The Bluest Sky You've Ever Seen: Seattle

That's Seattle in the photo. You might already know that due to 2 iconic type images in the photo, that being the Space Needle and Mount Rainier.

Where I am right now, Fort Worth, Texas, there are no iconic images that anyone might associate with this town. Regardless of that, my long time reader knows Fort Worth is the envy of cities and towns far and wide. This is a well known fact. Has to be a fact. I read it in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

Below is a video, with a hit song from the 60s, by Perry Como, called Seattle. It was the theme song for a TV show called Here Come the Brides, set in the time Seattle was a frontier town in need of women for all the loggers.

Seattle has been my favorite big city for as long as I can remember. More than any of the other big cities I've been to, Seattle is like being in a theme park. So many attractions. Let me describe a typical visit to Seattle and you'll see what I mean. This may be instructive for Fort Worth readers in terms of understanding why Fort Worth tends to underwhelm me. And others.

I park at REI Corporate Headquarters flagship store. Free parking in a parking garage. The REI store is a theme park all by itself. It's got a mountain bike trail where you can test your new bike. An indoor rockclimb, a great view, extremely cool architecture. REI built this late in the last century. If this had been done in Fort Worth, 4 years later Seattle Community College would have bought the building from failing REI.

From REI I walk to the entry to the transit tunnel that runs deep under downtown Seattle. I hop a bus going into the tunnel. Transit downtown is free. I get off at the first station, Westlake. Westlake Station is a cavernous space that connects to several downtown stores, like Nordstroms. Westlake is called Westlake because it is at Westlake Center. Westlake Center is sort of a townsquare. This type thing is why I was confused by Fort Worth's Sundance Square, which is a bunch of parking lots.

Westlake Center is a vertical mall with a very good food court on the top floor. There are at least 3 vertical malls in downtown Seattle. And several large department stores. There are no vertical malls in downtown Fort Worth. And no department stores. Westlake Center is the downtown terminus of the Monorail.

So, let's take the Monorail to Seattle Center. Seattle Center is where the 1962 Seattle World's Fair took place. It's not a long ride. To get to the Seattle Center Monorail station you ride through the Experience Music Project museum. You need to go there if you are a rock and roll fan.

At the Seattle Center there are all sortsa things to do. Key Arena is where the soon to be ex-Sonics play. You can see Key Arena in the photo above at the lower right. You can easily spend a day at Seattle Center. Big events take place here like the Folklife Festival and Bumbershoot. The price to ride to the top of the Space Needle has gone way up over the years. But it's worth it.

Once we're done with the Space Needle let's walk down to the Waterfront. It's not a long walk and it's all downhill. I don't know if it's back in operation yet. It had to close while a new sculpture garden was installed. I'm talking about the Waterfront Trolley. You can ride that. Or just walk the waterfront. There is a lot to see on the Seattle Waterfront. Docked cruise ships, piers with lots of stores and restaurants, the Seattle Aquarium, marinas, lots of boats. Including ferry boats. You can easily go for a short ferry ride, like out to Bainbridge Island, for a fun side trip.

As you're walking along the Seattle Waterfront, when you get to the Aquarium, you'll see the Pike Place Hillclimb. That's a wide series of steps that take you into Pike Place Market. There are restaurants to tempt you on the climb.

Pike Place Market can take hours to explore. It's huge. Multiple levels. Always busy. The Seattle Art Museum is nearby. Unlike Fort Worth, Seattle does not restrict its cultural amenities to one area and call it the Cultural District. Seattle spreads its culture all over town.

From Pike Place let's go back to Westlake Center, it's just a couple blocks away, and go down to the transit tunnel again and hop a bus (or soon a train). There are several transit stations, all huge and all themed to match their location. We'll get off at the last one, that being the International District Station. The International District used to be called Chinatown. But then Seattle got all politically correct.

