As the journey continues, we made our way further north from the ale stained town of Portland to the land of the coffee bean, Seattle, home to among other things, Starbucks and the Pike Place market. The former was not visited mainly because it is considered by the author to be one of the worst brewers of coffee, although they occasionally manage to surprise on the quality of water one can get for free.
We got to Seattle in the same method of hilarity as we arrived in Portland, ridesharing. After our first little adventure we felt like veterans of the game, read to take on the next challenge of bemusement, our chariot of rideshare managed to be a huge ass Ford van, this beast was so pimped out with wood panelling to the nines. The half car and half tank, even featured interior lights with wooden accents, so one could roll in style.
The other passengers of the vehicle of glory was 2 kids getting a ride to the airport, a girl by the name of Tortoise, the driver and her maniac of a dog, fortunately the travel time from Portland to Seattle is relatively short, about 5hours, thus the excitement was kept to a minimum. With 2 rest breaks and the dog jumping on everyone in the van at least 20 times. On a more personal note, the pesky mutt managed to step on my nuts a good seven times. Seattle in generally was a pretty chill city with a couple of crazies thrown in. Couch surfing in Seattle was somewhat challenging as we were not exactly located in downtown, we were in Burien, about 50mins by bus from the centre and our host worked afternoon and evenings. But like all ninjas I kicked ass and took names, which had really nothing to do with my awesome time management skills, but regardless, it all worked out in the end.
While waiting on Katies return from work on the first evening, the residences of the first floor left their window open, so we managed to hear the full sexual bravado and performance for a good 15mins. Bets were taken as to if the female was truly enjoying herself or only being vocally participative, the resonance of palm on bare ass also kept the voyeurs bemused.
Seattle, while renowned for having a large amount of rain, for our time there did not produce so much, the occasional chicken spit but not of a significant amount, that one might overhear, “Golly, that is a spot of rain is it not?” Thus time in charming Seattle was spent idly in coffee shops (The best coffee of this current trip, Espresso Vivace Roasteria), shopping for cupcakes, strolling of the waterfront and ferrying to the nearby island of Bainbridge, which was small and relative unexciting, not recommended. One of the more interesting discoveries that was made while thrift store shopping, was a whole host of goodies, an ironic hat to replace my green one that disappeared in the RS blackhole, a metal waterbottle and a replacement cell phone charger for the one the cat destroyed while we were in Portland.
I managed to also find a little taste of home while out in Bainbridge, the Australian meat pie company which was mainly serving up delicious locally made meat pies and sausage rolls. Featured in their line up of fun food products was the traditional Australian breakfast spread, Vegemite, this was nearly purchased in order to replace the dwindling stock contained within my pack, but the 500g glass jar was considered to fragile to the transported within my pack of destiny. Additionally and yet completely unrelated to Australian grub is that while we did not make it to the grave of Hendrix, we did manage to locate a statue of him of which I posed with in my most rocking pose I could muster.
Random observation
CS and ridesharing – advantages of this ‘economic depression/downturn’.
Vancouver
While it was hoped that craigslist could again provide us with a method of travel through the amazing rideshare service, it was not to be possible for our travels north to the great land of snow, winter Olympics and poutine, that is correct young ones, we were on our way to Canada. Greyhound, the fantastically fun monopoly that it is, provided us with the transport required to cross the northern border into far Northern America where we arrived at 2.30am in Vancouver, ready to do battle in this country that made me feel like I was at home again, I had made a temporary escape from Imperial Units and I was going to live it up in metricland for as long as I could.
After we eventually navigated the night bus of Vancouver, we gots to where we had to get to, the eclectic house of Rain. The antics that were Rain and Joe, Ken, and the two Spanish immigrants, Ivan and Issac the house of hilarity. Laughs were had, card games were played and board games, many and varied discussions, a lot of which about sex, thus my enjoyment of being completely inappropriate in regards to sexual innuendo could be maximized to its fullness.
