Dave's DOG Blog

Seattle/Tacoma DOG Rally – Owen Beach
Thursday

“I know, we could count people wearing Crocks!”

Yup, Susan (DUI President) was definitely bored. Our Alaska Air flight to Seattle was delayed by 4 hours. These downtimes are usually quite productive in getting the tide of emails and contacts under control, however there was not a wifi connection to be had, and little else to do in the gate waiting area. At this rate we’ll be arriving at the hotel at midnight. At least there’ll be no traffic. On the bright side, there is a Rubio’s on the other side of security, where we can get a $6 burrito for the low, low, airport price of $12. <sigh>

Friday

We awoke to the kind of beautiful sunny day that encourages (or suckers) visitors to the PNW to consider buying a house/moving/retiring etc. in the area. To be sure, the region truly is beautiful; majestic mountains, lush trees and greenery, and of course ample shore diving.
The famous Seattle rain was nowhere to be seen, as we set up the tents in one of the most picturesque spots on the DOG Rally tour.

Okay, okay… granted the tents were behind the bathroom facilities, but still…we were right beside the gently lapping waves of Puget Sound.

Set up was rather quick, at a mere 4 ½ hours, and the famished crew of Susan, Dave, Alan and John were ready for some food. We slipped off to Katie Downs for a quick lunch on the back deck, and hurried back to the park to meet our buddy Mike Racine for a dive. Unfortunately, the slack tide was not cooperating with our plans. The idea was to hit the water near dusk and hopefully encounter some Sixgill sharks. However, the afore mentioned tides and the bright sunny day, combined with a gaggle of boats on the prowl for salmon were enough to suggest that the dive might not be the best call.

So no diving means plenty of time to do some grocery shopping right! So now here is the hard part, how much food do you buy? We send out Participation forms to all of the dealers to get an idea of how many crew we’ll have (to work with the test divers) and how many tickets have been sold, so we can have an idea of how much food will be needed for the weekend. Unfortunately, we were flying completely blind with a grand total of zero responses as to ticket sales. So the food numbers were pretty much a wild-ass guess. Oh, and it turns out that Mapquest doesn’t know about McCord AFB. Their directions routed us right toward the base, where they are a tad sticky about unannounced visitors. So the road veered off into the sticks of coastal Washington state. It is important to note, as a guy, I was not lost, I was merely exploring. Ultimately, we did find a local Super Walmart, where we relived them of their entire inventory of Oscar Mayer XXLs and Premium Hamburgers.