How I'm Spending My Summer Vacation

When I decided to retire I made sure to do it in the summer, as far as I'm concerned that's the very best time to be in the Pacific Northwest.  The other 3 seasons are in varying degrees wet, damp, gray, dark and depressing.  Maybe it's because of the other 3 seasons but summer in Seattle is special, summer in Seattle is just glorious.  The days are long, the sky is blue and cloud free and I love feeling the warm sunshine on my skin.  When it rained for a few days last week I stayed home and experienced life through the Internet which doesn't bode well for me during those other 3 seasons.

But since this is my first summer vacation since I was 15 I'm spending it exploring the Seattle area as I would explore a foreign city.  I pack my camera, I put on my walking shoes and I take public transit.

One of the first things I discovered was just 2 blocks from my house.  A marijuana store is preparing to open for business in an old State liquor store.

Oddly enough the store seems to be named "Grass"

Washington state has legalized recreational marijuana but you can't use the stuff recreationally if you can't get it and as of this writing there's one open pot shop for nearly 700,000 people and when they're not out of product to sell the line to buy snakes around the building, across two parking lots to Lander St and then all the way down the street, perhaps 3 blocks in all.  Seeing that line made me recall things I've read about buying bread in the Soviet Union or shoes in North Korea.  More pot stores should mean better selection and lower prices and I won't have to bus it down to Lander street again to look at the lines to buy a legal product.

I attempted to explore Ballard but Market Street seems to have changed into an area of tiny expensive condos and trendy coffee bars, wine bars, pet grooming salons and yoga studios.  I hopped back onto the #44 bus and made my way to Wallingford.  There I stopped for ice cream at Molly Moon but when I sat down to eat my treat the place was suddenly descended upon by perhaps 40 Asian tourists who I had passed earlier as they gathered in front of and inside Archie McPhee.  The clogged the ice cream store and took pictures of each other.

Let's take pictures of each other and eat ice cream!

I walked back to the University District, boarded the #343 bus for home.  Explorations will continue until the weather changes.  As long as the sun shines I'm taking active retirement seriously but I know that by Labor Day change in the form or rain, clouds and falling temperatures will be in the air.

Retirement: The Fountain of Youth?

Today is the first weekday of my new life.  The weather is normal for summer in Seattle, which is to say absolutely fantastic.  I feel energized.  The world just opened and I want to take advantage of everything.  It's the fountain of youth.  

This is my first summer vacation since I was 15.  In a way I want to spend this time the way I would in Bangkok or Taipei.  What I usually do in a cities like those is to purchase a transit pass and find a different neighborhood to explore every day.  The transit pass that I've carried for the last 20 years of employment is good until the end of September so I'm good to go.  But first a new life needs new clothes so it's off to Cabelas to score new touring threads.   I  also took a daytime run through Costco so I could rub slouched shoulders with the rest of the old retired codgers who seem to haunt Costco on weekdays.

The Freeway Stop at 145th st & I-5 South

The stress of work has left behind a few layers and some extra belt notches and they need to go.  Bus pass plus lots of summertime walking = sweat and expended calories so I walked down to I-5 and took Sound Transit's 512 bus to to 45th street in Wallingford. 

Meat Activists?

I lived in Wallingford for my first few years in Seattle and I haven't crawled 45th street in 20 years.  My how it's changed.  Nearly everything seems to have changed, much shinier, grander and more upscale. More gourmet ice cream, gelato shops and coffee shops trying not to be Starbucks than I remember.  Until today I'd never seen a shop run by "meat activists" before.

From 45th street I walked into Greenlake and briskly walked to the Starbucks at the top of the lake so I could drink something, catch some A/C and plot my next destination.  I whipped out my bus pass and hopped a bus heading toward Ballard and got off at 85th and Aurora to take the "E" line downtown so that I could catch and express bus home.  

Gosh the park was pretty today:

I'm not sure whether it's the sudden freedom or the magnificent weather and I'm just one day into this but so far it's great.  I keep wondering how this would be if it was 45 degrees, overcast, wet and damp, and the sun was going down at 5PM; in other words just like 9 months of the year in this part of the world.

Playing the Old Man Card

I was riding home from work on my regular King County Metro bus, seated near the driver on a side facing bench that had textured lines dividing the seating area for three passengers.  I occupied the right seat area, a woman occupied the left with a space between us.  The bus made a stop to pick up more passengers and a young Asian woman perhaps in her 20's took the available seat but then scooted over to her left leaving half a cushion for her plump, unattractive friend who plopped down into the available half space with her left butt cheek and put her right butt cheek on my left thigh.  She forced herself to slide into the available half space and off of my left lap and compressed me into the wheel well of the bus on my right with her fat ass.  

