Alayna is adorable, lovable and hilarious. I am so blessed to have her in my life.

Yesterday was the first day this year that made all Seattlites long for the onset of summer in the Northwest. The day started sunny, ended with a spectacular sunset, and got up to a perfect 72 degrees somewhere in between. The warm sun felt like silk against my skin after such a long, dreary winter.

While I was at work taking in the lovely view of Meydenbauer Bay from my office, I e-mailed Alayna, “Just wondering if you’d be interested in prancing around blackberry bushes singing Disney songs sometime this evening.” This is how like to spend our free time together. There’s story behind it, and it ends with homemade blackberry pie at Alayna’s condo.

Alayna responded shortly. “Sounds divine!” So we planned to meet up at the Starbucks on Mercer Island after we both got off work. I met up with her, teriyaki in hand (the remainder of which will be my lunch today), and went through the drive-thru with her to order a Starbucks Vivanno (something akin a smoothie). Alas, Starbucks was fresh out of bananas, but Alayna came to the rescue by providing her own. They didn’t even give her a discount!

We arrived shortly at “the lid” (a park built on top of Mercer Island’s I-90 tunnel) for a picnic dinner, watching kids play soccer and chatting. I insisted that there was “a view”, even though it was totally obscured by the bushes. Does the view still exist if you can’t see it? If a tree falls and no one is around to hear it, does it still make a sound? But I digress. . . When it started to cool off, she took me back to Starbucks to pick up my car. Before we parted ways she said suddenly, “Do want to drive up to mile marker 22?” But of course! I mean, who wouldn’t want to drive up to mile marker 22 (the last mile marker before the Fall City exit).

She had a good reason though. You see, a friend of hers has assigned her to a regional treasure hunt, and at each location she is to find letters from the alphabet—“clues”— that she will eventually arrange to spell something, possibly “You are welcome”. This is in response to her telling him “Gracias” in the form of a jumble, and apparently he felt a need to one-up her. So far she’s searched for clues on her building’s entryway and the freezer at Mars Hill’s West Seattle Campus.

About a half hour later, we pulled off the highway at mile marker 22 to find a wooden cross adorned with fresh flowers and an envelope in a Ziploc bag. The flowers just happened to be two of her favorites, Gerber daisies and tulips, and the letter was addressed to Nadine (her middle name). After taking the flowers and the envelope (she looked like she was robbing a grave marker), we opened the envelope to find, along with a couple of alphabet letters, a blue index card with a drawing of “the pig of liberty”. This wasn’t a clue, it was just plain weird. On the other side of the card we were instructed to go 65 feet west-southwest of the Statue of Liberty, a replica of which can be found at Alki Beach.

Sadly, our tale ended there. We suspect that her next clue is under a picnic table somewhere at Alki Beach, but all picnic tables were occupied by the kind of people we preferred not to inconvenience.

10:29 AM |