I called the cab to pick us up at 4:30 AM for a 6:20 AM departure, and I set the alarm to wake us up at 3:30. Both of these reflected my tendency to overestimate the amount of time required for any activity. When the alarm went off at 3:30, I woke up almost immediately. I let Aaron sleep a little longer, knowing that his only responsibilities that morning involved getting dressed and leaving notes for our landlord on which plants should be watered and when. I, on the other hand, had to pack up the last few things that could not have been packed the night before: toothpaste, shampoo, deodorant etc. The hour I left myself for these activities was much more time than I needed. After I had put the large Rand McNally atlas into my suitcase and squeezed it shut, I still had more than twenty minutes until the cab was scheduled to arrive. I finished the milk, the last perishable food in the house, for breakfast and double-checked to make sure that all the windows in the apartment had been closed and locked as Mary, our 90-something landlord had requested. When the cab arrived, we grabbed the two suitcases, the duffel bag, the laptop bag, and the backpack, and we were off.
We arrived at the airport before fix o’ clock. This gave us a full hour and twenty minutes until our first flight took off. This was at least forty-five more minutes than we needed. Apparently, nobody else wants to fly across the country in the early hours of the morning. After checking in and being the second people in line at a security checkpoint that had yet to open, we took our seats in the small waiting area for the two AirTran gates in Terminal B. We watched the anchors on CNN discuss the Georgian-Russian conflict and watched our fellow passengers try, in vain, to purchase food from the obviously closed concession, until we boarded our first flight to Milwaukee.
With the help of a single Tylenol PM (those things really pack a punch!), I was out like a light for the entire first leg of our journey and for much of the forty-five minute layover and hour delay in the Milwaukee airport. I was not able to fully join the land of the living until about an hour into our flight from Milwaukee to Seattle. I found myself watching the view from the window seat as a preview of the journey to come. We passed through the heart of the Midwest, with its stunningly straight roads and its precise angular patterns composed of acres of corn, soybeans, and wheat. We passed over the foothills of the Rockies, defined by wrinkled earth and winding rivers and a stark absence of towns or roads. Finally, as we approached Seattle, we flew over the Cascade Mountains and Mount Ranier (known to locals as "The Mountain") and the leafy green suburbs on their western side. In a few hours, I was able to see from above all the things I would view at grounds level over the next two weeks, and my sense of anticipation grew.
When we finally landed in Seattle, our first task was picking up our reserved rental car at Hertz. Because we would be traveling such a long distance, finding a vehicle that sipped gasoline was absolutely essential. When Aaron and I were on our honeymoon in Canada, we had reserved an economy car but ended up settling for an SUV, a decision we lived to regret. This time, we were absolutely unwilling to accept such an “upgrade.” When we came to the counter and presented our reservation, the clerk glanced over it and told us that we could “upgrade” to an SUV with a GPS system for no extra cost. Without hesitation, we unanimously said “No!” No, that would not be acceptable. The sales clerk immediately backed town and told us that the economy car we requested would be available in 20 minutes. When we returned to the counter, our car was still not ready. The manager scanned through the available cars on his computer, suggested that there was a Prius available. We jumped on this opportunity, “Yes, we’ll take that.” Oh no, it wasn’t a Prius, it was a Sebring. Then the manager offered to give us a nice, sporty convertible for the same price. No, this was still not what we wanted or what we had reserved for our trip. Finally, they found us a white Toyota Corolla. Not large or flashy, but dependable and efficient, exactly what we were looking for in a cross country vehicle. We took it.
