4:30 am is painful to get up at, but it does have the odd small payoff.
Today was another trip to the Island for a spawning event, so that’s one payoff…fun with fish, and people I like working alongside.
A pretty nice sunrise was another perk.
We finished up early enough that I was able to book it back down the Island in time to make a ferry and when I pulled in the woman behind the glass asked if I had a reservation. “Yes, for the next boat….” She seemed unimpressed and out of sorts about the situation, not sure why, but I’d rather pay for the reservation and luck into an earlier ferry than not have a reservation and miss both. The ferry was 44% empty…yet she stamped my receipt with “STANDBY”. She clearly wasn’t having a happy day.
I pulled onto the upper deck, put the car in park, sent a couple of emails and then made a phone call. I had the window rolled down and a few moments into the call I noticed the driver of the blue Volkswagen, with a very large dog in the back seat, in front of me turning around and looking back at me. She opened her door and started walking towards me, smiling and gesturing…and I suddenly realized it was a coworker who I’d not seen since February. She said that she’d been sitting there and heard me speaking and laughing and thought “That’s Paige!” and turned around to figure out where I was. Right behind her. Oddly, or maybe not all that oddly since we both work a number of the same facilities but for different functions, we have run into each other many times. Once I was parked right next to her and this time I ended up immediately behind her. So that meant when my call was over that I had a companion to chat away the entire trip across the Strait with. It was really nice to catch up on what’s going on in the other unit. I didn’t get the data entered into the spreadsheet I intended to then send back to someone….but oh well. A job for first thing tomorrow morning.
And another highlight of the day was seeing a humpback whale on the trip back across. It breached twice, and showed off its tail in a dive. We really do live in an amazing part of the world.
I was also able to get my rental back before they closed, which saved me about $25 in fees. 🙂 Some days it’s a tough call…speed to get an earlier ferry or give up the earlier boat and find a beach to walk on with the camera in hand. Either way it’s a long day.
Lastly, not a highlight, but something that always makes me smile when I visit this particular site, is the “guard dog”. He’s been here as long as I can remember.
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