Rushy is in Seattle........

Rushy

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Well its Saturday afternoon about 4.30pm and I havent managed to find an internet cafe yet.

BUT I have found a free terminal in the Pacific Science Centre having spent a fairly wasted $18.50 to enter "Space" the worlds largest travelling Space exhibition...great for the kids.

Arrived Thursday evening to a wet and dark Seattle and miraculously found my hotel in Bellevue. without making a single wrong turn. No delays, no problems with planes, hire cars or anything AND as a bonus the hotel has 40 rooms permanently booked out to SAS aircrew, a bevvy of which are checking in as I arrive. Sounds good, especially as I am here for the next 14 days.

FRIDAY 26th MARCH - The problems start. One of the hostesses checking in picked up my carkeys off the desk in error( they all have alamo hire cars waiting for them when they arrive). I only discover this when I come to leave the hotel at midday for a quick drive out to lake Sammamish. Problem is we dont know which girl took 'em. A quick call to Chevrolet Assistance sees a nice man named Chris from AAA ( or Triple A as everyone calls 'em) cutting me a new key and I'm back in the car and on the road after just an hours delay.

The outskirts of Seattle are real purdy with most of the suburbs being set in hills and cut into pine forests. There are trees everywhere and and added to the fact that you're never far from a lake ofr the sea AND there is a spectacular mountain backdrop to th West ( Olympian Mts ) and the East ( Cascades) its a beautiful place to live. Most of the afternoon is spent in the largest outdoor store I have ever seen " REI " in Redmond. Bought a few items i didnt get in UK and a few other items that I couldnt resist.

No hostesses in the bar this evening but the barman, Scotty, is a big Man Utd fan and buys ME a drink on the basis that I'm english and live near Manchester. Thats a first.


Today ( SATURDAY 27TH ) has been spent visiting Seattle Centre and going to Pikes Place Market, the waterfront at Elliot Bay the heart of the city - The Westlake Centre, and then grabbing the monorail out to the Space Needle and the Pacific Science Centre. Didnt go up the needle, another day perhaps when viz is better, just getting a feel for the city as i'm here for a while and again at the end of my trip.Oh, nearly forgot my car keys were handed back in at reception!

Tomorrow i'm driving to the Mount St Helens area, approx 135miles, to go look at a bike belonging to a nice fellow named Monty,an 1100GS ( in black of course).........I hope to be on two wheels by next weekend!

No piccies until I find an internet cafe and upload to smugmug. Should have brought a laptop.

86 days to go..............

Ian
 
Rushy said:
One of the hostesses checking in picked up my carkeys off the desk

Your story started to sound promising at this point :eyebrow :eyebrow :eyebrow


Have a great time ;)
 
Rushy, di a month in the area in 1998 in a campervan with the wife and brats, can't recommend one single place because everywhere we went was fantastic. Did you see the black dudes singing at Pikes Place. They were absolutely the best live music i have ever heard, no instruments/no amp etc.
Enjoy and take care over there, oh and keep reminding the yanks, when they whinge about petrol prices, how much we pay over here!
 
I don't know exactly when you arrived in America, but WELCOME !!!!!!!

Enjoy Mt St.Helens. I was there back in '81 a year to the date when she "popped". While enroute there traveling east to west, I didn't realize that all these piles of dirty white "sand" along side the road were actually piles of "volcanic ash". Looked more like "dirty snow".
At the Mt St.Helens visitor center,which was nothing more than a trailer with pictures in it at the time, they were selling "little bags of ash" as souvenirs for $1.00. I told one family that if they went east of there about a mile or so, they could fill the back seat of their car of ash, for free, their's that much ash available.
It was amazing to see how much damage "Mother Nature" can do when she get's "mad"!!!

Don't forget that in July, the 15th through the 18th, is the "BMW National Ralley" held in "Spokane, Washington".
5-7 thousand brother and sister BMW riders, from all over the United States, Canada,Mexico, and Europe all converge in one spot for a 4 day,to "Ralley,Party,and have fun"!!!

Their is so much to see and do in that part of the country, that I wouldn't know where to begin in listing favorites!! But since you are so near the ocean, you must cruise the PCH or better known as the "Pacific Coast Highway".
And definately stop and see the "Giant sequoia tree's" in "The Redwoods National Forest" in northern California. These are some of the "oldest living tree's" in the world" and so tall, you litterally can't see the top. Have a safe and enjoyable Trip!!
 
If he's still there,I don't think he's got plans to come back.:nenau
 
Yes , I’m definitely back

Where have those 17 years gone. It was my birthday yesterday , in 2004 I had split up with my ex , and simultaneously been made redundant so I had to sell the house in Ruislip and moved back up to Cheshire just before my birthday . Instead of being sensible and getting a new job I decided to buy a ticket & buggered off for 3 months just a few weeks later.

Go pros & selfie sticks hadn’t been invented. I bought a small Sony cybershot with a whopping 128mb card , managed to get a 256mb for $110 dollars when I arrived. I had to be careful about how many pictures I took and then would pop into a Walmart and burn the images to CD. I posted them to a friend in Seattle but some got broken & some turned out to be shit due to a fault with the camera that wasn’t evident viewing images in the very small screen. Internet cafes were much harder to find than I expected & very slow so I actually posted a CD back to the UK for a member on here to post a couple of images.

I was keeping a pretty good diary but unfortunately I left it in a hotel room in SF a few weeks into the trip . I realised later that same day and rang the hotel but they said they hadn’t found it when they cleaned the room. I rang the next day NOPE , 2 days later NOPE. I was pissed off and didn’t really bother much after that because any diary would be incomplete. I’d put my UK address inside it and they posted it back to the UK 2 months later, it arrived home a couple of weeks before I did :blast

It was a great time and I wish I had a better record of it .
 
It was actually a beautiful sunny day when I visited it Chris :thumb

I've been up there in rain, sun and snow and it's glorious when the sun is out. The ride up there is epic as well :cool:
 

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