The Northwest, Day 1: To Seattle

This isn't a guide for where to go or what to see in the Seattle area, though you'd likely have a good time retracing our route. It's more a journal of everything that happened on our first trip to the Northwest, and the sort of moments and observations that help the traveler who left become the traveler who returns.

The journey included Seattle, Idaho, some long-missed friends and family, and the rural America in between. We had no plan, but expected coffee, books, art, music, good people and Frasier. We got all that, plus plenty of plot twists along the way. The Emerald City is a land of illusion.

Long Beach X

We tried out the airport down the street for this one. Compared to LAX, Long Beach was like a pleasant bus stop, with little trees and built-in greenery growing right inside the terminal. Even the security staff contrasted with those of other airports by their helpfulness and clear will to live.

We spent the wait inching closer to a young couple with a dog carrier, perhaps making them uncomfortable with wife’s unhushed jokes about stealing their dog. At one point the guy took dog to poo in the greenery.

Salt Lake City

In Salt Lake for a 1.5 hour layover, we were struck by the tininess of the airport. It was like a little midwestern cottage.

There was something about a time change, but I didn’t pay much attention to the science of it. However, as we sat to a dinner of authentic Louisiana red beans & rice from Popeye's, we noticed the local time on the receipt did not agree with our phones, and wondered if we were actually on a 0.5 hour layover. We quickly repacked our ten paper side-dish cups (the vegan entree) and started power walking to our terminal.

We turned a corner and discovered SLC is not a small cottage; it is a labyrinth of many miles and branching tunnels. We were the last to board the plane, breathless and trailing beans and rice through the cabin.

Seattle-Tacoma

We landed again around 11, crammed onto a shuttle to the car place, stood in an Avis line eating paper-cup beans, grabbed a car and hit the Washington highway.

That was a brief summary of a day's travel, but on the scales of memory, there are those small, personal moments that somehow balance a marathon of rushing, planning, maneuvering and chaos.

In this moment, it was after midnight, and the highway wound over and through a dark landscape of endless trees. A local preset station mixed softly with sleepy silence. A constellation of city lights grew in the distance. This was the furthest North we had ever gone, and everything felt new and different. It started to rain.

Capitol Hill

In the twilight zone between Day 1 and Day 2, we rolled on Capitol Hill to find a thriving late night bar scene sketched on a cartesian nightmare of cross-thatched roads splitting and converging along X, Y and Z planes. City and residential blocks overlapped and intermingled, and there was no parking anywhere.

Not, “the parking spots were full.”

Absolutely no non-permit parking spots had been deigned to exist in the realm of Capitol Hill.

The kings of the North rule harshly.

A miraculous parking lot of five paid spots appended to a liquor store averted doom. Nearby, a very drunk man kept lurching into the street, and a friend or passerby kept dragging him back and trying to fasten him to a wall. We carried our luggage a few blocks to our rented apartment. I wondered if the drunk man would survive.

The Air BnB

The apartment was a very small, very Seattle studio; white brick walls habilitated with woke urbanite eclecticism, and space and mirrors to get ready for the function with the approval of various Marilyns and Vishnus.

We tossed 10 decorative pillows onto the floor and went to sleep.

Day 1 - 4/20

Parking

The paid spot had an 11-hour lifespan, so waking early to move the car before the meter demons descended, I did some solo-exploring, driving in expanding circles around the neighborhood, Capitol Hill, and midtown Seattle to find a parking spot. Instead I confirmed my previous conclusion: there are absolutely no non-permit spots to be had within four miles of Cap Hill, and people with rental cars are blighted fools.

Somehow I wound up on the 5. The radio had three presets and the bluetooth could not agree with my phonepod, but the local talk was hitting. Even lost and defeated, I could admire the impressive profile of the Seattle cityscape. To experience a city is to know its pressures.

I drove into the heart of DTS. Its walls are high and its history is long, similar to LA but, as I would often consider, different in subtle ways. Like LA, Seattle is an old industrial port town that overgrew its Native landing. Art and nature feel integral and venerated. Canada is its Mexico. Though its metropolis is crowded, it doesn't feel relentless; there are easy routes to abundant nature in every direction. The streets are clean. Everything is under construction and constant reinvention.

Traffic was dense, but everyone drove conservatively and there was no honking. I was more concerned about bumping joggers, dog walkers or one of the hundreds of anime characters in the crosswalks (SakuraCon was in town all weekend. When I recall the story in my old age, all the locals will have Saiyan hair and giant papier-mâché keyblades).

I found what I was looking for, I guess: an abyssal subterranean parking garage that would let me leave the rental overnight for the price of an arm.

The foot-mile back to Capital Hill was uphill, but interesting. I thought about finding a newspaper to see if the drunk from last night had been run over.

In the local neighborhood market, the cashier rang me up some bananas and put me on the spot.

