- Seattle
1609 Safeway Enumclaw 1480.5 86F $13.92
Rite
Aid, No
Safeway
Gas 21 lb. ice $3.87
1645
We stopped at a Safeway that had a picturesque view of Mt.
Rainier. Ice was available at the
gas station on the same lot. Rite
Aid did not have the high speed RJ45 cable I was looking for. The Rite Aid at home did, probably
because we had high speed internet in our neighborhood. Maybe not here.
1703 1490.5 86 Radio Shack, RJ45 14Õ cable $16.31
But then there was a Radio Shack. They even knew what I was asking for.
1834 Comfort Inn SeaTac 1555.6
had
been up to 520 and back thru downtown
John wanted to see some of the sights in Seattle that he had
seen on a high school choir trip, in particular, the floating of Highway 520
over Lake Washington. I never
really knew where we were, but John had the map and got us to the
north-end-of-Seattle site. He
offered Bill Gates house too, but I declined, at least for today.
On the other end of the bridge we came to I-5 and, what was
that? A stadium for Washington
State University (the Huskies?), partially covered. John said it rained here a lot.
Boats were on the water, the winds and currents looked stiff
to me.
We drove south past downtown, China Town, Boeing, and
somewhat further before stopping for a hotel, finding a Comfort Inn in SeaTac,
right near the end of the runway at the international airport. There was actually a Washington city
named SeaTac between Seattle and Tacoma.
I wanted two days and tonight was fine but tomorrow was sold
out, except for a smoking room. We
got a smoking room in the southeast corner of the building, number 405. They had high speed internet. The customer picked up a
broadband-over-powerline modem at the desk and plugged it into the wall in the
room. All cables were provided.
We walked about a half -mile down to a DennyÕs for
supper. It was late but still
light, confusing. The service was
not very good. There was some kind
of convention of rowdy people in town.
Some were in line ahead and behind us. We ordered specialty drinks anyway. Talked about ham radio issues.
Back at the room, I checked our APRS progress and
e-mail. Nothing from N5BF-10.
I sent out the following e-mail to the immediate family and
Wilda:
To: cbduncan@earthlink.net,
copychick...snip... cbduncan@earthlink.net
From: Courtney Duncan
<cbduncan@earthlink.net>
Subject: John's phone
(John doesn't read his
e-mail... :-) )
His new number is 818 914
8113. I think everybody (except
maybe Wilda) has this in their phone already.
Sometime after he goes to bed
tonight I'll turn on his phone and leave it near his bed. Sometime after 6:30 a.m. Pacific Time,
give him a call and wish him Happy Birthday. It doesn't have a voicemail message in his voice yet (of
course). It's ring tone is
different from mine and he'll be asleep until I get him up 7:30 - 8:00, so you
may have to call a couple of times so he can wake up, figure out that there's
something strange here, and answer it.
We're at a Comfort Inn at the
south end of Sea-Tac airport south of Seattle.
http://findu.com/cgi-bin/find.cgi?call=n5bf-2
and have great cell coverage
here.
Talk to you tomorrow.
Courtney
818 825 9507 -- no longer
"the loaner"
Keeping it hidden, with some difficulty, I got JohnÕs new
birthday phone out, turned it on, and left it near his bed, leaving mine near
my bed.
2006 August 7
Viannah called John at about 7:00. He thought it was my phone. Have pictures.
Throughout the trip I would typically get up around 8:00,
write my mother, prepare for the day, and get John up around 9:00. That made 6:50 early for him. That was the first time the phone
rang. It was Viann. She left a message. John rolled over.
It rang again at 7:00 (10:00 eastern). It was Viannah. I pushed the button and handed it to
him. John lay in bed talking to
his sister for a while before realizing that he was not talking on my phone,
but another one. His! I snapped a picture.
He quickly set up his voice mailbox. Throughout the day when people would
call our house looking for John on his birthday, they would be referred to this
number. It rang half a dozen
times.
I text message came on my phone alerting me that now my plan
change (that added JohnÕs phone) was complete.
We went to the hotel-provided breakfast. John was putting butter on the waffle
iron to grease it, as he had been instructed to do in the Weed, California
Comfort Inn, when the crabby attendant chewed him out. ŌIÕll have to completely clean this
out. These are ready, you are not
supposed to do this.Ķ She then
spent fifteen minutes doing solely this unnecessary chore, glaring at me, John,
and everyone else in the room.
