, it comes upon us; we're gonna get out of town. We're gonna jump into Truck-Truck #2 and head up to the pass. The sky blue sky and autumn's yellow stone are just too inviting to be inside. We head up to Highway 2 going east into the North Cascades and in less than a half hour we're rolling through canopies of stained glass leaves illuminated by streaming sunlight. There are brilliant reds nestled in stands of cottonwood and big leaf maple. Over the top of Steven's Pass (I don't know Steven, but it's a nice pass) and a couple tens of miles, we roll into the counterfeit, bavarian hamlet of Leavenworth. We must have hit town as it puts on it's ooom, pah pah and sausage for Oktoberfest. The whole tourist trap was wall to wall lederhosen, helgas, tuba farts and sausage. We jumped right in and had ourselves some brats and a beer. The Girl was radiant and happy in the mountain sun, eating ice cream while the brass band played yet another version of 'roll out the barrel'. I looked at her pretty face, so serene and happy and then looked around the bandstand at all the people and smiled.