Back in the Seattle Again

Seattle 4

Click. Don't click. Whatever. There are no guaranties in this life.

Look at this picture. Go on, click on it while I wait here. This is why I love going out West. I took this pic by merely pointing my camera on the car window and pressing a button. Here's another:

Once I get out of the land of corn and cows, approximately 500 miles into the trip, I get to look at this sort of thing for the next 1500 miles. Here's a sunset:

Look, I don't wanna bash on Charlotte too much more, but there just isn't much to look at on the way there or back. Sorry Jon.

OK, there is the Smokies. But they seem to fly by pretty quick where as the continental divide takes hundreds of miles just to warm up. Then, after the mountains, there's the cool down of more foothills and by that time yer in Seattle. Very cool drive.

Bad books though. While in Charlotte I made Jon get a library card so I might check out some more books on tape. As you might remember from the last webpage I put up, I wasn't going to have much time when I got home before I took off in the opposite direction.

Charlotte's library, like many city libraries, seemed under funded. Mt. Prospect has about 10 times as many books on tape/cd. After staring for at the piles of crap for awhile, I grabbed, pretty much at random: "The Dilbert Principle" by Scott Adams, "Chromosome 6" by Robin Cook, "Anatomy of Jury" by Seymour Butts (Actually Seymour Wishman, but who could resist?), and "The Man Who Fell to Earth" by Walter Tevis. And now, the book report:

The A.P. boys called it "Shocking and thought provoking... Cook's best to date." Well, maybe those three dots are hiding the phrase: "that such a book would be published, let alone ever take up valuable space on a hard drive." Or else years of reviewing crap has driven that poor, abused, A.P. reviewer crazy. Because, for the life of me, I can't think why somebody would say anything vaguely positive about this waste of my 10.5 hours. But the road is lonely, so I kept listening.

Basically Robin Cook thinks its neat that most rejection of donated organs happens because of some genes on chromosome 6 (Our entire genetic code is stored in 23 chromosomes, in case you care). And what if some super-brilliant guy found a way to add some of your chromosome 6 to a monkey's 6? Well then you'd have a ready-made organ donor which could be kept on a secret island somewhere in Africa until you need a liver or kidney, but you'd have to set this all up years in advance through a super-secret arm of a big nasty company which would keep the monkey for you. Sure, that's simple enough, but what it a mob boss was a client and got whacked right after he had a transplanted kidney? Then you'd have to get some mob goons to steal the body from the city morgue and blast him full of holes to destroy the monkey kidney, and yet maybe the body would still be found and a clever young white coroner who lives in the Bronx and plays basketball with friendly gang members would figure out what was going on and travel to Africa with said gang members to bust up the donor-monkey-system all the while the super-brilliant scientist dude was trying to say the monkeys he created which were becoming human 'cause of all the DNA he gave them. Mobsters, race relations, gang members, scientist, uber-corporations, Africa, and boating all collide in this mess of a novel that manages to not end up saying much of anything except that we should be careful with technology. How careful is not actually specified, because that would involve writing not just typing.

Actually, I popped this "book" in first but it was so bad I switched over to Mr. Cook's opus. After having my standards lowered, I could safely continue listening to Scott Adams' self-confessed effort to cash in on the business book craze.

That's right, SELF CONFESSED. Right there in the beginning of the book Scott "cleverly" lampoons his desire to make money by writing a crappy book. I guess he seems to think that this will absolve him of guilt because he's being "honest." More honesty would involve Mr. Adams realizing he has no talent for words and handing back his advance -- but no such luck. Instead he repeats an article he wrote for the Wall Street Journal and fills the rest of the book with chapters based on and consisting mostly of emails he gets from readers of his comic strip. They have wacky work stories, you see? And what's better than listening to 6.5 hours of wacky work stories?

The Man Who Fell to Earth was actually pretty good. I was quite surprised to find that rarest of things: A science fiction writer who can write! Look, I like science fiction, but most of these clods are way more interested in talking about sciencey stuff than actually creating interesting characters. But Walter Tevis did an excellent job putting actual feeling into his book. And while it is a little weird reading a book written in the 60s about the futuristic 80s, I quite enjoyed my time with the alien main protagonist and the odd bunch of misfit humans he surrounds himself with. There's and almost palpable sense of loss that pervades the book and its an interesting viewpoint. Plot? Alien comes from dying planet to save his race by cashing in on superior technology. Doesn't sound like much, but it is very well executed.

