Crabber’s Truck
Crabber’s Truck
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Seattle Underground
Seattle Underground Tour
Yesterday it was all scarves up at the Sounders game. Today it was more like umbrellas up. It was a true Seattle day, painted in fifty shades of grey and punctuated with the steady drumbeat of an all-day rain. This morning Anne and I got to participate in one of Jay and Carl’s great family traditions, with Rey and Ashlan participating via Skype. Today is Selection Day, where the NCAA picks the starting brackets for their March Madness basketball tournament. Jay and Carl drew their seeds out of a hat, I drew for Rey and Anne drew for Ashlan. I did pretty well by Rey with two number one seeds. We didn’t know which team was which, because the selections had not yet been announced.
In the afternoon Jay and Carl had a memorial service to attend, so Anne and I took a bus downtown on our own. We’ve become quite the accomplished Seattle tourists. There we toured the Seattle underground. This tour featured the seamier side of Seattle’s history, which included all of the deadlier sins. Apparently, Seattle was first founded on tidal flats, while at low tide. This created a few hydrological problems, especially when the tide came in. The Seattle solution was to move dirt down slope from the nearby inland highlands and fill in the tidal flats. This created some problems for the businesses that were already there. As the surrounding streets rose up, the existing first floors first became basements and then subbasements. These former ground floors became the Seattle underground. The historic neighborhood around Pioneer Square was saved from the wrecking ball by the activism of the fellow that created these Seattle underground tours.
Starfish Bottom
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Starfish Bottom
Sounders
Holding Scarves Higher in the March to the Match
The Sound Wave in the March to the Match
Sounders Team Photo
The Twelfth Man
Last Chance for the Sounders
Jay and Carl took Anne and I to our first Major League Soccer (MLS) game today. We took the bus downtown to Pioneer Square and instead of being full of homeless people; it was full of soccer fans. The Seattle Sounders were holding their pregame pep rally there. Leading the rally was their pep band, the Sound Wave. After the rally, all of the fans made the traditional soccer March to the Match, with Sound Wave bringing up the rear. Last Saturday, Jay and Carl went to the Sounder’s home opener, which they won. During that game’s march blue and green flares were set off and a great photo from that event made the national news. The Sounders are the biggest draw in the league. Before today’s march we were admonished not to do that again, because “The Seattle police certainly have a twist tie with your name on it.” Even so, one blue and one green flare could be seen smoking ahead of us during today’s march. Last Saturday’s match was played in a steady downpour, but except for a few sprinkles it was pretty dry today. The sun even peeked out for a little bit during the game.
Today’s match was against Toronto. The Sounders play in the same stadium as the Seahawks do the other football team in town. It was still pretty much decked out in Seahawks paraphernalia. The upper deck was not seated, so we were not treated to the deafening roar of a Seattle Seahawks game, but the Sounders still drew over 38K. Toronto scored two goals in the first half and it wasn’t until the second half that Seattle answered with a goal of their own. The Sounders ended up losing 2-1. As the clock ticked off the minutes, the Seattle fans grew ever increasingly exacerbated with the refs, for not calling what was judged by them to be obvious penalties on Toronto. I don’t know this game very well, but I’m pretty sure that holding is not allowed. The goalie is the only player that is allowed to use his hands and that is only with the ball. It was only after the game that I learned that these were scab refs that were officiating the game. After the game Jay and Carl treated us to dinner by the stadium. This allowed us to avoid the rush of the maddening crowd on our bus ride back home.
Skagit Daffodils
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Skagit Daffodils
Spa-tify
Deception Pass Bridge
Thursday, we packed it up in Port Angeles and started back to Seattle. We took the ferry from Port Townsend to Coupeville on Whidbey Island. From there we hung out at Deception Pass for most of the day. We did some tide pooling and hiked across the bridge. During our 1982 great adventure we bicycled across this bridge. We had to be riding in the roadway then, because the walkways are too narrow to even envision walking bikes with saddlebags on. We must have been fearless back then, because it was scary enough walking the bridge’s sidewalks, what with all of the traffic on the bridge. The tide pooling was fun until Anne slipped and hurt one of her knees, “Honest Mark, it’s not as bad as I thought it was.” It’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt. So, we piled into the Prius again and headed to La Conner, a small town on the Swimomish Channel. We had lunch there and then treated Anne to the local quilt museum, which she loved. Between that stop and some Aleve, she seemed to be feeling better. We finished up with a drive-by of some of the Skagit daffodil fields.
Friday, the girls went to the spa. Ashlan had given Jay a gift certificate to one downtown last Christmas. There they were baked in a dry sauna, dunked into the cold plunge pool, assaulted by a Puget Sound saline pool and then steamed clean. Then they hit repeat. Meanwhile, Carl, Sagan and I went to the Seattle Center. From there we took the Monorail downtown, which seemed a bit intense, what with a security guard dueling with young toughs hanging around. Fortunately, Carl devised a secret escape route. I’d only left Sagan alone with Carl for a minute, but when I returned Carl was having an emergency. The back of his pants had ripped open. We then beat a hasty retreat. I had to act as Carl’s rearguard. On the way back we stopped at a skate park. One of the teenage skateboarders began performing a trick for Sagan, or at least attempting to. On his first try, he announced, “This one’s for you, unless I don’t make it, then it’s not for you.” Next came, “Second try,” then, “Third times a charm.” He finally did it on his sixth attempt. He had skated into a vertical surface, flipped the board up and balanced on the lip of the wall’s corner. Then he flipped his board down again, landed on it and then skated away to the sounds of our cheers. He didn’t hear Sagan say, “Do it again.”