Glaring back, I took over another iron and made a waffle myself, even
though I didnÕt want one. John had
something else and left as soon as he could. He would not go to a hotel-provided breakfast of any kind
for the rest of the trip. He
shrugged it off, ŌYouÕd think people in the same chain could get their story
straight,Ķ but he was hurt.
What I muttered under my breath was unprintable. It was his birthday too.
Laundry wash $1.25 X III
Dry $1.00 X II
We needed to do laundry. Took our dirty clothes down to the hotelÕs visitor
laundry: two washers and two
dryers. A woman and grandson were
there trying to use both already, but had no detergent of their own, so let me
use one of them since I did have my own soap. Still, we were in the laundry until after twelve due to this
sharing. Note: Next time we need to use a regular
Laundromat with dozens of washers and dryers.
The woman was from Florida, here on the west coast visiting
her grown children and grandchildren.
One of the children was on dialyses and couldnÕt move far. She recommended the Boeing museum, even
though she wasnÕt that interested in airplanes herself. This museum was just up the freeway from
here, we had driven past it on the way in.
1256 drive 1555.6 73F 89316
1415 1591.4 75F Space 83 $7.00 m/c
One of JohnÕs two priorities on this trip was to eat at
Shanghai Gardens in the Chinatown section of Seattle. He really didnÕt know how to get there. He worked on the internet for a while
trying to narrow it down, but we didnÕt have a suitably detailed map, or a
printer for Googlemaps. I wrote
down Ō6th ave. & S. King or S. Weller St.Ķ on the back of a
brochure, got an idea from the Google search where in the city to start
looking, and we drove off up the freeway.
I missed the close numbered avenues and the close numbered
streets, finally getting off around 104th street, somewhere north of
Seattle Pacific University. Having
noted a serious slowdown on the south I-5, we got off and took on surface
streets. The numbered streets were
slowly getting smaller. There were
a hundred blocks to go.
We passed through the SPU campus without seeing much and
soon were in a bad backup on the nearby surface streets. It turned out, after maybe half an
hour, that this was an entrance area to the southbound I-5, so we had managed
to be part of the freeway backup after all.
Past that, we continued on south, not really knowing where
we were.
John pointed out that I had missed Chinatown a long time
ago. He had said so when we went
by on the freeway the first time.
I hadnÕt heard this, to remember it.
With some study of the map, the street signs, and deduction,
we finally got to a part of town where things looked familiar to John. We found Weller Street and discovered
that it dead-ended into a park of some sort. Driving around it, we found ourselves in the right part of
Chinatown, then in front of the Shanghai Gardens restaurant. Now, all that was needed was to find a
place to park. This meant driving
around for another 15-20 minutes, seeing the sites, and the dragons on the
telephone poles.
We parked in a public parking lot and I used my Master Card
to pay the $7.00 fee for two hours.
We walked over to Shanghai Gardens and went in. It was 2:30 p.m. There was one party eating and the
staff were all standing around.
Finally one of them said, in broken English, ŌWeÕre closed,Ķ shooed us
out, and locked the door behind us.
There we were in the street in front of Shanghai Gardens,
hungry, and no place to eat.
We could fool around for a couple of hours and come back for
an early dinner. It wasnÕt obvious
how to proceed.
John wanted to go to a store across the street. We went there, wandering through their
grocery and food court.
Thai Place $15.14 China Town
Come back tomorrow.
John got what he wanted from the store. We decided, at length, to eat at the Thai
Place on the food court, not all that
great, and come back to Shanghai GardenÕs tomorrow. We didnÕt have anyplace we had to be at any particular time,
or date anyway
1530 onward 76F
With most of an hour left on our parking place, we got in
the van and drove through downtown, and up to the Space Needle. It was more than just the Space Needle;
it was nearly amusement park like with a roller coaster. Viann had encouraged us to go up in
it. Neither of us was excited
about being so high in a building.
Parking was $10.00. We just
kept driving and got lost north of downtown, again.
1605 1598.8 = 89360 Shell in Seattle Somewhere.
19.807
X $2.999 = $59.40
oil
just starting down, ok
1612
Somewhere while lost we found a Shell station and filled
up. The oil in the crankcase was
still holding up ok. This ($2.999
/ gallon) was the lowest price IÕd paid anywhere yet. In 1995, the lowest weÕd paid was in Indiana, $0.999 /
gallon.
