Friday 14 - The Seattle Travel Edition.

Dear Diary,

The Zensah Ankle sleeve.

14.  I am back home where, predictably, I was missed at work.  It's good to be missed.  The 20-something who lives 2 offices down, for instance, bounced by my office yesterday and said, Oh,Misty,I'mSoGladYou'reBack. ImissedYourEnergy!!!

13. This whole ankle thing has gotten old. It's on average about twice a year that I sprain my right anke. But there's nothing and buying eqUipment won't fix, right?



Stupid ankle.

Nemo?  Where are you nemo?

12. Meanwhile, the ankle is still swollen. Ooo, and ug-lay. Behold. This is day four, after wearing a sock all day. I spent most of the day sitting, too.

It's a Port, After all.

Himself.

11. But I can walk on it just fine. Up stairs, down stairs. I wore heels. No problem. But I can't touch it. Owie.  Stupid ankle.

10. Seattle was beautiful. Despite a forecast of rain for five days out of seven, it sprinled lightly early one morning and then never rained again.

On day one, we ate Indian buffet for lunch out with Baboo's Dad, who is also a psychologist and was in town for a DBT conference.

9. Day 2, we went to Pike Street Market, and had coffee at the original Starbucks. Then went to the REI flagship store. Then I had a stragith shot of espresso. Then we went running trails at Cougar Mountain. Then Had dinner with Dad Baboo at the cheesecake factory.

One of the many musicians along the waterfront.
We saw banjos, a capellasin ging, guitars,
and this guy, to name a few.

8. Day 3, we got up early and deove along the Olympic Peninsula. Baboo ran a 10k through the Hoh rain forest, and I hiked about four miles. It was so cool, mossy and dark. We drove back along the Pacific, stopping to look for shells. There weren't any. Mostly, there were rocks and driftwood,

7. Being fit is awesome. Loud tourists near you? No problem: run away.  Big-assed hills?  So what?  I was at sea level, practically swimming in oxygen.  Until day 4, I felt like I could run forever.

Best sandwich ever IN MY LIFE.  Shrimp and bacon club,
with sweet potatoe fries, at the Cheesecake Factory.
This was two meals for me.

6. Day 4 was the race. Stupid ankle. I would have been at least fourth, possibly third, in my division of my ankle hadn't given out.

Well. There is always next year.

Stupid ankle.

5. Day 5, drove to Vancouver, which is beautiful, expensive, and doesn't "do" iced tea. We went on a suspension bridge. We avoided buying gas there which was, apparenly, 140.8. I have to assume that is cents, per liter. On the way bome, we stopped in Bellingham, and ate at Anthony's on the waterfront. I had crab and a small steak.

I discovered that the persistant queasiness I'd had on and off was because of the outgassing from the leather seats in the rental car.

Peroshky, Peroshky!!
Mine was smoked salmon

Red velvet cheesecake, finished with white chocolate.
I finished this over 3 days.

It occurs to me that most of
my travel pictures are about food.
That seems wrong, somehow.
(Top Pot Donuts)

4. Day 6, we slept in, then drove into town and ate at Top Pot donuts, which had the best coffee on the trip. Oh, and donuts. We cruised through the market on Pike Street again, particularly an antique store and a place that sold old ads and magazines. We walked through Olympic Park. WHERE MY ANKLE WAS JUST FINE.

Stupid ankle.

We ate dinner at Paolo's in Kent.  It was great.  The food was wonderful.

Suspension bridge in Vancouver.
Can you find the Baboo?

"We don't do iced tea."

I can see Alaska from my porch.

Van Burien Press' fairly uninspiring menu board.

Olympic Park

3. Day 7, we slept in, and had coffee at the Van Burien Press, despite our Nuvi's attempts to keep us in Seattle.  Really, Nuvi had some kind of nervous breakdown in Seattle, where everything is a freeway.  Like, we would be sitting at a red light, not moving, not even in very heavy traffic, and suddenly out of the silence Nuvi would say, "RECALCULATING". uM, what?  recalculating what?  We're not even moving!

Anyway.  The Coffee at Van Burien press was so so. The barista seemed somewhat uninspired.  We were subjected to a very, very loud conversation between three high caffeinated new-agers that were going on, ad nausea, and youknowthere'saforceintheuniversethatformsbetweenusandthemoonandthesunreallyscientistshaveactuallymeasureditandicanFEELit.Ican.Imantrathatshit,youknow.

Aussie!  Aussie!  Aussie!  I had a chicken and asparagus
pie.

We sat around for a few hours, and then had lunch at Aussie Pies. Then, we flew home.