You can afford use up 6.5 hours on this book, unlike that terrible Dilbert thing. I'm still pissed off about being trapped with that money-making scam of a book.

Not much to say about this one cause the third cassette is messed up. And I was almost to Seattle anyway so I switched on the local radio and found this:

Good times. Ken and I have a funny story about this song -- you should ask us about it sometime.

So, eventually I arrived at Huda's place. If you don't remember who Huda is, then you need to read more back issues of "Errant Travelogue" (specifically Tacoma, and Seattle 1-3).

Huda has a terrific pad, which is right next to the beach and had a view of the sound. Man it's nice. Yep.

But it should be mentioned that is kinda messy. Since he was nice enough to let me loaf around his house for 1.7 weeks I won't discuss the bathroom or the kitchen but the pile of dirt -- that's another story. When I first got to Seattle, Huda wasn't home so I brought in my bags and hooked up my video game system. What? Anyway, while pluging in the plug I noticed the cat was sitting in a pile of dirt. Here's a picture of the cat:

The cats got a name but nobody ever uses it. She is simple referred to as "the cat." So there she is sitting in this big ol' pile of dirt and for a brief, scary, moment I thought that her litter box was just this corner and maybe that wasn't dirt. After only a little screaming, I calmed down and noticed that the dirt was feces-free. Whew.

Turns out Huda's got a plant hanging from the ceiling and it keeps falling down. How long the dirt had been there he wouldn't say. I have been informed that the dirt has been picked up, although I have no way of verifying this. Let's leave the whole subject behind us and talk about the cat.

She's cute, there's no gettin' around that. But she likes it rough. She'll come on over to ya, lie on yer lap, but then she gets antsy when you try to pet her. She starts trying to scratch and bite ya (no claws -- HA!) but she doesn't seem to be interested in leaving. This is her normal way of interacting.

Here she is sitting on a vintage game of RISK -- real wood pieces and everything. In the bottom left is one of Huda's posse', but I'll tell you more about them later. Now we need to move on to the real reason I was invited to come out to Seattle: The S.T.P.

Huda used to be a big guy, but he ate nothing but shakes for 7 months and now he's thinner than me. Which is mostly because I've gained a lot of weight and sat around for the last 7 months. But you've seen the photos from "One Act Wonders" so you know the awful truth. Part of this weight-loss plan involved exercising which lead him to sign up for the once a year Seattle to Portland (S.T.P.) bike ride. 208 miles

Some crazy guys will do this all in one day -- Freaks. Huda, like most of the 7,000 others took two days. Who droped him off and picked his stinky ass up after all that bikin'? That's right, me. I'm the one lying around while he does all the athletic stuff -- Think about the irony.

Actually, I only laid around the first day. After our continental breakfast the second day I... went back to bed, but then I got up and drove to Mount Saint Helens. Which was extreemly cool. I'm gonna show you some pictures, but almost none of them compare with the real thing. The scope and the size of everything just doesn't translate. Still, they're pretty nice pictures.

Here's some river valley gouged out by the torrent of mud after the explosion/eruption

More of same river valley. Keep in mind that the little tiny bushes are actually huge trees.

Kids playing instead of looking at big rocks

There's Mt. Saint Helens on the top. It should be note that I am miles away.

Mt. Saint Helens and people enjoying it.

Closer up, can you see the crater and the little mound growing inside it?

Even closer -- this mountain used to be a lot bigger.

Even though the top of the mountain was obsured by clouds it was very much worth the trip. Especially 'cause I gots ta drive Huda's fly ride: The Mazda 6

Nobody's every gonna let me behind the wheel of a BMW or Porsche or whatever without some serious supervision. I mostly drive underpowered compacts so getting to tear-ass around windy mountain roads with a sporty v6 was quite a treat. It's also got a pretty cool looking dash:

Pretty fancy, Huh? I was a little late getting into Portland, but Huda had a flat tire so we both arrived at our crappy hotel within minutes of each other.

