I often wonder what normal people do with their weekends. Some of my friends display their lovingly restored rides at car shows, others go boating, still others have family picnics or hike to the top of mountains just to see what there is to see.

Me? I go pirating. When I was still in the dating world, this was always hard to explain. On a date, the object of my temporary affection would inevitably ask what I did for a living, and then what I did for fun.

For a living, my standard answer was, “I sit at home, make stuff up, and people send me checks.”

For fun, well, that’s a far harder question to answer. I mean, how can you reduce being a pirate down to just a sentence or two without coming across as a crazy person?

I eventually just said that I was an entertainer. That was a little easier to introduce into a conversation, at least until they asked what kind of entertainer I was.

Back to being pirate, for heaven forbid they ever inferred that I was a clown.

Years ago, of course, this was an easier question to answer. There were no pirates around, except those 40 or so Seafair guys. Not just in Seattle, but the whole damned country. Pirates were few and far between. Until that bastard Johnny Depp came along and ruined everything with his preposterous Jack Sparrow.

Now everyone thinks he or she is a pirate.

I’m not going to go into the long and short of what does or doesn’t make you a pirate. Hell, I wrote an entire book on the subject.

But perhaps the events that transpired this weekend will demonstrate what it’s like to be a pirate who just doesn’t dress up in pirate clothes but lives a pirate’s life, as unpredictable as it can be.

Krimson Kat and I headed off to my old stomping grounds in Port Orchard over the past weekend. It was time for the Fathoms O’ Fun festival, a celebration that I used to be very much a part of, even getting sucked into being on their board and designing their award-winning float.

Other pirates were in town for the parade. As we all know, I don’t do parades anymore because, well, they suck. You stand around for an hour or more on a side street, just so you can wave to a blur of people as you try to keep pace with whatever speed the parade ended up going.

Kat and I had planned to pre-rade instead. This is where we end up roaming the parade route in the hour before the parade, interacting with everyone on the sidewalks who are bored stiff, waiting for the parade to start. It is prime entertainment space.

Our plan was to hit a couple of bars and restaurants all over town, then do the pre-rade at about 5.

Ah, the best-laid plans. We ended up getting waylaid at the Goldfish Races where we sang some impromptu songs and let the kids rob us of treasure. We had planned to spend just a little time downtown, then shoot up to some of my favorite haunts up the hill for more adventure before heading back down to town to do the planned pre-rade.

But we were already way behind schedule. We would have to go directly into pre-rade mode. We headed for the end of the parade route which always marks the start of the pre-rade. We were still a little early, so we wandered into the Hi-Tide. Long ago, it was one of my haunts here, so I thought it would be a good place to have a quick drink.

Drink yes, quick no. Within seconds of coming through the door, it was game on. We had walked into a gold mine of fun people who wanted to play. Kat and I dove right in, kicking up the energy level from about a 4 to a 7.5 in minutes with our antics.

There was just one thing missing. Music. I had waffled about whether I should bring my guitar with me on the pre-rade this time, but decided against it. My mistake. The guitar was now on the other end of town.

No worries. Off we went down the pre-rade route, still finding time to entertain everyone, not only on the way down, but on the way back. By now I had my guitar, so the trip back was filled with impromptu four line songs about the people we met and situations we encountered along the way.

We were totally off plan by now, which is when things are the most fun. We were in the moment, improvisational heaven where everything said and done became hilariously funnier because of that rare moment where everything is perfect.

We sang our hearts out in the bar, chatted endlessly to everyone we encountered, met the owners, hung out with the regulars, and sang more songs. It all became a blur, in part because the drinks kept arriving, and in part because we were in that zone I often talk about.

By the time some of our pirate friends arrived from doing the parade, we had forgotten all about that there was a parade that day. We owned the entire bar, hopping from table to table inside, then heading out to the patio where we sang and laughed some more. I’m not even sure when our pirate friends left because we were still going well into the night.

That, my friends, is a pirate’s life. Being so in the moment that 12 hours flew by like they were minutes.

The only downside was remembering that our car was still on the other side of town. It was almost a perfect plan. But even the trip back to the car was hilarious because we were still in entertainment mode as we rolled back down the parade route one more time

The next day? Well, there are paybacks in this business. We were feeling no pain Saturday night but Sunday morning, all the aches and pains of “being on” at that level came back to slap us on the ass. It was a less than pleasant experience, but the experience the day and night before made it all worthwhile.

Best of all, I never have to explain what I like to do on weekends to a prospective mate. And neither does Kat.

In the Emerald City, feeling blessed that the pharmacy gods came up with ibuprofen,

  • Robb