Now arriving: Emerald City

A few months ago I got a call from one of my best friends back in New York, Mike, inviting me to join him up in Seattle for Memorial Day weekend. I double checked with Matt, his cousin, if he could put another body up at his apartment and after he gave the okay I booked my trip.

So this past weekend I packed up and headed to the Northwest. As part of my new "fiscally conservative" lifestyle I took a new route to the airport - walked the estimated mile (estimated by my friend Jonas, I think it's somewhat less) to the train station, took the free shuttle from the train station to the airport and checked in. One thing I will mention because it annoyed me, was that I paid the $4.50 fare for the train, which I was only riding two stops, and no one ever came around to check.

That pisses the hell out of me because you can't buy tickets on the train (like you can in NY) so it's a crap shoot. Either pay the fare and you may not have had to, or skip it and risk getting some sort of massive fine. Stupid ass California mass transit. At least in NY, even if I was only going 2 stops on Metro-North they'd have checked my ticket. Transit fail on you Cali.

Anyway, the flight wasn't much in terms of adventure, save for the guy next to me, which I already covered in a previous post (" 'Scuse me while I kiss this guy"). I did complete 3 or 4 levels in Elite Beat Agents including the "YMCA" level and one of my new favorite songs, Earth, Wind and Fire's "September". But I consider that to be a successful fight.

When I touched down I headed towards the baggage claim and ran into Mike and Matt waiting for me. Mike's flight had landed about 25-30 minutes ahead of me and he already had a Starbucks in his hand. In his defense it was his first trip to the west coast and by his internal clock it was already quarter to 1 in the morning and he had been up "teaching" (he's a phys. ed instructor that's why teaching is in quotes - I give him a hard time about that all the time) since 7 or 8 in the morning. We headed down to the baggage claim carousel and after about 5 minutes after the first bags came up, I had mine and we were on our way.

After loading up Matts car we departed. We conferred that it would be a good idea to get some food before we got to Matt's apartment. However, Seattle, like other west coast cities doesn't have the "city that never sleeps" mentality that the three of us are used to. This caused us to head to a Jack In the Box on the outskirts of the city, the only place Matt knew of that was still open. Thanks to more lovely west coast street signage that doesn't exactly tell you what road you're on or where you're going, our trip was a little bit longer than we expected. However, we finally made it and ordered up some late night grub.

Upon arriving at Matt's apartment we promptly dropped off our belongings, inflated some air mattresses and headed back out to one of the local watering holes. The Blarney Stone Pub - sounds Irish enough for my taste. Plus they had Harp on tap. Check, it's a winner. After a few rounds, some catch up conversation and checking the day's sports happenings courtesy of Sports Center we retired to Matt's apartment for sleep. It being about 4am (internally) to Mike, Matt having to work in the morning and me with no real reason to stay awake.

So we didn't see or do much in terms of Seattle, but it was a nice ease into the trip.