An American Fugitive

Remember the lyrics, "I would do anything for love, but I won't do that"?
Good. I'm sure by now you can hear the song playing along in your mind.
Now, replace the word 'love' with 'books.'

I would do anything for literature, for the written word, to get my hands on a really good book... but I won't do that. Okay, right there we have an accurate description of my day yesterday.

Something happened yesterday that cannot go without being mentioned on CTR. As some of you know from past posts, I am good friends with CurlyJ of Running From Cupcakes (you can find a link to her on my Muses page).

Yesterday CurlyJ and I decided to head south into Washington for shopping. We had grand plans. Our day, which we dubbed Miss J & Ms. C's Day of Adventure, began with a drive down to Lynnwood to visit 1/2 Price Books and Alderwood Mall, followed by travelling further to the Burlington Outlets and Trader Joes.

A lot happened yesterday morning. You know those days when nothing goes right? Well 1 September 2010 was that kind of day. It began with me somehow thinking I had my passport when it was actually another person's in my family. Along the way to retrieve my real passport we almost get into a car crash because a semi truck driver decides to text on his cell phone whilst driving. I'm not exaggerating either - there was definitely some swerving, increased heart rates, and unpleasant exchanges. Oh, and we're in a little car. If the driver hadn't of looked up from that cell phone screen just in time we would have been squished to oblivion.

Once we're finally across the border we both realize Lynnwood is actually pretty far into Washington. We begin to see signs saying we're on the verge of Seattle.

1/2 Price Books was awesome though... it's a relatively small store crammed to the brim with books on every subject imaginable. I easily could have spent many hours browsing the shelves. Oh and not to mention super cheap... I ended up leaving with two books for just under $7.


Alderwood Mall was also worth the long drive down south. This mall is HUGE and has tons of selection. It was so big that as we drove away we saw a segment of the mall that we had failed to visit. Obviously, as the shopaholics that we are, we pulled over and parked again. More stores? More shopping time, please!

Then, at 630PM on the way to Burlington and Trader Joes it happens... the icing on the cake of our crazy adventure. Flashing across highway signs is warnings of an incident. We're told the I5 is closed.

You know those movies where a city needs to be evacuated and the roads become mayhem? That's what the I5 turned into in just a few minutes. There was complete gridlock spanning the I5's five lanes. And to complete matters, we had 1/3 of a tank of gas.

Thankfully we hit the incident shortly after the highway was closed. We managed to file out of the highway with the other drivers and make our way into another part of Washington.

I still don't know where we ended up, but by this time we had very little gas, no map, were isolated by a thick forest of trees, and the only building nearby was called Exotic Tools. No people. No cars. Nothing but Exotic Tools and two lost Canadian girls.

After awhile of driving we ended up at a gas station, which as luck would have it, didn't sell maps. Troy, a friendly gasman, tells us we're in Everett. He also tells us there is a fugitive on the loose in his city and the only way to get home is to drive deeper into the mayhem.

We buy a dinner of champions from Troy after realizing Trader Joes is out of the question. Who said Pringles and iced tea is bad for you?

And then we travel into the heart of Everett. As we drive we see countless cop cars speeding throughout the streets with their sirens and flashers on. We see helicopters flying low above us. We see telephone poles knocked over with their wires cascading down onto the pavement.

The traffic was bumper to bumper in Everett
but calm enough to start taking pictures again.

We make it back onto the I5 shortly after 9PM. We manage to get home just in time for the Late Night News... and it's then that our fugitive comes on the television. All that mayhem occurred because a man didn't insure his car, had a handgun, shot a cop car, fought through a car chase on the I5, and then ran on foot... or something like that, my mind is kind of hazy.

I love America and look forward to my next trip down... but right now I feel like I've been chewed up and spat out by Washington.

I hope those books are worth the trouble we went through to get them!


PS - we had a baking extravaganza the night before all this happened. I got some pretty yummy pictures of the final products but unfortunately no recipes on hand to share. Here's a look at our chocolate chip cookies and peach muffins!

Oh, and the real, impartial story of the fugitive can be found here.