When you get back to the surface, from the International District Station, you will be directly in front of the Seahawk Stadium, with the Mariner's Ballpark behind it, with a huge Exhibition Hall between them. Seahawk Stadium sits where the Kingdome used to be. Fort Worth can't figure out how to replace its antique Will Rogers Coliseum, used for rodeos, while Seattle somehow manages to blow up a perfectly useful Kingdome and build 2 new ballparks and a new exhibition hall. I love a dynamic go to it and get it done type city. But then there are some merits in being laid back and taking decades to get something done. I hope Fort Worth's Trinity River Vision town lake gets filled with water while I'm still on the planet.

From the International Transit Station there is a pedestrian bridge that takes you across the train tracks. On the other side you can go to the former Chinatown. You don't wanna miss Uwajumaya. It's an Asian grocery store, on steroids, with one of the best food courts I've ever seen.

After Uwajumaya you can go back to the transit tunnel, or get on that trolley I mentioned earlier. In other words you can find a number of ways to make your way back to your car parked at REI. The International District is right next to Pioneer Square. There are galleries, restaurants and nightclubs in Pioneer Square. This is also where Underground Seattle is, which is a tourist thing I've never seen.

On the way back to REI you might want to check out the Washington State Convention Center. It's a rather cool building. It is built over Interstate 5, creating a tunnel for the freeway. If I remember right the convention center opened in the late 1980s or early 90s. Since I've been in Texas they've spent $500 million adding on, with an atrium over 5th Avenue. Fort Worth remodeled its seldom used convention center in the past few years. In three stages. Because they couldn't afford the $138 million price tag in one shot. The Seattle Convention Center has plenty of hotels nearby, they didn't need to give tax breaks and concessions to get a hotel, like Fort Worth did. It's still under construction.

When you go into the Washington State Convention Center you go up a long long escalator. This takes you to a wall of glass that you can walk through and out to what is called Freeway Park. This is also built over the freeway. There are trails and waterfalls and greenery. There were some security problems and one murder, I believe. This was fixed with increased security and having more activities in the park. Fort Worth had a similar park, Heritage Park, that had similar problems. Fort Worth fixed their park's problem by surrounding it with cyclone fence and calling it closed. Right across from the county courthouse and next to a jail. One would think security would not have been a big problem to solve. But it's Fort Worth, little problems are not easy to solve.

Well, there you go, a small sampling of why I like Seattle. There is much more to like than the stuff I've described in the downtown area. Districts, like Fremont, which has seceded from the Union. University District, which is where the UW is located, is a good thing. Lake Union with Gasworks Park, good thing. I'll want to see Lake Union when I'm up there. Much has changed. In Ballard you can watch boats go through the locks to get to Lake Union or away from Lake Union. At the Ballard Locks you can go underwater and watch salmon go through the locks.

And now, Perry Como's ode to Seattle.

North Texas TV Connections. Again.

I'd grown bored with sharing each example of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram's bizarre practice of mentioning any, no matter how remote, connection between someone on TV and North Texas, especially Fort Worth. The main perpetrator of this is the Star-Telegram TV writer, Robert Philpot. At times he sounds almost giddy with excitement that someone on TV has been to Fort Worth, or lived here for 2 months when they were 3 years old. As you can see from Mr. Philpot's photo, he does not look to be the sort of guy who gets giddy over such things.

So, why am I mentioning this odd Star-Telegram fetish again? Well. Today there was a new perpetrator, in addition to some fresh goofy verbiage from Mr. Philpot.

The new perpetrator of the local connection thing turned up on the Sports page in an article about the Tour de France. There was a list of 5 questions, such as #1 "Can the Tour keep clean?" Or #4 "Will an American win?"

And then there's #5. "Are there any local ties?"

With the answer being...

"Not at first. But one Fort Worth business has a tie to the American team Garmin-Chipotle. Garmin-Chipotle took a stock of carbon-fiber Arundel bottle cages along with the team supplies to the Tour. Officials at Fort Worth-based Arundel aren't sure if their products will be used, since it might conflict with the team's sponsorships. But the lightweight cages could help Garmin-Chipolte shed some grams in the moutains."