2. Now, somehow out of all of this, I gained 10 lbs.  Not sure how that's possible, that would involve something like an extra 25000 calories eaten, added to the face that we were up on our feet moving around most of the time, when usually we are each of us sitting in an office chair.  I mean, I enjoyed myself, but not 25000 calories worth.

I'm assuming that because we ate out so much, I took in lots of sodium.  My clothes aren't tighter, by the way, so I don't know where it all is.  If it isn't gone by this weekend, well, I'll have to revise my ticker up at the top of the page and do the special K challenge, I guess.  Meanwhile, I'm taking in lots of green tea and water.

1. So, back in Albuquerque, where we only have two freeways.  I loved Seattle, and will probably go back, really, since I still don't have a Washington marathon.
I was scheduled to do the Duke City in about 2 days, but, um, probably not.  Tomorrow morning I"m hoping to go out and see how the ankle holds up to walking around the block.  I'll work my way up from there.

Next up: THe Rock and Roll San Antonio marathon, November 12th.

...

YOU GET DOWN FROM THERE, RIGHT NOW!

We went to a climbing gym yesterday.  No pictures, sorry.  I asked for some, but the truth is that the camera phones are a bit to navigate and our camera has been missing for several months.  Anyway.

So last week a coworker had invited Baboo to go to the climbing gym and he accepted, as something new he'd never tried, and WAS I JEALOUS?  I was.

I had been intruigued by this ever since I saw the guys trooping past the the new house on the trails with big pads strapped to their backs.  For months I watched them, finally settling on the hypothesis that they were headed for some high spot in the mountains to meditate, and maybe do yoga. Never quite satisfied with that answer, since it was about 99% guy trooping by with their big giant pads, so finally I hopped the back wall and shouted to them my curiousity, and they told me they were going bouldering.

You ever do something and say to yourself, "I could do that?"  Not because you're one of those "can-do" kind of people, but because you have this distant memory of yourself climbing trees until your mother, peering upwards through the branches, demands you to come down...NOW...before you kill yourself?

Oh, I was fearless I was.  I was constantly climbing up to very high places and my favorite thing in the world was to be higher than all the neighborhood houses and then sit and wait until my mother came looking for me, and then wait until she was right underneath, and then give a shout.  The look of panic on her face was what I was after--me, the tomboy who ONLY wore boy clothes and thought girls in Alabama in the 1970s were stupid.  I mean, they did stupid things and played stupid games.  Boys had all the fun.  Girls played with dolls, and talked about boys they wanted to marry.  Gaa.  Me and my friends, all boys, would place the Barbie that one of my relatives was foolish enough to gift me in great peril, and then take turns rescuing her.  She remains buried in my back yard somewhere.  I forget where.  I buried her and we were supposed to dig her up, but then I forgot.  Probably busy climbing another tree, or something.  I was reminded sharply of my tomboy roots while watching christmas movies this past week.  My parents gave me a steel-tipped bow-and-arrow set for Christmas one year; can you imagine?  What were they thinking?

Anyway.  So, of course, all that was 35 years ago, I was nine, and I weighed all of about 50 pounds.  Yesterday was a completely different experience, and as I clung to the wall oddly worried about falling--despite the harness--I thought to myself, "Less ass is needed here, and more forearm and finger strength."

Baboo and Sweetface shouted encouragement and suggestions from below.  We all took turns managing each other's rope-and-pully system.  Before climbing, a staff member had given us all the tour and a brief tutorial on how to manage the belay system.  I eyed the pully suspiciously--way, way up there--and imagined a cartoon-like scenerio where Baboo came flying straight down while I was lifted off my feet toward the ceiling.

But reality was way cooler, all the technology worked, and besides, the floor has about a half foot of padding on it, anyway.  We wandered about, testing this wall and that, some leaning forward, some leaning backwards and some going overhead (where gravity and mass inevitably prevailed, at least for me).

Of course, I. Am. Lazy.  But remember, I am also Stubborn.  I will be back.  I felt like I was nine again, and half expected to hear my mom yelling at me to GET DOWN FROM THERE RIGHT NOW, MISTY JANE--I AM NOT KIDDING!  It was a blast, and I plan to file down my nails and go again.

If you go: forget about fingernails.  Do buy some chalk.  wear comfy clothes; girls tended to be more in yoga pants and t-shirts.  Boys wore all sorts of stuff.  Be prepared to be a bit humbled.  But if you're like me, with the echo of childhood ringing in your ears, be prepared to wonder when you get to come back again.

...