seattle travel tree

Tree, not log, because it's not finished. Hah! Hah.

So: inspired by Ed's recent lengthy recount of watching a lot of fast moving water and the many accompanying still pictures of fast moving water, I am going to tell the world of my longest vacation yet: six days in Washington. It hasn't really happened yet, but I hope some interesting things happen there.

[8-09, 0:35 AM] (cool kids use military time)
I guess I'm not, technically, on the trip yet, but this is a good opportunity to gloat that I've finished my joke of a driver's ed class. I aced the multiple choice final exam today despite answering a few questions with other letters, like "Q". That class was like having my brain steamrollered, except for that one guy who told us gory stories, like the guy in the metro pit whose guts fell out or the woman who was ripped in half by a tree. Good day that was.

[8-10, 23:54 PM] (but in WA, it's 20:54. screw that.)
They say that each year June 1st through May 31st is Rain Fest in Seattle. They're right. Christ. I think today I've seen more water than Ed saw pour over that dumb waterfall on his inferior trip.
I mean, when we were driving to my Great Aunt's house this afternoon, the cab driver pointed out Mount St. Helens
and Mount Ranier.
I never want to see another rainbow again. On a positive note, there's a street called "Butte Dr." near this house. It's pronounced "Byoot Drive", but we've come to a consensus that it is, from now on, "Butt Doctor". Salmon here tastes as delicious as cake, and is twice as filling. Also, I now have a Mac in the room where I sleep. Maybe I'm operating on three hours of sleep and suffering from jet lag, but I'ma be up aaall night watching old MST3k episodes. I can always sleep in the Space Needle tomorrow - it's not like we'll be able to see anything but bleak grayness pocked with an unhealthy level of rainbows.

[8-11, 1:27 AM] (I guess I don't really need to put the inaccurate time down, since I have no time to update this during my busy days jam packed with water watching. I'll always post at night...)

I started this travel log as a joke, because this town is nothing more than a bowl of mountains containing a whole lotta pregnant clouds, as the legendary Paolini once described those puffy floaty rain thingies in one of his beautiful poetic similes. Today was actually interesting, however. I'm worried that means it's the climax of my journey. Well, anyway:

I had my first Starbucks Coffee today! Fitting, since the Starbucks plague grew out of Seattle. Maybe we'll get to visit the original store where from the virus spread. Verdict: It tastes like hot, dirty black sink water, just like all other coffees.

Then I met a few more relatives I didn't know existed, including a nice cousin and her soccer-crazed Aussie friend. We visited a waterfall that has a longer drop than Niagara does. Okay, so maybe it's just a little bit skinnier. It's still better than Niagara and you know it.

It was in the town where Twin Peaks was filmed!!!!!
I realize this is exciting only to me, and maybe any confused David Lynch fans who stumble across this page, but still: Twin Peaks!!! And we ate at the Diner that was there in the show! My cousin's friend ordered the Aussie burger for fun. The waitress told her her Australian accent was "pretty close". We all laughed at the waitress's ignorance, breaking her spirit. Good fun.

Then came the Space Needle, which doesn't look at all like a needle and certainly doesn't go into space. I guess it looks a bit like a syringe, but when I hear "needle" I think "little kids at Glen Echo camp shoving into my face asking to thread for them" - you know, the sewing kind, not the fun kind. The experience was pretty ho-hum, but I'm sure it was more fun than, say, being in a tall rotating restaurant in Canada, which sounds pretty stupid to me.
Looking down from up there we saw a theme park with rides, and it all looked just like RollerCoaster Tycoon, except you couldn't drown those people. Maybe you could try to spit on them, though.

After wading out through the TTT (tower tourist trap) we decided to actually ride one of the roller coasters. It was a crappy local fair so the rails were composed almost entirely of pure rust. This meant a painful ride - whacking your head against the car and your knees into the bar - but a really, really fun one.

Then we played with my uncle's three golden retrievers (in the rain) and ate pizza until the day was over. I don't know what we'll do tomorrow, but it will probably be much more fun than a cool hotel room sink or a plastic mouse in your bed. I mean, this week is really shaping up. We almost saw the sun today!

[8-11, 19:37 PM]

Went to Museum Of Glass and watched glass being blown by glassblowers. They were making a large glass fish. It was neato.

Right now I'm home alone with my great aunt's corgi, Dixianna. So far I've chattered at her for ten minutes, thrown food and balls at her, and made duck noises while holding a wooden duck. I think she's really annoyed with me. She's lying down in another room, giving me dry looks whenever I try to provoke a response from her. In response to her insubordination, I'm establishing dominance by closing myself in my room and blogging. They teach that in books, I think.

