More of Vashon

Busy day Thursday. In the morning I went swimming at the Vashon Athletic Club, which is connected to a gas station, as though it had once been the auto repair shop. I’ve already mentioned how crummy it looked to me, compared to what I’m used to at Charlestown and various athletic clubs I’ve belonged to or used around the country. The locker room looked cramped and kind of primitive. The pool reeked of chlorine and looked small to me. However, I decided to give it a try.

And I’m glad I did. There was no chlorine in the air at all. The guy who maintains it had told me that somebody had neglected to do something the day I smelled it. In the system he maintains, they make their own chlorine from salt. The water felt great. It tasted faintly salty. The inside of the pool has recently been resurfaced, and after swimming the first lap, I felt that it might be a couple of yards longer than Charlestown’s pool. The pool itself is good, even though the translucent walls of the room look shoddy. I didn’t even mind the shower for four.

After swimming, Carol’s and Geoff’s friend Carla took  me to lunch at the Vashon Tea Shop, right in the middle of uptown. They offer dozens of varieties of teas–black, green, white, decaf, herbal, and tisanes (floral infusions).

Here’s Carla contemplating her order at the counter.

We both had spinach feta quiche, made in individual portions and very good. I had lapsang souchong tea, which  I haven’t had in over 20 years, I’m sure. Ernie and I used to have it among a variety of teas we drank regularly, but that was long ago when we had tea every afternoon.

The current featured local artist makes these mini-altars. (I thought of Joseph Cornell’s art boxes.)

And someone made these silk mini-prayer flags.

When she invited me to lunch, Carla said the tea shop was “gentle elegant.” She’d heard about my first impression of Vashon.

I wouldn’t describe this shop as elegant, but it is charming and quiet. Definitely refined by Vashon standards.

And a curtained doorway leads into The Vashon Book Store, a surprisingly well-stocked bookshop for such a small community. Even more surprising, there’s another bookshop two blocks away, next to Cafe Luna.

Good lunch in good company.

Thursday evening Carol, Geoff, and I walked uptown to the performance of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer’s Night Dream by local actors. It was performed outdoors on a beautiful evening in the park.

The cast and the audience included people of all ages, from infants to elderly–well, not the cast. But there were lots of kids in the cast.

It was what you would expect of a small-town amateur production, and because of my hearing, I could not understand most of the speaking. That didn’t matter. The ambiance was great and I thoroughly enjoyed being there.

So, Vashon has begun to grow on me. Being here has become much more enjoyable.

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