Sleeping in Seattle

The Oregon-Washington State Border

"Believe me Jen, Forks is really out of the way."

"Yeah, but I can make a lot of my girlfriends jealous if I get a picture there."

Jen and I had this conversation at least three times as we worked our way towards the Washington border. The only good thing about going to Forks would have been visiting the Hoh Rainforest, but since we have already been there, I considered it a waste of time and gas. For those that don't know, Forks is the setting for the Twilight books and movies. Jen was somewhat disappointed, but she accepted it. If it is any consolation to her and her friends, we are pretty sure we passed through Forks on our previous drive through the area about four years ago.

Olympia, WA

Following the few minutes of cold shoulder Jen gave me, we headed up towards Seattle. On the way up we decided to stop in Olympia to stretch our legs and take in a bit of walking. We chose to find a thrift store. Upon discovering one, we found a parking spot and walked to the meter. It turns out that Olympia has a free grace period of parking where the first twenty minutes is free. We hit the button for free twenty minutes and out printed the receipt. Free parking is always good, but unfortunately it was to no avail, because the thrift store was a bust. It was more of a Buffalo Exchange with hipster clothes that were all overpriced. They had some good things there but just nothing that we were interested in.

We left the thrift store to stumble upon a street corner that proved Olympia, WA is the face tattoo capital of the world. On that one corner there were at least three people with face tattoos and we are pretty sure there was a fourth. This amount of people with tattoos on their faces is more than total that I previously have seen in my life. A face tattoo says many things about a person and none of them include them being a friendly and approachable human being. Congratulations goes to Olympia as you have a population of people that literally does not care about how they look to other people.

Seattle, WA

We arrived in Seattle shortly after passing through the circus known as Olympia, which was a very quirky and semi cool place. I called my cousin Christianna and told her we were fairly close to the house. She made sure we had directions using our fancy phones and mentioned what I thought to be her saying that she was almost home. Twenty minutes or so after getting off the phone with her we arrived at her house.

There was no car in the driveway, but I thought that I remembered her saying previously that she walked to work and thought little to nothing of it. We walked up and rang the doorbell. A split second or two later we heard a dog barking. Jen and I said to each other, "ooh, they have a dog." We wait a minute and nothing happened but a little more barking. We rang the bell again and knocked a couple of times, for good measure. Still we received nothing but barking. Immediately we made sure the address was correct. It was. We rang the bell one last time and some really tall guy answered the door, in a towel and T-shirt and it was not Christianna's husband, Heath.

"Hello?" the guy said

"Hi...Is Christianna here?" I asked

"She's at work, I'm her brother."

"Oh, I talked to her a bit ago and she said she was off."

"Oh, Ok."

"Cool, do you mind if we come in?"

"No, come on in, I just got out of the shower."

I would be lying to you if I said it wasn't a little awkward. I started to wonder if he was Heath's brother or Christianna's. I couldn't remember if Christianna's mom had another kid or not so there was a bit of a mystery to solve, and troubleshooting for answers is my middle name. The dude went back towards the bathroom, since he was still dripping when he answered the door, and left us to hang with the dog. So we sat there for about five minutes petting the dog and looking at each other for answers on how to approach the deciphering of who this guy is. When he arrived from the bathroom, he introduced himself as Josh. Following some spurts of small talk with stretches of silence in between,n a car pulled into the driveway.

Christianna and Heath rolled out of their old maroon Volvo station wagon and came into the house. We said hello and chatted for a bit, all the while the brother mystery floated around. Christianna never mentioned that a brother would be staying there, so my first inclination is that Josh was Heath's brother, but why would he say that he was her brother, in which the “her” refers to Christianna. There were mixed signals thrown at us as Heath talked more to Josh than Christianna did at first. After some snooping and process of elimination, the mystery was solved as Josh shares a mom with Christianna. After the awkward meeting between us, Josh turned out to be a cool guy. He is a bit younger at twenty one, but was laid back and was cool to talk to once we got to know each other better.

We caught up with Christianna and Heath and we found out that they had a date night planned and made plans to go out to dinner together. Since we too had a sibling stay with us we knew that a break every now and again was nice, and told them not to worry about us. They split to go eat dinner and we found out there was a three dollar cinema not too far away. Christianna and Heath told us to check out old town so we drove down to grab some food.

We noticed as soon as we got down to old town that we weren't going eat there, since all the restaurants looked a bit pricey for a couple of unemployed fools on a journey across the country. With the new information we decided to head towards the cinema and grab something that sounded good on the way. We stumbled across a little fast food/diner looking place called Kidd Valley. The place reminded me of In-n-Out Burger a little bit. Jen liked it because they had a wide variety of shakes. She looked over all the possibilities and decided on boysenberry. I have to hand to Kidd Burger because not only was the shake really good, but the burgers and fries were pretty excellent as well. After killing our hunger we pressed forth to the theater.

