Saturday, November 15, 2008

Seattle

We made it. After me messing up the flight times, a mad dash to the airport and a missed flight, we made it to Seattle about 2:45pm PST.

It's early here and I'm beat, feeling a little sick. Need to get on the Zicam today, but it should be a relaxing day for Delaney and I. After a whirlwind yesterday, with us racing around, we had a relaxing night and I fell asleep as he was watching The History Channel.

Our day started out OK yesterday, I was up early, went running, and showered by 6:45am. We should have left then, but for some reason I was sure it was a 9:25 flight. Or so I'd thought. Delaney was up and ready and I decided to give Kendall a shower before we left. It was the first snow of the season and it was blowing, so Tia said to check the flight. I did and saw an 8:25 departure.

In a panic I raced downstairs and confirmed it on the papers I'd printed. I grabbed Delaney, and about 7:10 we left, and immediately knew we wouldn't make it. As we turned off our private road, the Porsche started to slip and I realized that I needed to take it easy. We missed our sharp turn halfway down the road since when it's icy that one is almost impossible to make. We slowly crept about 20-25mph down the main road, along with everyone else. At the big left turn onto Smoky Hill, going about 25mph, I goosed the accelerator slightly and we spun out. Fortunately no one was behind us close enough to have to try and avoid us. A quick reverse and slow acceleration had us moving.

We got to the airport, raced in, and found an agent. We had 20 minutes to go and she called the gate, but they said they were leaving early to de-ice and no chance for us. :(

Delaney was worried, but we were 1st and 2nd standbys on the 12 o'clock with 12 seats. We had breakfast, two of the Jones boys eating burritos and reading. Then we walked to the gate, read more, hung out, had a minor bottle fight with plastic bottles banging off each other and ended up in row 2 of the next flight. Things were looking up, but we were delayed taking off and landed 30 minutes late.

We immediately grabbed our bags, got a car, and then headed to the Museum of Flight. I was operating more off instinct since we were in a hurry and I kind of remembered being there 3 or 4 years ago. We walked in about 3:45, paid, the girl telling us we had just over an hour, and then Delaney started racing through. At first I think he was trying to see everything, but then we slowed down, looked at some exhibits, he walked into a space station mock-up and talked to the docent for a few minutes, tried to land a space shuttle, simulated a pilot taking air traffic control instructions and more.

At first he wanted to come back again, but we had more time than he thought, we even walked through the original Boeing "Red Barn" factory, and he got to see lots. By the end he was pretty satisfied in an hour and we hit the gift shop for our pins (for our vests) before heading out.

We headed downtown, which is easy to find. I've driven it a few times and know how to get to the Convention Center. From there you can see the Space Needle, so I wasn't worried about finding it. Our printer must have run out of paper because I was missing printouts from the hotel and the aikido studio. But I could see the Space Needle and so we drove there and I pulled over in front of it. My Sidekick got a Google Map, which showed us a couple blocks away and we drove over and checked in.

It's pretty cool, we can see the Space Needle from our room, we're close to the Seattle Center, which is where everything happens we want to see. After a short walk down for Mexican (Delaney said better than Chipotle/QDoba, not as good as Bamba), we drove over to the Aikido studio and watched about 20 minutes of people throwing each other around. The first two demos were the beginnings of moves, leaning people over and I'm not sure Delaney thought much of it. Then the sensei started launching a few people in demos and I heard a "whoa" quietly whispered next to me.

Next was the Space Needle. I've been there a few times, but never up to the top. So we walked over, a nice stroll on a not-too-cold night, got tickets, and went up. Delaney thought it was really cool with lots of interactive screens that have Seattle history up there. He liked the ride, I had my usual level of fear riding up the elevator on the outside of the structure and then being at the top. I didn't like being outside and didn't stay there long, letting Delaney look around.

A late night decaf, cinnamon roll and Gator-ade at the top and we headed back to the room. A full day for us.

Today it's the Underground tour, the Science Center, and the Experience Music Project.

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