I shoved hard to my left in an attempt to give myself some lebensraum and convey that this was unacceptably tight but she ignored me and went on yacking with her friend.  I stood up and without looking the fat woman slid over to occupy the space that she sensed that I had vacated.  There were no more open seats on the bus.  I glared at the 2 Asian women, they ignored me.  A young woman sitting across from the Asian women  said, "Sir, would you like my seat?".  I told her no, that wouldn't be necessary.  Other passengers looked at me, one shook her head in mild disgust as if to say, "Kids today, what are you gonna do?"

The bus continued north on I-5 and got off the freeway at the Seattle City line in Shoreline when the woman occupying the 3rd bench space toward the back of the bus got off, the two Asian women scooted to their left without missing a word.  I took my now open seat next to the fat interloper.  I drew her attention and said, "These seats are made for three people, not four".  She replied, "I didn't know that", in a monotone.  I continued, "You have absolutely no manners forcing an old man like me out of his seat to stand all the way home so that you can sit next to your friend".  She gave me a look of mild displeasure and the two resumed their conversation as if I had never been there.  

I'm nearly 61 now, at work I'm the oldest in my group and some of my coworkers joking refer to me as "Grandpa" and 'Papa", which I really don't mind.  My thinning gray hair and lined face tell the truth and at 61 I don't qualify for any senior citizen discounts at restaurants or airlines and I don't try to con my way into any.  But time marches on, I am thinking about retirement and this is the first time I've ever played the age card.  I don't think I'll do it again soon but I felt strangely empowered, like I had something new to help me press this case against these two rude women.  

Seattle - Sound Transit Light Rail 7/18/2009

Funding for light rail was first passed by area voters in 1996 and with many missteps it's here, Seattle has now joined every other large west coast American city. The fact that Seattle was alone on the West coast without some kind of light rail rankled local politicians but most everyone I know suffered no rail envy after a trip to San Diego or Sacramento. While the system enters normal service on Monday the gates were thrown open to the public for a weekend of free rides. This picture above was taken on opening day August 17, 2009 at Westlake Station looking toward Convention Place.

Clearly the organizers were preparing for huge crowds on opening day that they didn't get, the picture at right was taken on opening day 7/17/2009 at noon at the Pioneer Square Station. Most of the stations had spaces like this with volunteers milling about and folk musicians strumming away for organizing the crowds that I never saw.

Hybrid buses will share this downtown tunnel with light rail once regular fare box service starts. The buses are free in the tunnel but the rail is not and that’s bound to be confusing. Tickets will have to be purchased in the entrance to the stations and the honor system is to be used.

I’ve ridden rail systems from Chicago to Chongqing and while local Seattle area politicians are pulling muscles slapping themselves on the back with congratulations for having joined the league of big and important cities I say hold on there just a minute.

Where's the information on the existing electronic signs telling me when the next train is due? All but the oldest rail systems (such as New York and Chicago) have the opening to the rail cars alight at the station in a predicted location. That's how it works in Taipei and Singapore and people line up before the train arrives in anticipation of boarding. Cites with a less cooperative ridership such as Hong Kong still have this feature, when I was last in Shanghai their metro was being retrofitted for it.

But fair enough, the local area has light rail now where before we had streets, freeways, cars and an extensive series of buses. I’m a bus commuter and I carry a Puget Pass. I drive perhaps 5000 miles a year and if this new train was convenient I'd take it. It will be if I stay at my present job downtown and wait until 2030. That's right, Sound Transit says that if they keep to their schedule light rail will arrive in the neighborhood to the south of me by 2030. As it stands now light rail is of no use to me. It doesn't go to anywhere I'd want to go. It cost a fortune to build. It won't get any cars off the road but it does make us feel as if we've finally arrived as a big city. Just like having the WTO in Seattle was supposed to.

I’m a regular bus commuter and I carry a Puget Pass. I drive perhaps 5000 miles a year and if this new train was convenient I'd take it. It will be if I stay at my present job downtown and wait until 2030. That's right, Sound Transit says that if they keep to their schedule light rail will arrive in the neighborhood to the south of me by 2030. As it stands now light rail is of no use to me. It doesn't go to anywhere I'd want to go. It cost a fortune to build. It won't get any cars off the road but it does make us feel as if we've finally arrived as a big city. Just like having the WTO in Seattle was supposed to.

