Another trip to Seattle. You know, when the TSA person at the Alaska Airlines gate at SJC recognizes you, you have to pause.
This trip, I was treated to a bulkhead seat on the plane. What that meant was one of the bags I would have put into the overhead ended up getting flight-checked. That means the bag is waiting for you when you leave the plane, but it's still a little disturbing, especially when you hadn't parsed things out between two bags. If the bag leaves my immediate area, I'd like a better back-up than knowing where the closest Bon and Nordie's are. But everything arived in one piece, and I headed off to the hotel. Nothing like a room overlooking Lake Union to create a good attitude.
As one of the engineers said "This is the weather that makes you forget the other ten months of the year". Gorgeous, glorious weather--absolute postcard stuff. A good time to check out another neighbourhood. This time I took the driving tour through Ballard. Ballard's an interesting mix of a lot of older houses sprinkled with some updated and new housing. They seem to have escaped the "monster house" problem of new houses being built on old lots, and being so large that they turn them into zero-line lots.
That pretty much finished off the north end of Seattle, and besides, I had baseball the next night. Not the Mariners, but the Everett Aquasox, their short season rookie league team.
The Aquasox play in a high school field that's been "enhanced" a bit. When I first went to an Aquasox game, the players were dressing in the high school lockerroom, and the umpires were dressing at the motel. I think the umpires are still dressing at the motel, but there are some facilities these days.
First I had to get to Everett, though. Okay, I found out first hand about the Seattle to Everett commute. That's pretty ugly. I probably could have taken the 99 and done about as well. As it was, it took about an hour to drive 22 miles up the I5.
If you're looking for a way to take the family out to a ballgame and not spend $200 doing it, minor league baseball is the way to go. The most expensive tickets were $10, which puts you closer to the action than if you were standing on the field on most major league parks. Food's cheaper, and the Aquasox appeared to be attempting to make sure that no kid walked out of that park without a prize. Not only were there kid-friendly contents between innings, but there were giveaways galore. There's also a supervised play area, to burn off the cotton candy and Red Ropes.
The baseball? These are kids who are playing their first pro ball. Two months ago they were either at high school or at a JC somewhere. Short season is sort of like orientation for pro ball--they learn about pro ball while they are learning pro ball. The play isn't major league caliber, but it's entertaining, and you can always say you saw the next big star play way back when....
Wednesday was a quasi business dinner at The Kells in Post Alley off of Pike Market. It's one of those places that you either stumble upon, or are told how to find, because it's not on the main drag. The food is excellent, and the beer selection (hey, I'm not doing an Irish pub/restaurant and drinking wine) was also quite nice.
Amazing what a little dinner and drinks can do for moving a concept forward.
All in all it was a highly productive and enjoyable trip. More on that later....
Posted by lsefton at July 18, 2004 10:06 PM