Killer whales will break your heart

I like whales, but that’s not news. 

Everyone on earth should like whales. Because they’re amazing and beautiful and smooth, because they sing, because a whale tongue weighs as much as a bus, and because whales aren’t just sitting around waiting for you. Whales aren’t like that.

Whales are the celebrities of the sea. Whales are running errands, falling in love, making mistakes and chasing their dreams, just like you and me, but when we see whales we all scream and take thousands of photos and talk about it for the rest of our lives. We see a whale for one minute and it changes us forever. Whales ARE whales, all of the time. 

Anyone can see Beyoncé or take a photo with her but what’s it like to wake up at 2am and BE Beyoncé and have to go to the bathroom? What's it like to know that every time you've met someone that day has been the most memorable day of their life?

These are questions I would know the answers to as soon as I looked a whale in the eye. So I really wanted to see a whale. A killer whale specifically. 

Last weekend we went up to the San Juan Islands to the Olympic Peninsula or to Washington or these might all be the same place. Our boat captain was Captain Matt and his life’s two-part mission to be charismatic and to find killer whales and look at them. Killer whales! He sat in the front of the boat staring through binoculars like a captain from a Wes Anderson film. I’m happy with any whales but I’d love to see killer whales from a Wes Anderson film.

The day went by really fast. And the further we went into the ocean and the smoother the water got and the more free ginger candies I ate, the more I started to realize that the ocean is gigantic. You guys, it’s huge. The ocean is just this enormous immeasurable thing deeper than ever, and in it are about eighty killer whales.

That's seventy-nine more whales than I even need to see, but still not very many.

So we didn’t see any whales but we did see how big the ocean is and isn’t that something?

As Captain Matt wrapped up our tour he did his best to convince us that we’d had an amazing time. He spent several minutes on the loudspeaker assuring us how much fun we’d had. 

“Remember we saw that eagle? We all loved that. We didn't see any killer whales but remember those seals? Remember when we saw a harbor porpoise in the distance? That sure was something to see. We really did have fun today, we really did have a great, great day.”

The good news is I've had a dormant fear my entire life that some day I'll see a killer whale and it will be so great I'll have nothing else to look forward to and no reasons left to exist. A fear that seeing a killer whale is the nature-sighting equivalent of doing meth, and I'll keep looking for that high again and never find it until one day I'm just lying in a ditch whispering about orcas to myself. That fear seems legitimate.

And the other good news is it seems like there's a small chance that some killer whales might have seen us, and I hope it changed their life forever.

Have you ever seen a killer whale? Please tell me everything.

Have you ever seen the movie Blackfish? I haven't but I want to.

Name any place in the world

My sister has the same initials as me but is better at running than me, better at making scrambled eggs than me, and probably smells better than me, and she’s getting an envelope in the mail any Wednesday now that says where she will live for the next year and half while she’s on a mission. 

For some reason the envelope will definitely arrive on a Wednesday. We know that, but we don't know where she'll be going.

She could go anywhere in the world! Except North Korea. And a few other places. But other than that, anywhere in the world. It makes me so excited I can’t eat, but then every few hours it makes me so excited I eat lots, so it evens out.

Can you imagine my sister being gone for a year and a half? I guess first you have to imagine me having a sister. If you already know my sister, you have a head start on imagining this. My sister’s name is Bryn.

A year and a half is a long time. Sometimes I think of a good joke and am about to say it to my sister, but then I think, I’ll save that joke and tell it to her when she’s gone. That way the joke can cheer her up after a hard day in Botswana or Iowa or Iceland or the Maldives, or anywhere, anywhere in the world. Except North Korea. And a few other places. 

Here are ten of the thousands of places Bryn could possibly go:

Neft Dashlari a city built on some boats floating off the coast of Russia or something.

Somewhere with tapeworms I want to hear more about them.

A 21-Jump-Street-style mission where she goes to high schools every day and pretends to be a student.

Florence, Italy This is my grandmother’s vote. My grandmother has it on good authority that girls usually go where their dads go, and my dad went to Italy. This sounds about as reasonable as the theory that men only go bald if their mom’s dad went bald, but I think some scientists proved that recently, so this one might actually be pretty accurate. 

One of those states no one can remember when they’re trying to name all 50 states.