So. The Texas connection, to the Tour de France, that the Texas locals absolutely needed to know was that a bike team might use a bottle cage that was built in Fort Worth.

Lulu called just as I was typing the above. She asked what I was blogging about. I read it to her. Lulu said, "That's so pathetic." I agreed.

And then in the Your Life section, the above mentioned Robert Philpot wrote an article about some Disney TV Shows. The first paragraph says, "It's not really that surprising that so many young actors from Dallas-Fort Worth are on TV right now. After all, this is a major metropolitan area, and its bound to produce a few people who'll make it to Hollywood."

If it's not surprising then why mention it????

Philpot goes on to mention the names and Texas hometowns of several people on Disney TV shows I've never heard of and few watch. Like Lulu said, pathetic. And so small townish.

Cousin Scott In Paris Texas

Yikes. I've become more of a Texan than I realized. In that I took extreme umbrage at my Yankee cousin Scott's rude blogging remarks yesterday about my adopted state. Rude remarks that sort of remind me of things I used to say, quite often, early on in my exile in Texas. I've lost count of the times a Texan has told me if I hate it so much here to please leave by whatever means I arrived. I phrased the sentiment more delicately than I've had it expressed to me.

I'd say the same thing to cousin Scott, but he's already left Texas, I expect never to return, so it isn't necessary to advise him to get outta here.

Cousin Scott went to Paris, Texas but did not mention the Eiffel Tower with the cowboy hat on top. Instead he went around town asking if the Hilton girl had been there.

Below is cousin Scott's uncalled for, totally without merit, yesterday diatribe about Texas. Like I warned you yesterday, cousin Scott does not believe in capital letters or paragraph breaks, so it's a bit of a challenge to read his amusing verbiage....

"seems like i've been in texas a long time. not sure whether that's because it's big or because it's still BORING. why did we want texas anyway? of course, i'm saying this having seen just the northern part. i'm sure places like brownsville are much more scenic and interesting. galveston! oh, galveston. i don't really have anything to say about texas despite umpteen hours driving through it. except it has nice speed limits. you go 70 on the freeways, and you go 70 on little farm roads. everyone goes 70, all the time. nice. and i absolutely detest texas mud. yesterday, when i had to take a little detour because of a "major accident," according to the sheriff's deputy, i was following a car with texas plates that pulled into a driveway, then backed out to turn around. after i did the same and got going down the road again, it felt like the entire car was going to fall apart. shimmying, shaking. if the car had a front axle, i would have been certain it had fallen apart. got out and looked, but saw nothing, so started slowly down the road again. little by little the shimmying smoothed out and i picked up speed. eventually i was doing 70 and everything was fine. the only thing i could figure is that i had picked up some nice red texas mud on part of the front tires when i turned around, and it had dried and was causing the problem. but when my shimmy problem was gone, so was the car i had been following. I WAS IN THE MIDDLE OF TEXAS AND HAD NO CLUE WHAT DIRECTION TO GO TO GET OUT OF TEXAS. fortunately, a nice guy driving a huge combine stopped and opened the door when i climbed onto the thing and told me where to go. today, there were a couple of firsts. number one, i was so engrossed in the fabulous texas scenery that i missed a turn and had to backtrack about 20 miles. the second was when i made an intentional detour and drove north about 10 miles into oklahoma, just so i could say i had been to oklahoma. noticed on the map that there's a durant, oklahoma, and i almost went there to see what marketing plans they had for kevin durant of the sonics when he becomes an oklahomaniac. also stopped in paris, texas, but the hilton girl wasn't there, and the guy putting out flags around the town square for the fourth of july didn't know if she had ever been there. i just finished spending a day and a half driving across texas, and i must admit i'm still looking for a reason for its existence."

Seattle Sonics in Oklahoma City?