After we checked into our hotel, The Inn at the Market, we met up with David. First things first, we had to find lunch, because we had eaten nothing but airplane cookies and pretzels since this morning. David took us to Dick’s, a Seattle landmark burger joint, for a quick lunch. We piled into his rented Pontiac convertible, our Open Top Seattle Tour Bus complete with authentic local bus driver (David worked as a Seattle city bus driver before taking a substantial pay cut to go to Harvard Law School). We drove to the University of Washington, David’s alma mater, for a shady place to eat lunch and a quick tour. He showed us a number of the academic buildings, the library’s reading room, which unabashedly resembled a gothic cathedral, and the building where he had personally spent the most time, the music building. He also showed us Red Square, a massive, imposing open area paved in specially treated red brick that would allow the police to wash away protestors with a fire hose if necessary. “It gets a little tricky in the rain,” David noted.
Then David gave us our grand tour of Seattle. We drove by a few of the more touristy places, including the fish market and the Seattle Aquarium, but we spent most of our time driving through residential neighborhoods and enjoying Seattle’s spectacular scenery.
To our great fortune, we arrived during Seattle’s one week wild blackberry season. Seattle’s mild and wet climate makes it fantastically easy to grow beautiful, ornate gardens and forests full of mature trees. This also makes it easy for blackberries, a hardy, invasive, non-local species to move in and flourish, killing other varieties of plants. But the blackberries these plants produce are delicious, so it is hard to stay mad. We found a few bushes in the Magnolia neighborhood just on the other side of a chain link fence. We strained over the fence, carefully avoiding the thorns, and plucked off a few. Wonderful.
We stopped back at the hotel for a brief rest before dinner. Aaron bellyflopped onto the bed and let out a disappointed moan “Aw, it’s hard.” Apparently not trusting his assessment, I threw myself on it, too. It was like falling onto the floor at first, but it quickly began to give way. I recognized this feeling. “Aw, it’s a damn tempurpedic.” The last time I slept on one of these things, I didn’t get any sleep at all because every time I rolled over, it was like rolling onto the floor. This one must have been a more advanced model because it was much more comfortable. Or maybe we were just exhausted by the time we finally went to bed.
We met David and his longtime friend Amy for dinner at Etta’s, a seafood restaurant by the water. Amy is a fantastic dinner companion because she has seventeen years worth of stories I haven't heard about David and tells them with a writer's flourish. I had a tuna sashimi salad appetizer, followed by Alaskan halibut served with corn salsa, wilted greens and a white been puree. Aaron and I shared a Root Beer crème brulee for dessert, which was unexpected and really wonderful. Afterward, we walked to the Kells, a nearby bar and enjoyed a few rounds of my beloved Macallen 12 Scotch. A truly fantastic start to the trip.
We arrived at the airport before fix o’ clock. This gave us a full hour and twenty minutes until our first flight took off. This was at least forty-five more minutes than we needed. Apparently, nobody else wants to fly across the country in the early hours of the morning. After checking in and being the second people in line at a security checkpoint that had yet to open, we took our seats in the small waiting area for the two AirTran gates in Terminal B. We watched the anchors on CNN discuss the Georgian-Russian conflict and watched our fellow passengers try, in vain, to purchase food from the obviously closed concession, until we boarded our first flight to Milwaukee.
With the help of a single Tylenol PM (those things really pack a punch!), I was out like a light for the entire first leg of our journey and for much of the forty-five minute layover and hour delay in the Milwaukee airport. I was not able to fully join the land of the living until about an hour into our flight from Milwaukee to Seattle. I found myself watching the view from the window seat as a preview of the journey to come. We passed through the heart of the Midwest, with its stunningly straight roads and its precise angular patterns composed of acres of corn, soybeans, and wheat. We passed over the foothills of the Rockies, defined by wrinkled earth and winding rivers and a stark absence of towns or roads. Finally, as we approached Seattle, we flew over the Cascade Mountains and Mount Ranier (known to locals as "The Mountain") and the leafy green suburbs on their western side. In a few hours, I was able to see from above all the things I would view at grounds level over the next two weeks, and my sense of anticipation grew.
