Seattle, Washington

Outside the main conference business, I got to meet the lovely and charming lady who blogs as “HBD Chick.” I cleared up matters with Mingus Quinn, who runs one of the oldest and best of the race-realist websites, and with whom I have been engaged in some sparring over miscegenation on Zack’s site.

I also renewed my acquaintance with Bob Zungo, the great-grandfather of HBD blogging, who is a fellow survivor of lymphoma. We compared chemo notes:

Derb: “How long did it take you to get back to normal after you were through with chemo?”
Bob: “Well, I finished chemo around Memorial Day that year. Took the summer off”€”three full months. Went back to my job after Labor Day. Got to my office, sat down at my desk, put in two hours’ work, fell asleep.”
Derb: “Oh, dear. So three months is not enough, then.”
Bob: “Figure six.”

This was my first time ever in Seattle. With the help of Jim Lucid, a local gent who was attending the conference, I did a little sightseeing. (Thanks, Jim!) The main event here was a trip to Lake View Cemetery to pay respects to an old acquaintance.

Later all of us took a walking tour of the downtown market area”€”very nice, though I could have done without the white-guilt murals reminding us how beastly we had been to the West Coast Japanese-American farmers in WWII. Don’t blame me, pal”€”I was the merest twinkle in my Dad’s eye on a different continent.

For the return trip to New York the organizers had checked me in to a red-eye flight: Depart at 11PM and arrive at 7:30AM. My usual strategy for a red-eye is to get likkered-up beforehand. It’s the only way I can ever sleep on a plane. Here the aforementioned Zack Duncan came to the rescue.

I had to quit my room at noon, but I knew Zack was staying over another night, so I trundled over to his room and threw myself on his hospitality for the afternoon.

Come evening, Zack suggested dinner in the hotel restaurant. The food was the usual mediocre stuff, but we knocked back two bottles of wine and, oh, a couple, perhaps more, of bourbon nightcaps. I figured I was primed for the red-eye.

Somehow I found the right plane and staggered aboard. I couldn’t sleep, though, so I asked the steward if he could sell me any bourbon. He certainly could: one of those little miniature bottles for $7 on the credit card.

I still couldn’t sleep. When the steward came in sight again, I asked for more bourbon. He went away and came back with another miniature, but when I offered my credit card, he waved it away. “This one’s on the house,” he said.

Those must be the best ones: I slept like a babe thereafter, all the way to JFK. Sleepless from Seattle? Not me.