Ten years ago if someone had told me that ten years later I would be living in Texas I would have thought that a scenario that could not happen. If they'd told me I would be living in Fort Worth, Texas I would have told them there is no way I'd be living in that rundown town. (At that point in time I'd only been to Fort Worth once, in 1981, when it was pretty much a rundown eyesore. Fort Worth has greatly improved since 1981).

Ten years ago if someone had told me that ten years later the Seattle Supersonics would leave Seattle and re-locate to Oklahoma city I would have thought the idea idiotic.

But that is what is going to happen. Starbucks Chief, Sonic Owner, Howard Schultz sold the Sonics to Clay Bennett from Oklahoma City. At the time of the sale promises were made regarding the Sonics not moving. Then Bennett insisted Key Arena, where the Sonics play, was not up to league standards, so he demanded a new arena.

Seattle balked, the state legislature balked. No new arena. This was one time too many where a Seattle sports franchise demanded a new arena. That and it was only in the 1990s that Key Arena had been totally remodeled with its seating capacity greatly expanded. For the voters to be told that just a few years later Key Arena is now outdated seemed ridiculous.

I never went to a Sonic game after Key Arena was remodeled. I don't think I'd been to a game after it became Key Arena. Key Arena originally was known as the Seattle Coliseum. It'd been converted from the Washington State Pavilion left over from the 1962 Seattle World's Fair.

The city and Bennett have been battling in courts for weeks. But yesterday the two sides settled the dispute. Seattle gets to keep the Supersonic name. Bennett still faces possible court time with the Starbucks guy. And there could be an injunction filed to keep the team from moving. But, I'm guessing it's a done deal and the Sonics are bye-bye from Seattle.

Is there a better basketball arena in Oklahoma City than Seattle's Key Arena? If so, I've not seen it.

Spencer Jack On A Beach in Washington

On Sunday it was hot in the Puget Sound zone of Washington. Well, hot for the western part of Washington. I think it got to 90. So, my grand, or is it great, nephew Spencer Jack had his first day at the beach. I learned this from Spencer Jack's Blog.

Spencer lives in La Conner. That's a cool tourist town in the Skagit Valley, near where I lived.

There are a lot of beaches on the Puget Sound. And a lot of parks. The parks are manmade, but the beaches are all natural. Unlike here in Fort Worth, where there is much excitement about a water project giving Fort Worth a little lake and some canals. And ridding the town of its scenic convergence of 2 forks of the Trinity River. I don't think Fort Worth gets any beaches in the deal.

Where I lived in Washington I could drive 5 miles to the east and be in the Cascade Mountain foothills. I could drive 15 miles west and be at a saltwater beach. Why am I living in Fort Worth I pause to ponder?

There is talk, among some, that I'll never return to Texas, after my month up in Washington, that starts in 18 days. But I've got a return ticket. I have to come back here. I love Texas. Whining and complaining and observing absurdity is what I enjoy. There is so little for me to whine and complain and observe absurdly in Washington. Well, the traffic sucks worse than Texas up there, but that's nothing fun to whine and complain about.

Driving Through Texas With Cousin Scott

My old cousin Scott, I mean my oldest cousin, Scott, recently ceased overseeing the production of words at the Seattle Times. Apparently cousin Scott decided that this gave him a good opportunity to go on a long road trip all over the country. And blog about it. With no photos. Scott does paint a good word picture, though.

A couple days ago cousin Scott saw my parental units and brother and sister and their spouses in the Phoenix zone. Then he continued his way east. Apparently enjoying the scenery a lot. Til he hit Texas. That's part of what cousin Scott was not enjoying, in the photo. That photo was taken a bit west of Amarillo. It's flat. For miles. And miles. It's even flatter for even more miles if you go through West Texas east of El Paso.

Maybe it's something in our family genes, or maybe living so long in overly scenic Washington that makes us react to Texas the way we do.

Okay, now cousin Scott's description of Texas. Be warned, Scott does not believe in using capital letters. This makes reading his long paragraphs a bit more work than what one may be used to. Maybe this behavior is why Scott no longer oversees word production at the Seattle Times.