In my time in Vancouver I managed to catch up with Pat, ex-High School chum of mine, whom now resides in the leafy suburbs of Vancouver, where he has himself is now gainful employed at EA and occasionally writes in his blog. We drank some beers and compared being an Australian outside of Australia and what to do when bogan friends of friends come to visit you. The general consensus being to tell them to pull their head in and stop making the rest of us look bad.
While getting my tourist on I checked out various sites of interest by the standard method of wandering around areas of town, such as Gas town (which had a steam powered clock), Chinatown (where they hide the asians and $10 all you can eat sushi), Kitalano (where they keep the Australians and other white foreigners), walking around the harbour (where they keep the boats and such). For me probably the best part of Vancouver was the market, while small, it had some amazing gourmet food experiences that could be bought, such as goat cheese and spinach tortellini. Some other clunernary experiences that occurred was the creation of the über mac and cheese combination, consisting of macaroni, blue cheese and bacon. A delectable combination to say the least. While a majority of my travels seems to be me eating and seeing parks, that is because I am a cheap skate, museums of significant importance are awaiting on the north east coast.
Some other food highlights were the consumption of some typical Canadian food, poutine. Which for those not in the know consists of chips (USA translation: steak cut fries), fresh cheese curds and covered in beef gravy. A delicious experience of mind, soul and maybe not so good for the body, this stuff was coronary inducing at the least. One of the final adventured we did was a journey to La Casa Gelato which had to have over 200 different flavours, some of them more ridiculous than the rest, thus I chose to buy the most silly flavour I could buy, well not the most, Wasabi flavour was available, I sampled but did not get that one. Instead I bought curry flavoured, while spicy it was creamy too, a wonderful balance of flavours kind of like a nice Indian girl giving you a handjob.
Whistler
This is where we got the party started and got the snow on. Getting from Vancouver to Whistler wasn’t really a problem at all, just bussing the way up there via pinche Greyhound again. The residing venue for our antics to come was the bachelorette pad of Martha, hair wizard, party animal, snow border and just all around kick ass person to be around. The other resident of this abode of amusement was Chelsea, nightclubber extraordinaire. Sleeping arrangements were interesting trying in fit in 4 people within a studio apartment, with us sleeping 3 people to the futon and another on the floor.
While most people who come to Whistler are cashed up to the nines and ready to hit the slopes, I on the other hand was the polar opposite. This was the second time I had been to ski slopes, in my life. Thus had no idea what to do, and being fairly broke, renting all the equipment, and ski pass for the day, was way out of my budget. Thus the closest I got to actually engaging in winter sports was tubing. Which was awesome. While yes it is typically designed and made for kids and families, Martha, Chelsea and myself managed to cut up the tube park like nobodies business, Miss Crystal opted out as she didn’t feel like the fun justified the chance of a breaking an ankle.
While it was pretty damn cold I had forgotten how much fun it was to be out in the snow, also how crazy one can party when around Martha. The first night we arrived, shots were had, before the eclectic collection of Martha’s clothes were utilized to get us all into our 80’s look for a party of the same theme. I even managed to sport a blonde wig to truly get out and rock the suburbs. Before we left the apartment things were messy, by the time we left the nightclub, things were a bit more messy to say the least. A large majority of that night was recollected by some via photos that documented how the antics unfolded. The next day was largely spent resting and recovering from all the fun that was had, a couple of nights later we also managed to finish off the evening back at the apartment with an ad-hoc vodka and mustache party, the preferred mustache being ‘The Bandit’.
Random Observation
Near to every person that is employed in Whistler, is Australian or from New Zealand.
In order for us to venture to the next intended destination of Banff, we had to return to Vancouver for a couple of days, where we managed to catch up with Pat again, this time at his place for a Going Away / Hat party. The next day we got a rideshare all the way from Vancouver to another ski town of Banff.
Men In Hats - Safety Dance
