SEATTLE pt. 1

Hostels have a dorm-room feel. Mine was co-ed, but you can be certain that there were no women in it, the entire time. Only guys. Unattractive guys. The place kind of smelled like feet, but was clean; the mattresses surprisingly firm. Each bed had a death-defying wooden ladder leading to the uppermost part, where suddenly sitting upright can be boldly noggin-cracking.

The Green Tortoise has a reputation for the proximity to all things tourist, and didn't disappoint. Down the street, past the homeless kids with their homeless dogs, and I was at the Pike Place Market, bastion of fishmongers and handmade crafts. Really, it's quite spectacular, alive, colorful and vibrant in ways my apartment and office are decidedly not. I ate fresh fish, sampled even fresher fruit, and bought zines at a left-wing bookstore. McCain bumper stickers very far out of sight.

Want to save some trees? A hard pitch to resist, that one. I joined Green Peace, and grew a beard. There are canvassers on every corner, each espousing the protection of one of our natural elements. Well, fire didn't get in on the act. 'There's certainly some compassion fatigue,' said one, who stopped me in Portland. He spoke passionately about air pollution, and chain-smoked.

I rented a car. In retrospect, the hassle, and exhorbitant cost weren't worth it, although it was a nice ride. What was cool about the car, was that it had both a manual and automatic option, the former controlled by toggling up and down on the shifter. I opened it up on my trip on I-5 South, down through Olympia, and into Portland. It being a weekday, I kept getting stuck in rush hour traffic. I yelled at other inept drivers, and felt like a local. I'm tooling around, staring out the window at the pines and assorted foliage, when, WA-HEY! There's Mount Rainier! I pulled over at a rest station, bought some Cheez-Its, and took pictures.

Logging trucks, everywhere. The forests are mostly coniferous, not unlike Northern Minnesota. I suspect we're on similar longitudinal lines. Evergreen College is just stunning, like being in a rainforest; mist drizzling, groves of ferns, moss, a hummus and pita stand in the square. Riot Grrrl started here. No football team. Just a gorgeous campus, where the dorms resembled modern commercial office spaces.

Each trip is divided into two parts, the public and private. The first is lived through the expectations of others; those who've advised certain activities, sights, and smells. These are usually the people to whom you feel ought to receive gifts, no matter how token. Actually, the token gifts are the biggest nuisance, since time's spent buying shot glasses and miniature Space Needles. Then, you have to spend some time formulating responses to the inevitable questions about the trip upon return. Thus far, the biggest questions have been why I travelled alone, and why I didn't buy more shot-glasses.

There's coffee everywhere. The cliches are true. Everybody's wired. I bought an umbrella, stepped onto the street, opened it, and destroyed it. Ten dollars, shot. From shop to trash in under a minute. The wind and rain were almost comical, they were so intense. It's what I expected; it's what I wanted. I rode a monorail built in the 1960s for the World's Fair, saw Mount Saint Helens (which didn't erupt, to my relief,) and drank raspberry beer at Six Arms pub.