[8-12, 0:53 AM]

I think Dixie might not hate me - she's sleeping in my room for some odd reason. Maybe she just knows that she makes annoying noises as she falls asleep and wants to bug me. Whatever, I'll be unfazed on the computer until she's unconscious. The thing looks like a big fat twinkie! All corgis do, apparently.
Well, I saw The World's Deadliest Mountcano, Ranier. Sort of. Uncle Mike drove me to the parking lot in front of the liquor store and I could see about half of it. It hasn't rained all day. Nature here seems to have accepted me, grudgingly, and turned all sunny and things. Sweet.

Had cherry pie for the first time ever. That's about all that's happened. Here's a fish!

O <---bubbles o o __n_,,,-`| ( o u _ < \/ ``-,| I guess it only really looks like a fish if you squint, though. And then move your head back and forth in the right motion. And then look at a fish.

[8-13, 2:18 AM]

Since that roller coaster didn't sufficiently snap our necks, we drove back to Seattle and whipped through really hilly neighborhoods today. I think our plan is to be as touristy as possible, as evidenced by:
-The way we've taken pictures of everything fitting the criteria that it's already been photographed by enough tourists to bleach it
-The fact that my mom and I are both wearing "Seattle" shirts, just in case we get kidnapped and boated to Alaska where one of the kind Inuits will notice that we're in the wrong place and ship us back
-I bought a stupid hat.

I really like that hat. It helped deflect rain.

...Er, anyway, a lot of stupid crap happened that nobody in their right mind would care to read an essay about, so I'll list stuff. Oh, and I gat serm pikchurs! :D

-We actually did visit the original Starbucks! It looked just like all the other ones, except it had a different logo and lots of retail mugs with that logo on them.
That's the front of the store. I don't know how to crop pictures with this stupid computer, so I'll leave Random Portly Man on the side there.

-Went to market. They have every kind of flower you ever saw and every fruit or vegetable and every fish you could imagine being sold there, along with such randomosities as bear costumes and ocarinas of time (seriously) and sculptures crafted from Mt. St. Helen's ash. (When a state is devastated by a horrible, deadly natural disaster, America decides to capitalize. That's the lava-red ash-white and clouded-over-sky-blue spirit!)

-Watched men throw fish.

It's a famous shop stand where you order up a fish or jar or whatever and the workers belt out robust chants and calls that the surrounding crowd can join in on, then they throw the fish over a dozen feet right into the paper it gets wrapped in. Then you pay.

Americans seem to love handsome men throwing things and yelling. Incorporating this into your business is guaranteed success. I'm totally going to paint paintings and then stand in a street stall hurling them at people! And I have these fine fish throwing men to thank.

-Drove by homeless man with cardboard that read "ANOTHER DUMB SIGN." My cousin generously decided that was worth a few bucks.

-This photo doesn't have much to do with anything, really. It makes Seattle look deceptively rural, though. Those are totem poles in the background. See the beautiful sky? I haven't been kidding about the weather. Much.

-It's hard to tell from behind, but this is Vladimir Lenin. He has a massive, infamous statue over in this neighborhood. He stands right in front of a strip mall where we ate delicious gelattos. The story goes that some guy found him selling for a lot of money at a yard sale and decided he'd spiff up the street, or something. Awesome. Apparently people put silly clothes on him sometimes.

-This is the Troll. He's under a bridge. On Troll Avenue. Coincidence? You decide! He has a Volkswagen buggy in his left hand, so that should show you how big he is. (very)
I climbed up his shoulder and leaned jauntily against his head in another picture, but it was taken with an old school disposable camera and I'm not going to go get that stupid thing developed and then scan it in back home just to put my face on the internet and get killed by internet samurai stalkers.

-Then we drove up and down a bunch of hills to get this cool snapshot of the city. There's supposed to be a big mountain behind it. Pretend it's there.

-On the way home we passed the Starbucks factory. It's really large and daunting. The only indication of whose HQ it is (beside cousin Zach telling us) was a tall tower with the Starbucks lady's eyes peering out at the top in all directions. A high level of creepy. I've had enough of coffee, already! I swear we slowly drove by one intersection in a neighborhood with FIVE coffee shops, including a Starbucks, a Tully's, a Seattle's Best and a few more private-owned stores. I don't say criminy a lot, but criminy is that a lot of coffee.

-Then I went home and punched the Mac until it did what I wanted it to. Stupid thing.