Country Cousins

Star in Your Own JibJab! It's Free!So if you haven't checked out Jib-Jab, you should do one of these, though trust met, you'll burn a couple of hours doing it. These are my niece and nephews.

Sunny Seattle

Ok, we were a little quick to judge the visibility in the northwest in the last post because as it turned out, we may never have such clear view of Mt. Hood AND Mt. Rainier, not to mention a brief drive by of Mt. St. Helen's. Seriously, I don't believe the odds are good we'll ever see all 3 again in the same trip. But we were lucky enough to see them this time around.

After a couple days in Portland, bike riding, Body Worlds III, and a hike to the backside of Mt. Hood where we could see glaciers showing off their blue hue in the sunshine, we set off for Seattle with Aunt Joy and my cousin Hayley for bumming around the city. Taking the regular commuter ferry to Bainbridge Island (for a mere $6 compared to the $25 that the tourist boats were charging just up the street), we were able to see the entire city of Seattle with Mt. Rainier in the background. We celebrated Joy's birthday that night at the Wild Ginger, a great nouveau Asian restaurant (that just happened to have a great wine list, so L was happy, even if there were shrimp and scallops all around her).

On Sunday, after hunting down some food and coffee, we headed to the Space Needle for more blue-skied views of the city. It was pretty cool though the glass elevators were not my favorite.

We headed over to Pike Place Market after that to just take in the breadth of humanity. After we collected all the pieces for our picnic--Greek grape leaves, Chinese pot stickers, French bread, French cheese, Greek baklava, American-grown Concord grapes and peaches--we found a nice spot on the grassy park nearby.

While we ate our lunch, we were treated to the great American pasttime: drug dealing. In the broadest sunniest daylight that Seattle probably sees, there were all the players: the two well-dressed men (casual but definitely looked as if they were living in some nice loft in Seattle) who were the top of the heap, the middle man with the flannel shirt, jeans, and backward baseball cap, the less-than-middle-man young black kid in a hoody and baggy pants, the half a dozen people buying (young college age kid who looked crushed when his $ didn't buy him enough of a fix; the older guy who also had some beef with the hoody middle-man; etc.), and the few desperate tweakers, one woman in particular who was trying to sell her unattractive self to any of the buyers for a little junk. We saw bags exchanged, money exchanged, beefs started and worked out, and no cops to be seen. Really, anybody watching for about 5 minutes could have seen it happening, but most of the locals and tourists were going by or enjoying the view of the water and sun and Rainier and oblivious to the whole drama. There was a 6-7 year old girl who stared at the action from less than 10 feet away while her parents busily engaged in a conversation with their friends. Even she knew there was something going on that shouldn't be going on in broad daylight.

Drug dealing aside, Seattle was fabulous and Portland was amazing! We ended the trip with a neighborhood party at Joy and Ralph's and a trip to Trader Joe's and our usual bootlegging stash for the border.