Each Sound Transit rail car is made in Japan by:

Sichuan - Bus from Chengdu Chongqing

I took the bus from Chengdu to Chongqing, roughly the distance from Seattle to Portland. What was I thinking! I had read that the buses were modern and that a new expressway had been completed between the 2 cities. Well, the expressway isn't done yet. Construction outside of Chengdu cost us at least an hour. I also have a headache, maybe because when we arrived in the station in Chongqing the guy sitting in front of me jumped up, grabbed his bag from the overhead compartment and swung it right into my face. That's him filling up the left side of the picture above. He left a nice faceprint on the inside of the left lens of my glasses. I don't think that he even noticed, I know the Chinese term for excuse me and I certainly didn't hear it. Just another cultural thing which I may get to later.

I thought that I'd be sitting on a comfortable brand new bus with clean windows that would allow me to happily snap pictures of the Chinese countryside. What I got was an ratty old coach with grimy windows. I was sitting on the aisle and the insides of the windows had dirty curtains drawn so everybody could see the TV. It's been years since I took a Greyhound bus but I'll bet that even in anything goes USA that they don't run violent slasher movies on their intercity coaches. Both were Hong Kong cop movies in Cantonese, which means that my fellow passengers had to read the subtitles. Bonus for me, the 2nd feature was subtitled in Chinese and English. Do I even have to mention that I was the only westerner on the bus? I put on my MP3 player because my fellow passengers were busy shouting into their cell phones. I fell asleep but awoke when the bus stopped at a rest area for lunch.

No golden arches at this rest stop, there was plenty of hot fresh food but it all had that red oily breath of fire look of Sichuan cuisine so I passed. I bought a bowl of noodles topped with crushed peanuts for 4Y (maybe .35 US), wolfed them down and then it was back on the bus. The Chengdu - Chongqing Expressway is a toll road. It looks like the designers didn't consult engineers anywhere else, those acceleration lanes to get on to the toll road are awfully brief. All of the signs are bilingual, sort of. I saw the sign "Many Accidents Happnd This Neighborhood" too many times. An overpass is a "flyover". And just like on an American Interstate there were giant billboards pushing cosmetics, cars and various companies. There was one ad for a plumbing company of a naked little boy peeing in a giant arc into their western style toilet. I saw some scenery, terraced farm plots and what might've been rice paddies.

After checking into my hotel (more on that later) I went for a walk to scope the place out. Chongqing and Seattle are sister cities. http://www.scsca.org Seattle is damp and cold, Chongqing is steamy and hot. Both Seattle and Chongqing have a monorail, sort of. Seattle's isn't running due to an accident, Chongqing's is partially underground. http://www.cqmetro.cn/

It started to rain (that sister city thing again) so I ducked into a restaurant. They gave me a menu, which naturally I couldn't read. The dog ate my homework, hopefully Fido wasn't for dinner. I was hungry, other than my small bowl of noodles at the rest stop I had a snack of a envelope of "Chongqing Strange Taste Horsebeans". I'm not making that up, I'm going to try and get some to bring back. Sweet, salty, spicy and hot, sort all at different times. Not knowing what to do I took my waitress to the other tables and inspected what the locals were having. I ordered a plate of sautéed greens and a bowl of some kind of tofu. I don't eat red meat but I overlooked the pork, I've learned that in China there's oink in everything. It was good but while I was eating I had the feeling that I was being watched. I looked up from my meal and found 4 waitresses and the owner staring at me, obviously entertained by Grandpa Lauwai on the chopsticks. We all had a good laugh, even though they were laughing at me. I don't know what I was doing wrong (other than stumbling in there in the first place). I didn't ask for a fork, I didn't mishandle the sticks and get rice all over the table. I thought that I was doing a good job getting the food from the plate and into my face. We all had a good laugh and the big meal was insanely cheap.

I don't like my hotel. But as I'm sure the Great Helmsman Chairman Mao once said, "you get what you pay for". And I haven't paid much for this place, about $28 a night. The Chinese Internet booking service I used said that this was a 4 star hotel and although there are more expensive rooms here there are cheaper ones too. The Internet is a wonderful thing. There's a Marriott down the street that promises luxury, as in A/C that'll freeze meat and a clean bathroom. I got onto the Marriott web site and got myself the weekend special. I'm off to wriggle out of my reservation.