Tourist Day

While Kelly took the boy off to Cub Scout camp, Cammie and I had an adventure downtown.

There was a Sounders game that day so rather than selling the ticket, Cammie wanted to take advantage of it and see a game.  This was the big derby match between the Sounders and their rivals, Vancouver Whitecaps.  Now when I say "rivals" it's really something that only stays on the field; once off the field, we all happily go out for a drink.

So the day started off going over to Omi's house to help move some stuff around.  I thought I'd catch Sharon who was coming down to move some stuff to storage with her son and a couple more heavy lifters.  She said she'd head out between 8 and 8:30 and get down there between 9:30 and 10.  Well, we got there at 9:30 and stayed for an hour moving things around and bagging up garbage, and when we left, she still wasn't there.  The last thing I did before we left was moving a turntable unit out of the office upstairs.  It was on a rolling cart about 12" deep and 24" wide and 3' tall, but the wheels were fixed in one direction, which weren't facing in the direction I needed to roll it out of the room.  I foolishly picked it up to carry it out the room, sideways, a little hunched over...and felt something spasm in my back.  Ouch!!!!  I rolled it out to the top of the stairs and decided to call it a day.

We headed back to the house to change into clean shirts and get change for the bus.  I called her after I got home and she was still quite a ways North and hadn't stopped at the storage unit yet.  I was going to be leaving for the game on the 11:00 bus, but I figured it was a 1:00 game, run two hours, ride home and get back by 4:00-4:30.  I could join her at the house after and see if she needed anything else or wanted to go to dinner.

We hopped on the bus and there weren't any other game-goers on the bus until we got to 45th St., and when we arrived downtown, there weren't hordes of people wandering around in Sounders gear.  There were a bunch in Mariners gear.  Odd.  We went down to the nearest Starbucks after getting off the bus to grab a quick lunch.  While we were standing in line, I talked to a woman who was on her way to the Mariners game and she mentioned that it was supposed to be a night game, but Root Sports wanted a prime time East Cost slot, so they moved it to a 1:00 time.  I wondered how that was going to affect traffic with two games starting at the same time.

Well, the answer came a few minutes later when I got an email reminding me of the 7:30 start time for the Sounders game.  Whaaaa?  Waitasecond... apparently they swapped the time slots and weren't quite as vigilant about letting all the season ticket holders of the changes.  I went online this morning and corrected about five other game times that have changed since I put the dates and times into the calendar.

Since we now had SEVEN HOURS to kill, and didn't want to take the bus all the way home only to turn around and come back, we decided to do a little Geocaching.  We walked up to the International District and looked for two there--came up empty on both.  Then wandered down to 2nd and Main to the Waterfall park and made that find.  It took a little while given some bad GPS coordinates and signals, but followed some of the hints and eventually made the find.

We wandered down to the waterfront where we discovered that the cache had been stolen, but Cammie happily posed with Mr. Iver to feed the giant metal seagulls.  We wandered down the waterfront a bit more and after passing Post Alley, I remembered that the World's Most Disgusting Landmark is on Post Alley.  I looked up the address and we headed that way.  We met up with a horse that was gearing up to pull a cart along the waterfront, said our hellos and then headed on our way.

We arrived at Post Alley and its cobblestone lined street, and a block up, found The Gum Wall.

Cammie made her contribution to the wall and all its gooey disgustingness.

We walked up to the Seattle Art Museum and watched the Hammering Man, whose arm moves up and down.

Wandered through Pioneer Park (aka Homeless Park) and was able to get a photo of the restored pergola (without homeless people in the background).

A semi truck driver accidentally knocked the original one down in 2001.  This was originally built in 1909 as a protective shelter for passengers riding on the cable cars and had public restrooms below.  The cable cars were torn up, the restrooms closed, but the shelter remained.  The trucking company's insurance paid for most of the restoration which cost a couple million bucks, and was re-opened in 2002.

We stopped to admire some of the local architecture, got sandwiches at a local place called Tat's, and ate half the sandwich, wrapping up the other half for the game.  We also got some water and sunscreen, and settled into our seats.

The game was excellent!  Of course, we won, which made it even better.  After the game, we went to the bathroom and I chatted with one of the fans from the Whitecaps.  Being Canadian, she was, of course, very polite and funny.  Cammie said, "Yey!  We won!" or some such, and not wanting to sound in-your-face about it to the women standing behind me, I said, "Yes, but they had really good defensive players that prevented us from getting a lot more goals."
Canadian fan: "They didn't do well enough, though.  We'll have to go into the locker room and give them a piece of our mind."
Me:  "Well, it was a close game.  You really only lost by *this much*" [gesturing with finger and thumb]
Fan:  "That much doesn't get you any points."
Me:  "True...but it was a great game.  Are you driving back to Vancouver tonight?"
Fan:  "Yes, it's not too far."
Me:  "And the border waits are nothing at this time of night.  You should be able to whip right through."
Fan: "It's just the bridge that's out...what a delay that is!"
Me:  "Yeah, but it was taken out by a Canadian...so..."
Fan:  "But he was from Alberta!"

We all had a great laugh.  Good people.

We filed out of the stadium, across the street and caught the bus to head home.  It took almost 45 minutes for the bus to get out of town, which is ridiculous.  We finally got home a little after 11:30.

Three days of school left.  One full day, and two partial days.  I'm really looking forward to a summer break!