"across the state line in texas, oil derricks, big farms and ranches, cowboy boots and hats and a happy "join the NRA" sign replaced rock outcroppings and the beauty of the desert. boring. maybe tomorrow i should sneak up to oklahoma city and stand on a street corner downtown and tell everyone there what seattle thinks of the new sonics owner. maybe not. tomorrow: wichita falls to texarkana or however far into arkansas i get. it better not be boring..."

Mount Rainier, Olympic National Park & Mount Baker

Eighteen days til I'm on my way to Washington. I've not been there in summer since 2004. The mountain you see in the photo was out the entire month of my visit. In Washington-speak, when you say the mountain is out it means the sky is clear and you can see Mount Rainier. I'm hoping the mountain is out every day of my visit again this time.

I've not hiked a mountain since 1998. I'm bringing my hiking boots with me. I hope I get to see how good a shape I'm in. Below I'll put a video of some guys climbing Mount Baker. Mount Baker is a volcano near where I lived in the Skagit Valley town of Mount Vernon. Mount Baker was about 30 miles away as a crow flies. I could see it from my kitchen window. The last time I hiked Mount Baker was with nephew Joey, sometime in the 1990s. That's Mount Baker, as seen from I-5, looking through a notch in the hills in south Mount Vernon. My nephew has a restaurant at a golf course on the other side of that notch. My house was just a bit to the left of the notch.

The hike up Mount Baker, with nephew Joey, took place from the south side. There is a big ski area on the north side of Baker. It's a much longer drive to get there, over the twisty turny Mount Baker Highway, that is not suitable for an acrophobe. The ski area of Mount Baker holds the world's record for deepest snow. My last time up there was with nephews Chris and Jeremy. They now live in Phoenix. We hiked up Tabletop Mountain where I took my all time favorite photo of the two of them sitting on top Tabletop with Mount Shuksan behind them and Mount Baker to our right. That is Jeremy in the photo on the right, sliding down Tabletop Mountain heading towards Mount Baker. That day at Tabletop Mountain was probably the most fun I ever had with my nephews. As you can see, there are a lot of mountains in Washington.

Go here for more of my photos of the Cascade Mountains and hikes I've gone on.

Below is a nice tourist type video giving you a good idea of what it's like to visit Mount Rainier and Olympic National Parks. Below that is the Mount Baker video.



The below video is of a climb up Mount Baker from the side of the mountain I hiked it with nephew Joey. The video starts in the Skagit Valley flatland.

Watermelon Viagra

This morning I was surprised to learn that jocks have been taking Viagra for its performance enhancing qualities. But not for the type of performance enhancement you might think they'd take it for. Instead, they are popping the blue pills to make their blood flow easier due to the relaxing of blood vessels and the resulting delivery of more oxygen to their hard working muscles.

I don't know how widespread the sports world Viagra popping is. Those pills aren't cheap.

Here in Texas, Texas A & M is doing its part for performance enhancement. They've discovered one of the phyto-nutrients in watermelon, that being citrulline, has the ability to relax blood vessels, like Viagra does, with the same result.

Trouble is most of the citrulline is located in the part of the watermelon most people don't eat, that being the rind. I've always liked watermelon rind. And I've never had the need to use Viagra. Now, I guess I know why.

Texas A & M's Fruit and Vegetable Improvement Center, down in College Station, Texas, near the Presidential Library of the first President Bush, is busy working on trying to breed a watermelon where the performance enhancing citrulline is in the fruit part as well as in the rind.

If Texas A & M is successful, I'm guessing those are going to be some expensive watermelons. They will need to be banned from sports, just like steroids.

The video below demonstrates the power of too much watermelon rind consumption.

Searching For Seattle News

I look at Google Trends every once in awhile. That's constantly updated list of the Top 100 search strings that people are Googling. In other words it's what people are looking for information about. Every once in awhile I'll see something on the list that matches something I know. Or I'll click on the search string to see why it's hot.