And now a word about the sorry state of hotels in America. Did you know that all four hotels I stayed at during my trip had their video inputs removed so I couldn't hook up my Playstation 2? I'm not just talking about a videogame jones here, the PS2 is also a DVD player so I was thinking we could relax with a movie or some Aqua Teen Hunger Force. But my efforts were thwarted by "Lodgenet" which is a basically a Tivo box somewhere that has movies stored on it. And you can see these movies for only $10! They also have videogames.

Really crappy Nintendo 64 games. If yer gonna stick us with Nintendo, could it at least be the Gamecube? It's just possible that I don't want to pay $7 per hour for 5 year old videogames. Jerks.

Portland, by the way, has a transit system that looks a subway (at least the cars do) but travels around like a trolley. And it's FREE in the downtown area.

Here's an out-of-focus Huda trying to figure out our stop. We had Tapas and wine-free sangria at "Fernando's Hideaway." Really.

The next day we were off to visit Washington's famous rainforests.

Why are there rainforests in Washington? Well the air coming of the ocean has lots of moisture and when it tries to climb over the Olympic mountains the air gets cold (higher up = colder) and cold air doesn't hold moisture very well. So most of it comes down as rain -- creating a rainforest. It's a weird rainforest, though. Since Seattle is so far north there a lot of evergreen trees instead of the type of tree you would normally associate with rainforests. And lots of hanging moss.

Ferns, moss, and pine trees -- weird.

No rain in the rainforest today.

We had to follow this damn group of Swedes through the whole hike.

Kinda creepy.

There's Huda with his precious STP jacket.

Finally a picture of me! And that Huda guy.

As much not like Chicago as possible.

This turned out well -- you'd better click on it.

The rainforest was quite impressive. If your ever in the Washington area, see it. And Mt. St. Helens. And Mt. Rainer. And the Olympic Mountains. And the cool rainforesty beaches, which are coming up next:

Approaching the beach

Getting closer...

Almost there...

We're here!

Author of website

Frequent subject of website.

Man-alive was that cool. After that went went to see the Hoh river waterfalls:

Ready to go, or leave -- I can't remember. Let's say go 'cause it's at the beginning.

Are these the falls?

Look at me! I'm on a bridge!

Unobstructed view.

Obstructed view.

Very pretty.

Even better.

Back in the car and off to more adventures.

A helpful motorist reminded us that people were being killed overseas:

So we stopped at a local restaurant for some ribs:

And the latest news about the Weapons of Mass Destruction:

Thus reassured, we asked for some ribs, but yer not gonna believe this: They weren't anywhere to be found on the menu even though the sign clearly advertised BBQ Ribs. The waitress seemed annoyed when we complained about being lied to. Why couldn't we just accept that people are fallible? After all, it wasn't really a lie, it was an honest mistake. We calmed down, forgot about it, and shoveled in what they offered us.

After the rainforest, we went on to the Olympic Mountains. Yea, more pretty pictures!

A lake at the base of the mountains

More lake and foothills.

Lots o' trees in Washington.

But the clouds rolled in and obscured our view -- better pictures here.

On the way back we got to ride on a ferry boat.

Here it comes

And here's Huda on said ferry.

Once, when I was 5, my father dangled me over the edge of a ferry boat. Probably seemed like a good idea at the time.

Our old college friend, Andy happened to be viewing a wedding in the Seattle area and he managed to squeeze us into his schedule. He brought along his new lady-friend, Mary-Beth.

A petrified man in a trinket shop?

Laura bought me that shirt for 30 cents!

Love the shades.

Right next to the petrified man trinket shop (not its real name) is an old U-boat that was once the pride of the Soviet navy. Now it belongs to some retired American Sub guys who also reminded us to support our troops.

There's the retired sub-guy and his cute little dog. The dog does tricks for carrots.

These once held nuclear torpedoes -- yowza!

As my trip neared its end, we took a bike ride to a fish ladder:

Lazy fish won't jump for the camera.

And Huda's Multiculturepals had a picnic:

No burgers, no hot dogs, no chips just wild-style food from around the globe.

Wait, they did have lamb-burgers. You can really taste the lamb.

Huda's managed to find himself a really cool bunch of friends that I'd tell you more about except that this webpage is already way too long.

Before we head into the final road montage, I'd like to thank everyone I met/hung out with on this trip. Thanks for not really inviting me into your life but putting up with me anyway.

Also, I'd like to complain that you can't get Hanger One Vodka or Fresh-squeezed orange juice in Seattle either.