The Various Diners of Whatcom County 1: IHOP

IHOP Restaurant (International House of Pancakes), 420 W Bakerview Road, Bellingham, WA

Starting at an IHOP?  Are you serious?  Well, the idea was that, like a great cinemaphotographer color correcting his camera with a white sheet of paper, I'd start somewhere obvious.  And frankly, who's to say what constitutes quality when it comes to a diner?  This place is near the airport at least, and deserves a look.

The Various Diners of Whatcom County, Washington: An Overview

Tom Waits, "Eggs and Sausage (In a Cadillac with Susan Michelson)"

When I lived in Korea I didn't miss breakfast foods that much -- like a lot of Asia, Koreans will basically heat up leftovers from the night before and that's what you eat before starting the day.  "Breakfast food" -- scrambled eggs, sugary french toast or pancakes -- is more of a Western thing.

However, I really missed diners.  Because diners aren't just a breakfast menu, but even more importantly a space -- preferably an all-night one, but I'll get to that.  While the quality of the food and coffee is important, so is the 30 minutes or so of peace and relative quiet that any diner should afford to anybody in need of such things.

Weirdly enough, during my time in South Korea there was a minor craze for precisely the type of syrupy-sugary breakfast foods that so many ex-pats seem to crave -- waffles in particular.  But those places were breakfast food restaurants, explicitly not diners.

Brunch is not breakfast.  I am willing to die on that stack of pancakes.

Anyhow, now I find myself living near the lovely town of Bellingham, Washington, just south of Canada.  And one thing I've noticed is that there are a ton of diners here, ranging from the corporate joints just going through the motions to the real spots -- the unique breakfast palaces -- that dot most of the county.

I plan on having at least one meal in all of them.  As far as I can, I'll order coffee and a plate of Eggs Benedict.  If that isn't available, then some combination of toast and at least one egg, sunny side up, will do.  I will try to be flexible above all else.

Each spot will receive between zero and five Nighthawks at the Diner for their trouble, based on the following criteria:

Vibe

Song heard

Coffee

Did the yolk pop like it should?

Can I sit and read a while?

Price: EB, coffee, tip

By my own count, I've got 18 places to visit.  Of course, with COVID and my own limited geographical experience, places might drop out or be added as needed.  For example, one local place is only doing take-out service for now -- nope, not a diner.

I should also mention -- shockingly -- that Bellingham does not have any all-night diners.  Honestly, this makes me sadder than it should but hey, I can't change the world.

Also, many years ago I came across this brilliant blog (remember those?) -- eggbaconchipsandbeans.  Feel free to think of this as my humble, American attempt at homage.

Thank you for joining me on this exciting, high-cholesterol journey!

And always tip your waitresses.

Owl Along This Country Road

So I know a lot of you think I was joking about THE KILLER OWL out here where I live.

This morning walking, neighbor (also walking) let me know that he HAD JUST HAD HIS WINTER HAT NIPPED AT BY THIS OWL.

We are on high owl alert, fam.#Bellingham #CountryLife

— "Give Me Ammunition, Not a Ride" James (@wetcasements) March 25, 2022

"You cannot step in the same river twice"

"Now, dear Reader, to say that two events occur at the same time is no simple matter.  In the Newtonian universe, there is an absolute gridwork of space and time, within which the material phenomena of existence fluctuate; and measuring against that gridwork one can of course say that any two given events are occurring at the same absolute time.  In the curved continuum of the Einsteinian universe, however, there is nothing but the material phenomena of existence; there is no underlying gridwork to measure against, and so you cannot say two events separated by space occur at he same time, because there is no clock that can encompass both of them -- their time is inextricably bound up with the other three dimensions that locate them.  This idea was expressed long before Einstein, by Heraclitus: 'You cannot step in the same river twice.'"

-- Kim Stanley Robinson, The Memory of Whiteness

War Pig

The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the ensuing (entirely predictable) war crimes are horrifying on so many levels.  Nothing I can say here will shed either light, peace, or sanity in the region.

So let's just keep it local, shall we, and mention that a former Washington State politician has stolen 60 Ukrainian orphans and trafficked them to Poland:

"But international agencies say, with the chaos and confusion of war, now is not an appropriate time for international adoptions from Ukraine. And Shea’s presence, and the lack of information surrounding the American group he’s with, has raised concerns among some residents of Kazimierz Dolny, the small Polish town where the children are staying at a hotel-guesthouse.

'I asked him many times, "What are you going to do with these children?" and he told me that it’s not my business,'  Weronika Ziarnicka, an aide to the mayor of Kazimierz Dolny, said of Shea. 'I got the feeling in my gut that something’s wrong with this guy; he didn’t want to tell me his last name.'"

Shea is the author of a Christian manifesto which includes the grooming of child soldiers for Christ. 

In Vino Veritas

Bellingham, Washington.

"gossamer in a basalt world"

"Our lives are plants, creating leaves and flowers that fall away and are lost forever.  I suppose that writing this account on these leaves will make little difference; words are gossamer in a basalt world.  Still I am glad I did it.  Soon we will descend to the ninth planet, and in this interregnum I feel completely cast loose, on the edge of a new world, a new life; stripped of all habits, opinions and expectations, I tremble like a blade of grass in the open air.  The old life swirls in my mind like rock jasmine blooms down a canyon stream, and I wonder what will live on into my new existence, for even my unsheathing feels like a dream to me now, fragmentary, delirious, unreal.  Still, spun into gossamer these parts of a world may remain within my ken: what we feel most, we remember best.  The weak link is."

-- Kim Stanley Robinson, Icehenge

Reefer Madness

Bellingham, Washington.

I don't partake of the icky any longer, and haven't in about 20 years or so.  But pot shops are a part of life out here in Bellingham and at some point I should probably take the trouble to actually walk inside of one.

Also, I love the unearned confidence of his sign on the right -- "EST. 2021" indeed.

Stay golden, pony-boy.

"the inertia of blind wanderings"

"Think of our own life-lines or life-times as being such a vegetable thing, abundantly flowering and putting forth seedpods of what we are, so that moments ripen and fall to earth, bursting with new plantings of ourselves in us -- and these, subject to mutations, radioactive alterations and misunderstandings of our original form, puns, cross-messages of the first code we come from -- and so we go to birth, to the leaping aliveness of a new beginning from the inertia of the blind wanderings of the plant we are in our going to seed."

-- Robert Duncan, "The Pod of Adam"

"not even on other planets"

"But that was the kind of thing that happened when exploring unknown territory, when struggling through the mountains of terra incognita for the first time.  It was the kind of experience that humanity would never have again, not even on other planets.  Of course there were wilderness adventure tours these days being dropped in Alaska or Mongolia or the Himalayas without maps or compasses or GPS or radio, to try to reproduce that experience.  But no mater how they tried, Val did not believe what they were doing was really the same.  It was impossible to regain that mental state, of wanting to know and not knowing."

-- Kim Stanley Robinson, Antarctica

Hiya

Light posting for a bit.  We're dealing with some health issues in the family.  Life is never easy.