San Juan Islands

Oh, I'm sure, yeah, to deal with them, because they are very smart.

I was on a sailing adventure with my wife over in the San Juan Islands off Oregon and Washington.

There was a pod of killer whales in the neighborhood at the time, and we were moored outside of an entrance to a bay kind of a thing.

The bay ran for eight or ten miles along the shoreline and had another entrance from the Pacific Ocean.

And over that period, I think kind of earned her trust.

But there was no market in the San Juan Islands at that time.

This was around 2008.

And I had intercepted a call from a journalist that said, Hey, we want to come over to San Juan Island today.

And then about a week later, I was staging a house and I got a phone call from a friend, Stacy.

And she said, what have you done? And I said, what do you mean? And she goes, are you watching the news? And I said, no.

And she says, can you find a TV? And so I turned on the TV and the headlines across every news channel in the Puget Sound said the San Juan Islands, the hottest market in the U.S., Long story short, that attracted the buyer infamously.

And so those are the kind of things where you see something and it's not happening.

That's right.

They forgot that the San Juan Archipelago is right in the middle.

middle.So since this cluster of islands sort of fell outside the treaty, Great Britain and the US decided to, well, both claim the islands

They figured it was on the far side of the world, you know? Who's gonna care? Well, the people that lived out here cared a great deal.

So instead of what I kind of wanted to do, like one of the things, and again, it's not unique to me, but just of my age and where I was in my life, 9-11 was this really important chapter break in my life.

beyond the ways that we normally talk about it, right? Insofar as I left for my wedding, drove cross-country with my friend Doug Anderson and Cosmo the Wonder Dog, greatest dog who ever lived or ever will live, got married, San Juan Islands, went on our honeymoon, came back, picked up the dog to drive the dog back solo because my wife had to get back to work at the Justice Department.

The first day of being on the road, I was in Pendleton, Oregon, and that's when 9-11 happened.

And so you've heard, some of you have heard this story before, but the point is, is that, you know, marriage is a big chapter.

Very small ship.

and it's going to San Juan Islands and Puget Sound.

Wow, nice.

I mean, gosh, everything, right? I mean, from Tahiti to Alaska to the Caribbean to Europe to Asia.

How was your vacation?

great uh one of the most amazing places i've been in my life so san juan islands outside of washington state i didn't know where it was my wife looked it up she's like i want to do this it's essentially the same thing they do to transport you to martha's vineyard where you drive your car on the ferry and go across the ocean it was excellent

Awesome.

We had a