When we finally landed in Seattle, our first task was picking up our reserved rental car at Hertz. Because we would be traveling such a long distance, finding a vehicle that sipped gasoline was absolutely essential. When Aaron and I were on our honeymoon in Canada, we had reserved an economy car but ended up settling for an SUV, a decision we lived to regret. This time, we were absolutely unwilling to accept such an “upgrade.” When we came to the counter and presented our reservation, the clerk glanced over it and told us that we could “upgrade” to an SUV with a GPS system for no extra cost. Without hesitation, we unanimously said “No!” No, that would not be acceptable. The sales clerk immediately backed town and told us that the economy car we requested would be available in 20 minutes. When we returned to the counter, our car was still not ready. The manager scanned through the available cars on his computer, suggested that there was a Prius available. We jumped on this opportunity, “Yes, we’ll take that.” Oh no, it wasn’t a Prius, it was a Sebring. Then the manager offered to give us a nice, sporty convertible for the same price. No, this was still not what we wanted or what we had reserved for our trip. Finally, they found us a white Toyota Corolla. Not large or flashy, but dependable and efficient, exactly what we were looking for in a cross country vehicle. We took it.
After we checked into our hotel, The Inn at the Market, we met up with David. First things first, we had to find lunch, because we had eaten nothing but airplane cookies and pretzels since this morning. David took us to Dick’s, a Seattle landmark burger joint, for a quick lunch. We piled into his rented Pontiac convertible, our Open Top Seattle Tour Bus complete with authentic local bus driver (David worked as a Seattle city bus driver before taking a substantial pay cut to go to Harvard Law School). We drove to the University of Washington, David’s alma mater, for a shady place to eat lunch and a quick tour. He showed us a number of the academic buildings, the library’s reading room, which unabashedly resembled a gothic cathedral, and the building where he had personally spent the most time, the music building. He also showed us Red Square, a massive, imposing open area paved in specially treated red brick that would allow the police to wash away protestors with a fire hose if necessary. “It gets a little tricky in the rain,” David noted.
Then David gave us our grand tour of Seattle. We drove by a few of the more touristy places, including the fish market and the Seattle Aquarium, but we spent most of our time driving through residential neighborhoods and enjoying Seattle’s spectacular scenery.
To our great fortune, we arrived during Seattle’s one week wild blackberry season. Seattle’s mild and wet climate makes it fantastically easy to grow beautiful, ornate gardens and forests full of mature trees. This also makes it easy for blackberries, a hardy, invasive, non-local species to move in and flourish, killing other varieties of plants. But the blackberries these plants produce are delicious, so it is hard to stay mad. We found a few bushes in the Magnolia neighborhood just on the other side of a chain link fence. We strained over the fence, carefully avoiding the thorns, and plucked off a few. Wonderful.
We stopped back at the hotel for a brief rest before dinner. Aaron bellyflopped onto the bed and let out a disappointed moan “Aw, it’s hard.” Apparently not trusting his assessment, I threw myself on it, too. It was like falling onto the floor at first, but it quickly began to give way. I recognized this feeling. “Aw, it’s a damn tempurpedic.” The last time I slept on one of these things, I didn’t get any sleep at all because every time I rolled over, it was like rolling onto the floor. This one must have been a more advanced model because it was much more comfortable. Or maybe we were just exhausted by the time we finally went to bed.
We met David and his longtime friend Amy for dinner at Etta’s, a seafood restaurant by the water. Amy is a fantastic dinner companion because she has seventeen years worth of stories I haven't heard about David and tells them with a writer's flourish. I had a tuna sashimi salad appetizer, followed by Alaskan halibut served with corn salsa, wilted greens and a white been puree. Aaron and I shared a Root Beer crème brulee for dessert, which was unexpected and really wonderful. Afterward, we walked to the Kells, a nearby bar and enjoyed a few rounds of my beloved Macallen 12 Scotch. A truly fantastic start to the trip.
Links
Inn at the Market
Dick's Drive in Restaurant
Etta's
No comments:
Post a Comment