Olympia, WA is Full of Dirty Hippies

I was out of town for a few days. It wasn't a vacation. My friend, Dave, was getting married. Dave lives in Seattle. His fiancee was from Olympia, the state capital. Naturally, the wedding was in Olympia.

I had visited Dave in Seattle once before and I learned the following things:
1. Seattle likes coffee.
2. Seattle doesn't really like Starbucks.
3. Seattle has about 4 things to really check out if you're a tourist, namely: The Space Needle, Pike Place Market, and, did I say 4? I meant 2.
4. There's a mountain, Mt. Rainier, that you almost never get to see because of cloud cover.
5. When you can see Mt. Rainier, the correct phrase to describe this is: "The mountain is out."
6. The mountain was not out when I was there.
7. You can get good beef jerky at Pike Place Market.
8. I like beef jerky.
9. The Sonics used to play there.
10. I just wanted to have a list of 10 things.

This time, however, I was not going to be in Seattle. I was flying in and heading straight to Olympia. I figured Olympia would be like most state capitals: mid-sized, full of government buildings, corporation-filled, easily-accessible from the highway, and easily-bypassed with the same highway. When I think of state capitals, Richmond, Virginia seems the archetype. No matter how often I've driven past while traveling from New York to Florida, or vice versa, I've never felt the urge to stop or learn more about it, but from the road it looks exactly like a mid-size city with a semi-substantial downtown comprising a few city blocks, and that's it. Olympia, as far as I could tell, only had one government building and no real high-rise buildings. It was more residential and small-town than I would've suspected. It was also completely over-run by alternative, tattooed, short-haired, sexually-ambiguous, environmentally-charged youths of an apparent hippie persuasion. Needless to say, it was culture shock.

In my apartment I use some organic home cleaning products (without bleaches or dyes), so most of my friends think I masturbate while watching An Inconvenient Truth and bath once a week to conserve water. I do neither, but I do support alternative energies by using ConEd Solutions to introduce wind power to the NYC power grid, try to recycle paper and plastic, and try to eat local and organic when I can. In New York, that's revolutionary. In Olympia, I'm a dirty capitalist bent on destroying Mother Earth and harming all of her children.

I also learned some things while staying in Olympia, namely:
1. Everyone has compost bins to discard food-based waste such as banana peels, peach pits, and left-over rice that was never eaten.
2. Compost bins attract flies.
3. Some people also have big-ass spiders that hang out in the kitchen to eat some of those flies that are hanging around.
4. Everyone has little vegetable-garden patches in their backyard.
5. Some people also have chickens that hang out in the backyard too.
6. No one has paper towels or tissues.
7. Toilet paper is still welcome.
8. Not flushing the toilet after a #1 is encouraged.
9. Not flushing the toilet after a #2 is optional.
10. I could probably go for 20, but let's just stop here.

My friend Dave is a great guy and I was so glad I could be there to support his marriage. Seeing how happy he was made me feel great to witness the moment. I, however, blame him for the viral infection that consumed my immune system for most of the weekend when he booked for us an Olympia hostel [In fact, the only hostel in Olympia or so their website says] for our stay. Many of the items off the Olympia list were present at said hostel, which masqueraded as a clean, environmentally-friendly place to stay. I, on the other hand, would contend that the hostel was a lock box of germs and disease.

The bedsheets were full of what I hope were crumbs. The couches seemed to have been pulled in off the curb two weeks prior. The spiders in the kitchen were Arachnophobia-sized. The chicken hanging out in the backyard ended up in our bedroom, through a window? Through the door? Who knows. The blonde-children running around half-naked the next day, belonging to friends of the hostel workers, were reminiscent of The Children of the Corn. I felt bad for those kids. They did not look well-occupied.

11. Most women don't shave their legs or arm-pits [I knew I wasn't going to stop at 10].
12. I just don't get that.

Maybe this was only a product of Dave's circle, maybe these traits weren't prevalent throughout Olympia. I'm basing this on what I experienced and most of the time I was with people who would be at the wedding. Still, most of the people hanging around downtown and in the grocery stores seemed the same way. I'll extrapolate and stand by my observation, namely, Olympia, WA is full of dirty hippies.

On the bright side, in the impromptu, two-hand touch football game the day before the wedding I scored 3 out of my team's 4 touchdowns. If there was fantasy two-hand touch football, whoever had me cleaned up. My first has a deep bomb, which went for the length of the field. My next touchdown was Randy Moss style, where I leaped behind the defender and pulled the ball, literally, out of his hands in the end zone, preventing a momentum-shifting, drive-ending interception. My third and final touchdown was a 4th down conversion that guaranteed our non-loss (the game ended up tied). Not to pat myself on the back, but it was a huge day for me, two-hand touch football-y-speaking.

The wedding was non-traditional and casual and a lot of fun. By a lot of fun I mean a lot of fun considering I was completely engulfed by the hostel virus, with moments of nose-bleeding, constant nose-running, head feeling like it was in a vice-grip, no alcohol anywhere in sight, no meat anywhere in sight, etc. Again, on the bright side, since it was casual, I was dressed in khakis and a dress shirt, no suit, no tie, and considering how I was feeling I didn't want any alcohol. I didn't even mind the religious Jewishness of the wedding, which followed the Reconstructionist approach. It was my first real encounter with Reconstructionist Judaism and, objectively, I must say, it had a Pentecostal-chanting feel, which either mystified me or just wasn't my cup of tea. Basically, there was a lot of repetitive singing and dancing around. And if you're thinking what I'm thinking, then you would agree that the whole "No Alcohol" thing really dampened the potential of such singing and dancing. I'm pretty sure if I had a couple vodka sodas in me, I would've danced and sang like a maniac, like a possessed sociopath, basically, like a Olympia, WA resident.

Jared

P.S. All of the people I met, although "dirty hippies," were all wonderful people and I think the planet needs a few more of these environmentally-conscious individuals [They just need to be less, quote-unquote, off-the-reservoir]. Here's to finding a middle-ground for all of us to get behind and reducing the impact we make as people. Check out this link for more info:

http://www.climatecrisis.net/takeaction/