I woke up early, read a book in bed, packed my bags again, then checked out of the hostel around noon. I wonder around Seattle looking for a last bite of Americana before boarding the ship.  I ended up settling for a burger at a pub, but I think I could have done better than that. After that I strolled around a bit longer, getting increasingly closer to the ship. I knew it wasn’t leaving till the next day at noon, but having some pretty valuable possessions on my back (not to mention the ridiculousness of walking around downtown Seattle looking like a pack mule) made the whole thing a little unnerving, so I ended up boarding the ship around 7pm. At the security gate was a woman who obviously missed the past few days of work, and thus had missed the meeting where it must have been mentioned that a passenger was going to be boarding a ship. She refused to let me cross into the port, and so I had to contact the port agent I had been dealing with to see if he could help me resolve the issue. I had only been in contact with the person trice before, and he struck me as the kind of person who didn’t really like to do his job. When I first contacted him a few days prior to this, he had something of a ‘yea-I’ll get-to-it-eventually’ attitude, and the previous Friday when I found that he still hadn’t informed anyone at the gate that I was coming in, he responded to my email asking for help by telling me how busy he was. So you can

Elliot bay as seen from the ship.

imagine who thrilled he must have been to see me calling him that evening. Despite it being a Sunday, he picked up after a few rings and heard my issues. He then asked to speak to the person working the gate. I caught flashes of what he said to her, and none of it was pretty. She got sick of listening to him, and passed my phone back to me. I’m not exactly sure what happened after that, but I got through the gate and onto the ship, at which point I settled in, unpacked a few things, then read a book till I fell asleep.