But right now I'm stumped. There is all this Seattle stuff on the list. But I can't figure out why.

#2 is "king 5 news." That's Seattle's NBC station.
#3 is "seattle news."
#4 is "kiro 7." That is Seattle's CBS station.
#7 is 'kings county hospital." Seattle is in King County.
#8 is "kiro news."
#15 is "komo 4." That's Seattle's ABC station.
#16 is 'kiro tv."
#53 is "komo tv."

Why are people looking for info about the Seattle TV stations? Clicking on the search links provided no clue. Very odd.

ABC's The Bachelorette 4 Gag Me Fest

Go here for this morning's blogging about last night's Bachelorette final episode.

I know I said I would not watch this train wreck anymore. But last night I was tired, my head hurt, my back ached, I was in a bad mood. I needed some mindless nonsense to appall and possibly entertain me with its appallingness. The Bachelorette fits that bill.

Last night, the Husband Hunter, DeeAnna, was down to 3 guys, all with 'J' names. As in Jeremy, Jason and Jesse.

The premise of last night's episode was the Husband Hunter was to go on a supposedly romantic date with each of the guys, somewhere in the Bahamas. After dinner she hands the guy a card telling him if he wants to they can spend the night as a couple in something called the Romantic Fantasy Suite. I think that's fancy speak for brothel, but I'm not sure.

Stay in the Fantasy Suite? As a couple? As in sleep together? And that is what it appeared happened. I don't remember the order of the assignations. But one of the guys, either Jeremy or Jason, was laying on the bed, smooching DeeAnna. He then gets up and shuts the door, blocking out the camera man. How romantic. To me the implication was that DeeAnna must have helped herself to a full sampling of her 3 suitors husbandly wares.

One of the guys seems real strange, like there's something wrong with him. His name is Jeremy. In Survivor Sucks someone had this to say about Jeremy, "Jeremy is a sociopath and he scares me." He seemed robotic to me.

The third potential husband, Jesse, is a short guy, with long greasy hair. He snowboards for a living. DeeAnna asked him what he wants to do when he's done snowboarding. Jesse said he wants to teach snowboarding.

Much of this show seems obviously scripted. Each of the guy's talk to the camera about how their feelings for the Husband Hunter are growing deeper, how they must find the words to let her know their feelings are growing deeper. And then we see each of them tell her their feelings are growing deeper, or some variation thereof. And DeeAnna is terribly pleased to learn of the growing affection. Soon after that they get their invites to the Fantasy Suite for a night of whoopee.

Jeremy seemed to be the one who most ardently, in his robotic way, expressed how his feelings had grown into something he'd never known before. Likely because of that being a sociopath without normal human emotions thing.

So, Jeremy, the guy who expressed his growing love the best, got the boot. I'm guessing that poor ol' Jeremy did not meet the Husband Hunter DeeAnna's performance standards in the Fantasy Suite part of the auditions. This show should be on HBO and include what goes on in the Fantasy Suite. That'd surely be compelling television.

So, it's down to Jason with a kid and Jesse with a snowboard. Jason seems a bit odd. Strangely manic. Jesse seems real young.

Here's another gem from a Survivor Suckster, "I watched this all at once, and think I would have loathed the girl from the beginning. She's got a hard face, is pear shaped, has huge thighs and a misshapen butt, and has--based on the really sad "Bachelors Tell All" show--a fairly severe personality disorder."

Sucksters can be so rude. But I sort of agree. That and she has this very annoying way of talking, where she slides her head back and forth like she's got a rubber neck. I only made it part way through the "Bachelors Tell All" hour that followed the hour where she slept with her 3 potential husbands during the course of a week in the Bahamas.

I guess I'm just a prude. But I really don't think I'd wanna have myself on national tv, searching for a mate, and being a bit of a skanky type in the process. That just seems sorta not the mate you wanna bring home type thing.