Tourist Traps, Snowballs, and Bad Driving

April 10, 2007

Here we are, back in Seattle. We have spent the last week taking care of business. Now we are resting a bit before we head off to Austin to visit my brother. I’m excited as I will be able to see my niece dance for the first time. I understand she is quite the dancer.

Zachary and I got to ride a Duck. Ducks are World War II landing craft that have been refurbished. For forty bucks, Zman and I got to ride around Seattle and check out the sights. Then we headed off for a boat launch and drove around Lake Union for awhile. It was touristy, but very fun.
Today we checked out the new sculpture park and walked the waterfront to see what was happening. It’s kind of fun to visit my hometown as a tourist. There’s so much I’ve never seen just because I live here. We have wandered through the market and ridden elevators downtown. Hey, we had to do something to keep ourselves entertained in between bouts of passport pictures, document processing, and waiting in line.
April 17, 2007

Last week I got to ride go carts with my buddies Dan and Brett. We had a blast, tearing around the track on our carts, racing each other and anyone else who ventured onto the track. We ended up extremely sore, but energized.

We also headed out to Leavenworth to visit some old rafting friends. It was great to felt out of the city. There was snow up on Snoqualmie Pass so we stopped and played in that for a while. It was awesome to be cold and feel snow in my shoes. On our way home we visited our cat, Gatito. He lives with my cousins in Lake Sammamish. We had a tremendous Barbeque complete with salmon, chicken, and fresh Caesar Salad.

It was during this short road trip that I came to the conclusion that Washington State drivers are probably the worst drivers I have ever seen. They all drive as if there is no one else on the road. They drive slowly in the fast lane, pass in the slow lane, stop before merging, change lanes without signaling, and sometimes they stop in the middle of the road for no apparent reason at all. No one seems to know what a blinking yellow light is for and therefore they just sit and stare at it.

I have tried to be objective. I mean I have lived in Western Washington for twenty-one of my thirty-eight years. I have traveled to every state and a dozen foreign countries. When we moved to New York, I tried to pretend that they were the worst drivers, but I no longer believe that. Although there seem to be no rules in New York, most drivers understand the principle of moving out of the way for faster traffic. They will double park and block the right lane, but no one ever stops right in the middle of the road unless something is wrong. Traffic flows there. Anything goes so long as movement happens.

Here, some folks seem to have appointed themselves as traffic cops; they drive the speed limit in the fast lane so as to prevent anyone from breaking the law. As a result, traffic is a mess. You can’t get anywhere no matter what time of day it is. They have finally started building light rail, but only after arguing about it for ten years. The bottom line appears to be that nobody wants to admit there are others here who need to get places. The fact that gas has topped three dollars a gallon doesn’t seem to deter single occupant vehicles or huge, extraneous gas guzzling SUVs.

Maybe it’s the lack of sunshine. Maybe it effects people’s brains. Who knows? What I do know is that I have missed the mountains and the water and the fresh seafood. Complain as I will, I will still always call this place home.
MJR

Up In The Air

April 3, 2007

Let’s get caught up.

School ended on Thursday, March 29 with a big party for one of our students who will not be returning. I had a blast throwing kids around in the pool. Friday we woke up early and got on the charter for Bamako. I noticed that my back was sore from the day before. We spent the day there with our friends Ray and Geri, heading off to the airport at 1:00 a.m.

We arrived at the airport with our six parcels and hung out until our Royal Air Maroc flight left at 3:30. We were tired, but anxious to get on our way. Ray and Geri were going as far as Casablanca where they were to transfer to a plane to Amsterdam. We had a three hour layover in Casablanca. I boarded the flight in agony; my back hurt so bad I could barely stand it. Carrie gave me some drugs and I promptly fell asleep; awakening in time for landing in Morocco.

We thought Geri was kidding when she told us that we were actually in Fez, not Casablanca. Unfortunately however, she was not. Because of fog in Casablanca we were diverted to Fez. There we sat for an hour before heading off again. When we finally landed we had less than an hour to get to our New York bound plane.

We got off the plane and onto a bus that took us to the main terminal. There we went through security and hung out in a room to wait for another bus. With five minutes left, the bus showed up. It took us to another building where we went through more security and waited for another bus. This bus finally took us to our awaiting plane. After an hour we took off for JFK.

We disembarked with less than two hours before our final flight to Seattle. We went through immigration, found our six boxes at baggage claim, and headed off for customs. There we were detained because they wanted to inspect my drum with the goat skin head. After struggling with the wrapping, etc. the guy finally said forget it and sent us on our way with about 45 minutes left till departure. We waited in line to drop off our bags with Royal Air Maroc, then ran out the door and down the sidewalk to our terminal two doors down. We found a luggage cart, loaded Zman onto it and took off. My back was screaming the entire time.

Upon entering terminal three we were forced to wait in line to tell the man we had no liquids. He took my lighter and sent us to get our boarding passes checked. The lady checking passes had never seen one like ours. We told her it had been issued by Royal Air Maroc at the ticket counter in Bamako, Mali, but she insisted on getting it checked with someone else. It is hard in these instances not to get impatient. We had less than thirty minutes before our plane left and this lady isn’t sure about our boarding pass even though it says “BOARDING PASS DELTA AIRLINES” right on it. After confirmation (and five excruciating minutes) she let us go. We O.J. Simpsoned through the terminal, arriving at our gate with no time to spare. The ladies there were equally confused by our passes, but ultimately let us on the plane. Seven hours later we arrived in Seattle, except none of our six bags made it. Fortunately we discovered that none of the folks who had come from Casablanca (and there were more than you would think) had bags. All six packages arrived the next day.

Now we rest in a beautiful little apartment with a great view of Lake Washington. We shall now spend the next week accumulating documents and doing paper work to prepare for our impending trip to Venezuela. This may even include a trip to San Francisco to visit the Venezuelan consulate. It’s all a bit of a pain in the ass, but necessary to get us where we need to go.
MJR