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Friday
March 31, 2006
a-z tv sub i

scroll down, my friend  
The Living Barge has really come
to life since my last visit with the
first load of plants
. I came today
to document its passage by tug
from its assembly dock at Duwamish
Shipyard to further upriver where it
will be moored throughout April be-
tween Gateway Park North and Slip 4.
After giving the approximately 450
plants a last drink before their trip,
Sarah, Nicole and I boarded a Western
Tugboat with Todd and Pete and we were off.
It was a beautiful day for a boatride past
derelict docks, gawky cargo cranes, giant
wrecking yards, Tetris stacks of ship
containers
, steel grated bridges, mammoth
Boeing buildings and Brobdingnagian bargeloads of life's
essentials bound for Alaska
. Getting the Living Barge situated
proved more challenging than anyone had anticipated and I
was recruited to help haul and heave the hawsers as the boat
was threaded between two dolphins (a ring of pilings lashed
together to act as a single post to which a ship is tethered
). I
literally had to learn the ropes and what I learned was that
after touching them my hands reeked of petroleum and other
chemicals the ropes had absorbed from proximity to the river.