return to seattle

I set out for Seattle, WA on New Year’s Eve looking to catch up with my Seattle posse, ski the Cascades, and check in on my favorite American. I didn’t have to go too far at the airport to find what I was looking for:

Rrrrraaaaaabbbb! Oh my gawwwd! Thanks for the awesome t-shirt. I plan to sport it around Toronto and pretend I’m from Wisconsin. It’s not so far from the truth, really. I imagine rural Alberta is demographically quite similar to rural Wisconsin. Well, OK… from what I’ve heard they’re maybe a little more wild in Wisconsin.

The Seattle crew and I headed out on Capitol Hill and parked ourselves on the sidewalk to watch the fireworks at the Space Needle (photo courtesy of my buddy, M. Yee). The fireworks seem much more spectacular in this photo than I remember. I was most of the way through my brown-bagged bottle of Bollinger at the time, so perhaps my perception was clouded. Yeah, I’m a classy guy.

New Year’s Day was a recovery day, then the next day I convinced my buddy Dave and his girlfriend to play hooky from work and head to Crystal Mountain. Crystal had a ton of fresh snow. It was Cascades-typical sticky and heavy snow, but there was a lot of it. Crystal has a huge new section of former backcountry that’s now accessible via a little double chairlift and it was killer. Untouched and gorgeous.

Later on in the week I signed up my co-pilot Rob (call sign “Fruit Loops”) to check out the Boeing Museum of Flight with me. They had the cool Blackbird spy plane on exhibit and we snapped a few pics in the cockpit.

Unfortunately we were too late to go in the “SkyPark” where they keep all the old planes that you can look inside (ie. a Concorde, a former Air Force One plane). I just snapped a photo of the Concorde from outside the fence.

I had a long day of travel today to get back to Toronto. I’m a little burnt out but it was nice to do some pleasure reading and descend into my own little world with my headphones on to reflect on my travels. Well, it’s getting late (even on the west coast), so here’s me signing off. Happy happy 2008!