Tokyo, Japan If my sister goes to Japan I will be as excited as that dog in the YouTube video that sees his owner for the first time in 2 years and gets so excited he passes out. I’m not posting a link because the video itself was pretty underwhelming.

Marseille, France

Just the rainforest Is that a thing? I hope so.

Canada Everyone in my family has dual Canadian-American citizenship and we all talk a big game about being Canadian but if my sister spent a year and a half there she would honestly know infinitely more about Canada than the rest of us combined.

Portland, Oregon I would get to see her every day.

I miss you already Bryn. Mostly because you already live in another time zone but also because I love you a ton.

Welcome to California

I thought I lived in California for a year but I was wrong.

California is actually located in Temecula, California; a place so California it's measured in dog years. Live there three weeks and that counts as almost five months spent in California.

Temecula is an hour from Los Angeles, an hour from San Diego, and an hour from the beach. That can either sound like the best thing or the worst, depending on what inflection you use. It really depends on how you pronounce the word "hour." Is that a fast hour, a quick fifty-five-minutes-and-you're-in-the-ocean trip? Or is that an hour of desolate unbearable wasteland separating you from anything fun? I can't tell you. You'll have to find out for yourself.

What I will tell you is that Temecula, California has streets so wide there are sometimes three left turn lanes. Three left turn lanes!

To me, all undeveloped nature looks straight out of either Jurassic Park or Land Before Time, and Temecula is the Land Before Time sort of nature, which is cool because most of Portland is the Jurassic Park sort.

It's the desolate unbearable wasteland kind.

My sister Bryn made me this mug to commemorate our weekend in Temecula so now everything I drink tastes like California. If you live near me you're welcome to try it. I live in Jurassic Park.

Why are these wet

The other day a cab driver and I were talking about Metallica.

I'm not sure how we started talking about Metallica. I had a super early flight and a cab so early I honestly think I called it in my sleep, and I woke up halfway to the airport halfway through a conversation about Metallica. So there we were. This cab driver loved heavy metal.

"Yeah I've been into heavy metal since I was a kid" he said as I rubbed my eyes and swallowed a yawn. "Even in fifth grade I was always wearing ripped jeans and heavy metal t-shirts, I was a real freak. All the other kids were like WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU and I was like hey, I'm just really into Metallica."

I was a real freak in fifth grade too.

Once in fifth grade our Sunday school teacher gave us each a handful of Skittles, and then asked me to come up and write some things on the chalkboard. So I set my Skittles down on top of my notebook. 

"Don't eat my Skittles, you guys." I announced to the class. "I licked them all."

I wasn't even halfway to the chalkboard when one of the girls screamed. "These are wet! Why are your Skittles wet?!" She was holding one of my Skittles (probably a red one, those are the best) and looking horrified.

"I told you," I said, real calmly, cool as anything. "I licked them."

For some reason that explanation freaked out the whole class. All the other kids were like WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU and I wish I could have responded with hey, I'm just really into Metallica.

I know this picture is too recent but I love their faces in it. They look like their photographer is speaking another language.

You can ask this fifth-grader if she likes Metallica but she's too busy brushing her teeth with a Sonicare to answer so don't bother.

I am really into jazz music though.

Guess my favorite word

If you had asked me a month ago to describe the world I would have needed a minute. Maybe my answer would have to do with people, or families, or traveling, or owning the right number of socks or being surprised or getting old, or animals. I would have said it was about a lot of things.

Now if you ask me to describe the world I can answer immediately HILLS. The world is about hills.

Because a month ago I started biking and guys, hills are everywhere. Hills are all that matters to me now. Does that road have hills? How many bike pedal rotations would the hill take to bike up? Are there downhills? Please describe the downhills.

I only think in hill metaphors now. Long line at the checkout is a hill. Someone smiling at me: short downhill. Learning Spanish: too hilly. Not even worth it. 

Most days are a mix of uphill and downhill and some days are a slow uphill then a downhill, and some days are just straight uphill which is the worst because where am I going, why do I need to get up there?

Every shape looks like a hill to me. Eyebrows. The letter n. Sandwiches are a good food because they're flat. And pizza because I love pizza.

Idioms with the word "hill" in them make me go insane. If I hear someone at a table next to me in a restaurant say "It's all downhill from here" it takes all the self-control I have to not turn around and scream HOORAY DOWNHILL IS THE BEST and high-five all of them because they get it. It's about hills.