1704 1624.1 hotel (nap)
From the gas station we found the freeway and went back to
the hotel where we both had a nap for an hour or so.
1918 drive
1945 spot 35, moved to 38, $5.00 m/c
On the spur of the moment, we got up and drove back down to
Chinatown. We knew where to go
this time; it took less than half an hour. There was a line out in the street at Shanghai Gardens; I
let John out to get in the line and went to park, right across the street this
time. It was only $5 in the
evening, in fact, through the night to 5:30 a.m.
I walked over to the restaurant. John had not known what to do. There were people waiting inside and outside. The place was full. We walked in together and sized up the
situation. If this had been an
ordinary visit, I would have just gone somewhere else tonight, but this was the
second try at Shanghai Gardens, one of the two priorities of the trip! We waited around for a while, decided
to walk up to the desk. Got in
line behind someone waiting for takeout.
Finally, we were given a number, coolly, and went to wait our turn.
Shanghai Gardens $55.00
After this it didnÕt take all that long to get seated. We ordered enough food for a family of
five. John wanted certain dishes
and wanted me to order things too.
We ended up with three big boxes of leftovers at the end of the evening.
When we sat down it was busy, but it was emptying out by the
time we got up to leave. We
noticed the fish tank and some of the exotic fish in it. People came in who must have been
family; they were seated in a special place. We watched them break down a large table into a small one
and a portable top. John was most
impressed by the tofu dish. It
made tofu into food, he thought.
We both struggled with our sturdy plastic chopsticks.
2140 back past Space Needle at night
On the way back we drove up to the Space Needle again,
viewing it at night, getting misdirected on yet another set of streets. We wanted to return to the hotel on I-5
south, but for some reason I kept following the signs for north.
[Editing note 2/5/10. I think this is from the same effect that confuses my east
and west in California. In Texas
the ocean is to the east. In
California (and Oregon and Washington) it is to the west. Apparently I think of east as the
direction toward the ocean more strongly than as the direction of the
sunrise. Similarly, in California,
the international border is to the south and the way to follow the west coast
is north. In Seattle these are
north and south respectively. cbd]
2222 hotel 1659.6
WhatÕs
it like having a 16 year old?
IÕm
not.
Back in the room John asked me what it was like to have a
sixteen year old. All I could
think of was that I wasnÕt. We had
had two sixteen year-old girls, but this would be different. I thought IÕd have to see how it went.
ŌAny
kind of sea food makes me sick.Ķ
While we were packing the Saturday before leaving La Canada,
our across-the-street neighbors the SmithÕs had noted the antennas on the van
and had come over to ask where we were going. On learning that we were planning on driving PCH, Maggie
said, Ōseafood.Ķ
Now, John was announcing to me that any kind of seafood made
him sick. I was sure there would
be hamburgers along the coast too.
Watch parts of dumb – over intense shows.
Flipped on the TV and watched pieces of a bunch of intense
cop shows. Marathon athlete foot
chases, crashing cars, courtroom and out-of-courtroom antics. These shows were all silly. John would mute and play his Game Boy
or switch channels on any commercial, or any sexually implicit content.
As was becoming usual, we turned out the lights about
midnight. (Eleven in campgrounds,
twelve or one in the hotels.)
2006 August 8
Mostly
overcast this morning.
Even though we were getting up at around nine there were
still clouds to burn off.
Still wake up with dread.
- The
unknown
- Driving
hazards
- Being
in charge
This morning was the last time I had coffee, maybe
ever. IÕd been trying to get off,
thinking it might have something to do with the feelings of dread that I would
always wake up with. I had decided
to just do without coffee for at least the rest of this trip.
[Editing note 2/5/10. IÕm still off.
cbd]
After an e-mail discussion, I decided not to fool with
N5BF-10 anymore. Monitoring on the
way into and around town, I had heard activity on the 30-meter frequency, but
none of our packets had gotten in, even in the shorter format, and even
transmitted more often.
As we loaded up, I just disconnected all the APRS equipment
from the shortwave radio. We were
parked underground so I didnÕt put up an HF antenna at all. Later I would just run the radio on the
20-meter whip instead.
1720 = 1020 drive away 1659.6 = 89420 64F from SeaTac