“Quick, what’s your favorite Tim Curry movie.”

“Uh… The Wild Thornberrys.”

“...I’ll take it.”

It was Tim Curry’s birthday. Someone else had a better one and they went on a tangent. Somehow I couldn’t think of the word “It.” This moment is a pointless footnote, but it happened.

Pike Place Market

Now we're getting to the parts where we took pictures.

According to every Youtube touristador, the Pike Place Farmer’s Market is Not To Be Missed. Seattle history and culture steep and pour in this centenarian market’s cobbled alleys. Our one pre-scheduled stop happened to be a Savor Seattle Food Tour of the Market, a spot-on birthday gift to wife from my mom.

On the Market’s main street, locals and tourists flow around farm-fresh produce, fish stands and exotic bakeries. Side passages lead to tangent bazaars full of ethnic goods. The topography is, again, three-dimensional, and everyone is in a hurry. Somewhere in the rabble, a theatre was supposed to exist where we would meet the Food Tour.

The Uber driver dropped us in the middle of the Market and wished us luck.

Without going into detail, we went up, down, through, inside, behind, above and below the porous market, becoming late and searching for a location marker that our GPS insisted must be accessed in some Platform 9 ¾ fashion. The Emerald City is a land of illusion.

We found the entrance in a crevice of the chewing-gum-gilded walls of Gum Alley. Maybe you’ve heard of it.

The Food Tour group met in a little improv theatre and was led by a little improv person. Everyone was seated in a circle of chairs. Coming in late from the street, I figured we were either in the right place or volunteering for an improv skit.

Our enthusiastic leader was Stephanie Park. I didn’t catch much of her backstory, but the fact that the tour convened in an improv circle clearly wasn’t coincidence - she had the energy, wit and self-deprecating shtick of a Theatre Person. She gave us the exposition and dramatis locale of her Tour, unfurled a violent pink umbrella, and led us out into the throng.

The Market is an old place grown over decades without a plan but evolving to meet the needs of the time. It is governed by tradition. Gum Alley is a monument to irreverence. Rotund pig idols are venerated with coins. Large fish fly over the heads of market goers. Street performers rotate props and pianos around a dozen different corners. These histories and more Stephanie stage-projected to our huddled group as we sampled authentic Greek yogurt, cheese curds, truffle paste, and chowder.

Gum Alley

Stephanie shows the way to Savor Seattle

After the tour, the bayside green zone across from the Market looked like the place for a siesta in the grass. Heads covered, we languished in the vibes of Elliott bay; hawkers, talkers, coffee drinkers, birds, boats and waves. Kids running through the park, footfalls inches from our heads. Maybe it wasn’t a great place to lay down, but to feel the city through auxilary senses was wholesome, and those senses reminded us that it also happened to be 4/20.

The single-item to-do-list done, we hit the streets in search of the Seattle experience. We found it ten yards on, in the first of many independent bookstores.

Bookstore #1

This place was a many-roomed, multi-level Weasley house with a vast and carefully curated selection. Rather than current best-sellers, the high traffic areas were replete with books and books from female and underrepresented voices. I was happy to find so many titles and authors I'd never heard of.

A creaky staircase led to a mezzanine of art and culture books and nooks to enjoy them, and a huge wall of deep cut sci-fi and fantasy. A back room was dedicated to religion, metaphysics and the occult, and an island of left-field indie magazines, periodicals and manifestos of all shapes and sizes, transmissions from the underground Seattle scenes I hoped to peer into.

We came out with Ursula Le Guin's reimagining of Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching, then visited a local coffee shop to try the drink of the people.

We usually do very little pre-planning for trips. Planning is for regular life. Adventure is for spontenaiety and organic experience. Let the busy ego wither.

So I enjoyed my first latte and looked up Seattle nightlife options, but there were surprisingly few for being Saturday, April 20.

The strategy became "find Thai food, and whatever happens will happen."

The Thai was top notch. But then the whatever happened.

Plot Twist

Dinner was interrupted by a baffling text from AirBnB. The host had a family emergency and needed to take possession of his apartment immediately. We had until 11 a.m. to vacate (<12 hours). An exciting twist when you're deep on Buddha-shaped Sapporos hundreds of miles from home. The Emerald City is a land of illusion.

What's more amazing, though, is how the technology of the future enables us to hurdle over life's nonsense. I immediately booked our remaining nights at a La Quinta on my phone, and wife scorched one or two AirBnB reps and managers on hers. That investment would pay off with a full refund of the AirBnB stay, which more than covered the cheaper La Quinta.

Even nuttier, the La Quinta turned out to be less than two miles from the Space Needle and surrounding attractions, an area that is far more navigable than the chaos of Capital Hill.

I hadn't started reading Le Guin's Lao Tzu yet, but the introduction to Taoist wisdom was not lost on our first day in Seattle.The Thai was top notch. But then the whatever happened