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July 3, 2012

Western Front

Ready, Set, No!

by Geoff Young

“If you're going to fail, make sure it's epic.”

“Who said that?”

“Nobody, I was just trying to make you feel better.”

The day began innocently enough in Forks, Washington, on the Olympic Peninsula. A logging town, Forks is now best known as the setting for Twilight, a popular emo-vampire book series whose essential message is that women are only as valuable as the men they covet. Don't hold me to that; I'm relying on third-hand information and don't know what the books are actually about, nor do I care to do so. I am as qualified to discuss Twilight as certain people are to discuss Moneyball.

I feel pretty confident about the vampire thing, though. And in Forks, because the streets are lined with shops that contain the name Twilight in them, in the hope that some angsty teen will convince his or her parents to buy whatever crap that particular shop is selling.

This is why we left at 6 a.m. Also, we had a full day ahead of us, including a ferry ride to Canada to visit the famous Butchart Gardens. The gardens were both lovely and entirely too full of people like us, but that is a story for another day.

The important point is that we would return to Port Angeles, on the United States side of the Strait of Juan de Fuca (defiantly named Juan de Fuca Strait on the Canadian side, calling to mind all manner of variations on the People's Front of Judea or what have you), around 5 p.m. This would give us 2 hours to drive to Tacoma, where the Rainiers were scheduled to host the Las Vegas 51s at 7:05.