The Landmark Crest Cinema is an old movie theater that has been revived and made into a discount cinema. They showcase second runs movies, but also had one or two newer movies as well. Jen and I went there to see Splice. It is a science fiction movie about the perils of creating a new species and the ethics behind cloning and creating new life from scratch. All in all it was very well done, disturbing and a bit crazy at times, but its message was well perceived and they went about the movie in an interesting way. After the movie we headed home, for it was late and we needed to rest up.

Saturday started off with a great and hearty breakfast of homemade waffles, compliments of Heath. He made three different kinds of waffles; buttermilk, wheat, and gluten free. Heath is a waffle connoisseur and he has a very professional looking waffle iron, as it heats and flips for an even distribution of cooking. Heath also brought out some fresh maple syrup of which he delighted us with, along with the information that maple syrup was going down in price, like it was a stock. The waffles and syrup tasted great and they were almost over shadowed by the bacon. The bacon was cooked in the oven, which turned out to be amazingly good, as well as less greasy and much easier to cook.

Shortly after breakfast concluded, Uncle Richard drove up. It has been four years since we had seen him, and we played catch up for a bit as we sat around talking. After telling of our recent adventures and him telling us of his, Christianna decided that we should all walk to the park. Heath grabbed a frisbee and the dog, Boris, and we all proceeded to walk down to the park. As we walked, my allergies decided that I wasn't allowed to have as much fun as I wanted to. My nose went into hibernation, as the snot and mucus did that weird thing where it gets so stuffed up that eventually it starts to run out of space to be stored, so it just runs out of your nostrils.

We arrived at the park and Heath busted out the frisbee, that was of championship quality. It was a clear plastic disc that had a rubber like angled edge, which made it a little softer than regular Frisbee. The frisbee is also not supposed to be used in conjunction with Boris. This caused a dilemma, since all that Boris wanted to do was play with the frisbee. Our frisbee tossing turned into a game of keep away from Boris. The fun part was getting to a missed catch before he did. After a while of frisbee, Boris grew less and less energetic about chasing the disc and slowly became more excited about laying in the shade. This also prompted some trick catches of the frisbee, since there was no longer the threat of a dog eating it. Then, a funny thing happened as Josh threw the frisbee that sailed in between Richard and Heath. Richard went jogging after it and suddenly looked down at his leg as Heath ran by him.

Richard asked if anything had hit him in the leg. I am not 100%, but I am pretty sure Heath did not drop down and punch Richard's calf muscle, but you never know. At first it seemed like a temporary charley horse, as he came down on his leg wrong, but after a couple of minutes Richard could barley put any weight on his leg. This put a damper on things as Heath left to fetch the car with Boris, in order to pick Richard up since he could not make the walk back to the house.

The rest of us walked a little more of the park and made our way to the beach and the open water of the Puget Sound. It was very pretty there and I was enjoying it thoroughly, until my allergies flared up even worse. As if the stuffy/runny nose wasn't enough, my allergies decided that my eyes should itch a ridiculous amount. This caused a little rubbing, which in turn caused some puffiness and redness, which in turn caused my utter annoyance at my allergies. I'm not sure of the root of the allergies, but I do know that it worsened as we neared the ocean anywhere in the Pacific Northwest. It must be some coastal plant or tree that is more abundant near the waters.

After walking back from the park, it was time for dinner. This meant it was time for some BBQ. As Heath was cooking, Christianna checked online for a diagnosis of her fathers injury. We weren't completely sure, but it seemed like Richard pulled his muscle. He then kept his leg elevated and iced for the evening and was told by a medical friend to stay off of it for at least a week, which meant he had to get some crutches. The crutches meant that he could not partake in his scheduled bike trip that he had planned for the week. I could see the devastation in his eyes as this was a minor hit to his independence and would hinder his ambition, and anyone who knows Richard, knows that this is his Achilles heel. So we took it easy for the rest of the night.

Sunday was a bit of a lazy day as we sort of cruised around the neighborhood and checked out some thrift stores. Unfortunately the one we were headed to was closed, so we re-routed our trek to a different store. After looking around a bit, Jen found a pullover sweatshirt as Christianna and Richard went to a farther Goodwill to pick up some crutches. The day concluded with Jen going to see the new Twilight movie, Eclipse, with Christianna, Heath, and a friend of theirs. Josh and I hung out at the house and watched a little TV and caught up on some internet happenings. I then needed to shower for our days in Seattle were coming to an end in the morning. We had a nice, laid back weekend hanging with family, and it was much appreciated. We want to thank Christianna and Heath for letting us stay and also a thanks to Josh and Boris for being fun to hang out with while we stayed there. Sleep came, and in the morning, the good-byes were said as our adventure took us into the country that hockey built, Canada.

Random Facts

Loads of Laundry Done at Christianna's House = 2

Face Tattoo Count = 4

Pictures Taken in Washington = 0, Jen forgot to take her camera out.