Day 10: Pointy needles, pointy bras, and a near fight for the ages

Hello from Olympia, where I've been largely offline for the past 5 days.  I left my laptop power cord in the hotel in Metropolis, IL (or was it Sioux City, IA?) and was reliant on Tanya's laptop for all my computing needs.  But she left a few days ago and my only link to the outside world since then has been my one-hour-per-day internet access at the local public library.  (If you think some of the previous blog entries have been long, consider that I haven't had a meaningful conversation with another human being for more than two days.  You've been warned.) 

Although the road trip officially ended with our arrival into Olympia late last Monday night, Tanya and I had a full day to explore Seattle on Tuesday, which provided a few more blog-worthy experiences.  We got a late start in the morning, which was a surprise to neither Tanya or me.  (Neither one of us is a morning person.  We joked throughout the trip that we should request an early checkout time to make sure we got on the road before noon each day.  One of our biggest fears was that we were going to book ourselves into a hotel that had a 1pm checkout, thus ensuring a completely wasted day.)  After the hour drive north on I-5, we arrived in Seattle around noon, with about a half hour to spare before we met Tanya's friend, Flora, for lunch.  Flora is currently working at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which is conveniently located on 5th Avenue, right near the Seattle Center.  They have a really interesting visitors center with exhibits on many of their domestic and international projects, so we spent some time learning about teacher education, vaccination clinics, and an ongoing engineering competition designed to develop a sanitary, waterless latrine that could be used in remote areas of the world where access to water is limited.  I was relieved (hee hee) to see that all of the prototypes developed thus far would make it difficult for me to lose my sunglasses if they were to fall off my shirt.

Most of the exhibits are very hands-on, and in true Seattle fashion, technology-oriented.  One even allowed you to enter your ideas for ending world hunger, which were then projected onto a large screen for all to see.  As you'll notice in the picture below, Bill apparently didn't install a filter on his computer to prevent off-topic responses.  I resisted the strong urge to post something inappropriate and moved onto the next exhibit.

Flora made her way down to the lobby and we headed over to the Armory to grab some lunch.  My choice of food was sealed as soon as Flora mentioned that one of the vendors, Skillet, served cornmeal waffles with a side of pork belly.  Tanya ordered the fried chicken sandwich and wisely chose poutine rather than a salad as her side.  Who gets a salad with fried chicken?  That's kind of like buying low fat egg nog.

We said goodbye to Flora and made our way next door to the Space Needle.  I had been to the top a few years ago, but since this was Tanya's first trip to Seattle, we decided to suck up the $21 cost of admission and made our way to the elevators.  The trip up only takes 43 seconds, but the elevators are positioned outward such that you get to see the city shrink below you as you make your way to the top.  Once there, we went on the outside observation deck, where the clear day provided great views of the city, Puget Sound, and Mt. Rainier.

Next, it was on to the Experience Music Project museum right next door.  I had been to the museum a few years ago and felt like I could have spent the entire day there, which was the case again this time.  They had a sci-fi movie exhibit as well as an exhibit dedicated to Seattle native Jimi Hendrix, neither of which I had time to see.  Most of our time was spent in the Women Who Rock exhibit, which traced the contributions of women in music from Maybelle Carter up through the present day.  Given her infatuation with disposable pop music, Tanya seemed much more interested in the latter, whereas I spent more time on those from the 60's through 90's.  On display were Aretha Franklin's handwritten notes during her contract negotiations with Arista records in the late 70's, an exact replica of the hat she wore at Obama's 2009 inauguration, dresses worn on stage Chrissie Hynde and Tina Turner, hand-written lyrics by Stevie Nicks, and musical scores from Billie Holiday.  But the real attraction was the conical bra outfit Madonna made famous during her Blond Ambition World Tour in 1990.  My 15-year-old self took a moment to appreciate it, then we moved on to the Nirvana exhibit.

It doesn't take more than a couple minutes in the exhibit to realize that the curator, perhaps reflecting the views of the local citizenry, has an over-inflated sense of Kurt Cobain's importance in music history.  I don't dislike Nirvana, but I've never understood the infatuation some people have with them and Cobain in particular.  They were a good band that burned brightly for a few years, but the level of credit they receive for somehow saving music is usually greatly overstated.  One station in the exhibit even tried to portray Cobain in this picture as some sort of messianic figure who was ascending into heaven.  Gag.  That's not to say the entire exhibit was worthless.  The shards of wood resulting from a smashed guitar at an early house party performance were neat to see, as were early pictures of the band hanging around parts of Olympia that I now have come to recognize.  (It should be noted that while I was in the Nirvana exhibit, Tanya made a return trip to the Women Who Rock exhibit to fawn over Kelly Clarkson's stage outfit and Lady Gaga's childhood piano for a second time.)

After a couple hours, it was time to meet up with Tanya's high school friend, Marlee, who lives not too far from the museum.  From her place, we walked to Bar Cotto, an Italian restaraunt and bar in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, where we shared a couple very good pizzas and appetizers on a sidewalk patio.

Gluttony has been a recurring theme on this trip, so it made perfect sense to walk up Madison Street to Molly Moon's, a local ice cream chain specializing in strange flavor combinations.  I resisted the Capitol Hill Hangover Sundae, which you can see below includes bacon bourbon toffee crunch, and instead went with a single scoop of the raspberry lemon thyme ice cream.  

As we finished our ice cream, we walked back to Marlee's apartment, which is when I nearly witnessed what would have been the greatest street fight ever.  I noticed a bit of a commotion across the street involving a couple women who, despite the cooler NW evening temperatures, were wearing shorts and bikini tops.  That didn't seem strange to me, although I did take notice that they appeared to be in a somewhat heated conversation with what I assumed to be a homeless man.  I ignored it at first and happily finished the rest of my ice cream cone.  But as the conversation grew more heated, I began to take a keener interest.  Maybe the homeless guy was making cat calls at the girls?  Maybe he was upset that they had rebuffed his request for pocket change?  Maybe they made a comment about his lack of hygiene?  Again, I didn't think too much of it...until I heard a loud baritone voice emphatically tell the homeless man to stop bothering them.  I turned just in time to realize that the voice came from one of the girls, except that those were no girls.  They were a couple of transvestites out on the town and they weren't going to take any more of this homeless guy's crap.  A near physical altercation ensued which was precipitated by one of the women sticking her chest out and charging at the homeless guy.  I couldn't tell if the move was meant to intimidate him or flaunt her goods.  Either way, it seemed to work because the homeless guy quickly retreated, but not before making what I can only assume to be a few more untoward comments.  I don't think either Marlee nor Tanya were aware of what was going on, or perhaps they were too jaded to care.  But I was grateful for the cheap entertainment to help pass the time on the long walk back to Marlee's apartment.

And that's where this grand adventure ended.  Tanya stayed in Seattle for a few more days before flying down to the Bay Area, while I returned to Olympia to begin unpacking the hordes of boxes that were scheduled to arrive the next day.  It's been a week since then and I smile whenever I think about all the fun we had over the course of 8 days and 3500 miles.  I told Tanya at the outset that my three goals for the trip were a) to get us here safely, b) to have a lot of fun along the way, and c) to arrive with our friendship still intact.  Somehow we managed to accomplish all three.