Lukas flew back to Switzerland on Monday; the Lady left, too. I didn't get back to the ship in time to pick up my training manual, but I did get to the hospital just in time to see Lukas off.

Needless to say, my two weeks' sailing training was an amazing experience—fun, exhausting, overwhelming, exciting, and so on. There's better adjectives out there, but they're not coming to mind. I wish I could go right back for another haul, longer this time—a month sounds about right—but I do have to show up to work every once in a while to keep my job. I'm slowly getting used to life on land again. The biggest change isn't the excess of privacy or sleep, it's my metabolism which hasn't shifted gears from climbing-up-rigging to sitting-at-computer: I'm eating normal for land life but I'm still hungry pretty much all the time.

Best moment of the trip? Standing at salute on the fore t'gallant yard, 70 feet or so up, at the mouth of the Columbia on a sunny morning, cormerants flying in huge Vs out to sea while we fire a 21 gun salute to the Chinook Nation. A close second was watching the Rose Festival fireworks from the main t'gallant, halfway between the water and the deck of the I-5 bridge, river below me full of little boats bobbing in the reflections of the fireworks. After that, everything else—so many things I'd never seen or done before.