Day 5: There IS sun in Seattle

**Samara's comments are in italics.

We woke up this morning to find that it was possible for the sun to shine in Seattle. It was cloudy, mind you, but at least it wasn't cloudy and raining.

First things first, we had some breakfast. There was an IHOP down the street, so that's where we went. Once we got back to the hotel, we called the cab company to see what the rates were, and also called Northland Services to see what we needed to do in order to drop the Canyonero off.

Apparently my Google maps directions were okay, as were the Northland Services website directions, so off we went. Samara was a little mad that I had apparently misplaced her umbrella in the packing, but so far the rain in Seattle hasn't been too horrible. The thing is, I wanted to pack the umbrella since we were staying in Seattle for at least two days and would be without a car for at least one day. I was going to pack it into my purse, but I didn't want it in my purse for 3 days. So Aaron said that he would put it in the car so we could get it out in Seattle. So we get here and Aaron says he can't remember where he packed it. He pokes around for a bit and then says he can't find it. I'm annoyed because while it isn't all out raining like it was when we first arrived it was drizzling. So here I am in Seattle without an umbrella.

We got to Northland, and the guy at the gate handed us two orange vests after checking our IDs. We went across the scale, punching a button to take the weight ticket, and pulled into Lane 1 behind a tractor trailer. Basically we were now in a yard full of 40-foot containers, giant forklifts and tractor trailers. I donned a vest, went into the office, and filled out the paperwork to get our SUV onto the ship.

Back outside, I handed the paperwork to an inspector guy. Samara asked if rats would get into our car while it was on the ship. He said it would probably be okay, and then told us a charming story about finding a very large rat in his car one day. He swears it was from his home garage, not the shipyard. I told the guy about the time a opossum got in to my brothers Camaro. The guy looked at me like I was nuts and proceeded to ignore me.

Back inside, we paid Northland for the privilege of receiving our Canyonero in October. Then they called us a cab. When it came near, the license plate said "fresh" and there were dice in the mirror. Not really. But it was driven by a coughing Sikh. The cab itself had horrible shocks, and the Sikh took advantage of its dilapidated state by driving extremely fast. He also hit the hooka too much. He kept coughing and hacking. I was worried he had TB, but more than likely he just smoked too much.

Oh, but I almost forgot, in my haste to make a Fresh Prince of Bel-Air joke, that we had to wait a few minutes for the cab to arrive, so I made use of the porta-facilities, aka The Honey Pot. EW!


So we had the coughing Sikh take us to the Space Needle. We weren't about to pay $16 each to go up in the damn thing, but we did snap some photos. We wandered around the base, where there were some sculptures with homeless people sleeping under them, and an amusement park of "lame fair" proportions.


Also, there was a giant seagull. It was like the size of a chicken.


Then, tired of the fun, we decided to take the monorail! What's it called? Monorail! The monorail, for the princely sum of $2 each, took us from the Space Needle to the Westlake Shopping Center (a mall of some sort).


Update: Apparently we were riding this monorail. Yes, the red one that failed and stranded 190 people on Saturday. The blue one is actually out of service completely so that it can be refurbished. Wonder if we would have rode the monorail if we'd seen this news story first.

We ate there at the food court, which had Indian food. Mall Indian food and there was mall sushi as well. Amazing. After that, we decided it would be worth walking further downtown so that we could avoid as much of the taxi cost as possible. We walked about 10 blocks downtown until we decided that cabs were starting to look scarce. Samara called the cab company, and this time our cab driving was a more sedate Arab. He got us back to the Skyway Inn without scaring us too much.

We took another bath in the giant jacuzzi, and washed our hair--It was dirty from the drizzly rain. Pretty soon it will be time for some pizza and some more television watching. Our flight leaves tomorrow morning at 8am, which means we're taking the 6am airport shuttle to make sure we have enough time to check in.

Seattle, by the way, is full of hippies. On the news as I write this were two stories. The first was about a campaign to prevent a school district from cutting down some trees on its property to build a new school building to replace one that is unsafe and leaking. The second story was about the 20 cent grocery bag tax that the city of Seattle is trying to levy. That's some serious hippie stuff right there.

By 1:15pm Alaska time (4 hours behind Lexington), we'll be landing in Dillingham. I don't know how long it will take to get into our apartment and get things hooked up, so I'd recommend waiting until Wednesday to call us. But here's our new Alaska phone number for everyone: 907-842-5047.

And by the way, it is currently raining in Seattle and here I am without an umbrella.