 |
| Photos |
Well, where to start? At the beginning is as good a place as any. The best some say. I digress. We met in Seattle/Tacoma airport at 10am on Monday the 16th of August, after a gruelling and invasive (not physically, I hasten to add) interview by the US customs people. Both utterly jetlagged and bewildered by the shiny surfaces and aroma of coffee floating through the doors it took some time to work out that we had to leave the airport in order to continue the adventure. On the free shuttle bus to the travelodge we gawped at how American everything is. Hardly surprising, you masters of language might suggest, but it is. Everything is exactly how it appears in the TV and films that pervade our culture. Exactly. But bigger.
Seattle, WA
Having an entire day ahead of us we set off to explore, drinking "Peace tea" that comes in 1 dollar gigantic cans and has fabulous decoration on the side. We love peace tea. We went to the sci-fi museum where we oggled Captain Kirk's chair and the terminator replica, debating whether or not we could take one in a fight. We went to the Experience Music Project, which is more or less a large shrine to Hendrix and were saddened we couldn't get a slot in the "jam booths". We saw about ten trillion Starbucks, but decided not to grace them with our company and coin - a gesture of defiance as Starbucks was born in Seattle. Seattle is wide, clean place with fresh air, plenty of trees and a pervading aroma of fresh coffee. A place we both agreed would be little hardship to live in. On the second day in Seattle we went in search of an army surplus store that we might buy very cheap sleeping bags and a tent. Joe also wanted a spork, which was to be found at an outdoor shop manned by very pleasant people that gave us a modest "being British discount". More coffee was drunk. A visit to the famous Pike Place Market yielded little as we arrived as it was closing. Taco bell was tested. It passed. In the evening we took to the cheaper bars and marvelled at the fact we had made it to America and had a car full of petrol and a fistful of dollars. Nothing but the open road ahead.
The Car
On day 2 in Seattle we returned to the airport to pick up our car, where we found out we had been "upgraded" into what appeared to be smaller and less practical cars. Splendid. The choice was between a hyundai accent and chevrolet HTT (or something like that). The chevy came in a choice of 3 colours, but no colour could hide the fact it was essentially a Hearse. The hyundai appeared to be built using a technology similar to that used in the production of disposable takeaway containers, and contained a similar number of luxury features. In the end we decided the takeaway container was probably more efficient than the corpsewagon and went for that, dubbing it The Steed.
Portland, OR
Portland is what a city would be like if hippies and greebos got together and built one, which may be exactly what happened, given the Pacific Northwest tendency to grunge (Nirvana from Seattle, anyone?) and the overall inclination to liberalness. Fashion tends toward black t-shirts and jeans whilst food and drink tends toward independent franchises. Arriving in the evening we took the tram in for a quick drink at the Ash Street Saloon, which later turned out to be an "English style pub". News to us. Portland is well organised and keeps its citizens well fed with legendary "food carts", from which we ate a Hawaiian style breakfast/lunch of rice, sausage, egg, pineapple and orange pieces on the second day after riding into town on the tram. We searched for "Stumptown Coffee" (Stumptown being an old nickname of Portland due to the large amount of logging in the area), which was an excellent establishment, serving cheap, quality coffee with cheaper refills. A large number of beret-wearing applemac-using clientele littered the one large room and lended a pretentious, refined, independent air to the place. Not to be missed.
We lunched on "Honkin' Huge Burritos", which were excellent and even the "small" lived up to the franchise's name. In the afternoon we rented bikes (Portland is loaded with cyclists) and cruised the streets looking for another army surplus to secure further camping items. In the evening we met with a "couchsurfer" called Alex (go to www.couchsurfing.org if your interest has been piqued) who showed us around the bar scene with her friend Louis. We started in a bar that had $5 infinite play arcade machines all over the place, so we enjoyed a few rounds of House of the Dead, Dance Dance Revolution (Louis: "Loosen up guys!". Us: "We can't; we're British"), X-Men and PacMan. Truly oldschool. After this the night becomes something of whirling blur of local beer (our favourite being Deadman ale), voodoo doughnut and jokes about the British. So thanks Alex and Louis, we had a wizard time.
Route 101
Ah. The legendary Route 101. A few hundred twisting miles of coastal beaches, jagged rocks and misty redwood forests. Before Route 101 between Seattle and Portland we quickly grew bored of the interstate I-5 and, taking a lesson from Zen and Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, turned off and followed the American equivalent of B-roads (somewhere around the size of a UK dual carriageway...well, almost) for the rest of the way. What a difference! From drear tarmac and glimpsed hills to small towns (our favourite was called Vader) framed in golden wheat and emerald trees. Anyways, Route 101 from Portland was awesome. We made deliciously slow progress, ate Philly cheesesteaks at Eureka and camped both nights, amidst the sprawling grandeur of gigantic pick-up trucks, RVs, and a plethora of outdoor gear including ATVs, windsurf rigs, dirtbikes and mountain bikes. Our toy tent and sleeping bags worked excellently. Somewhere along the way, turning into a road, Mark temporarily forget which side of the road to drive on and nearly drove us under a gigantic blue monster truck driven by two identical, slack-jawed barbies. What a sight.
San Francisco, CA
We landed mid-afternoon in San Francisco; blithely turning a corner on Route 101 we found ourselves on the stunning Golden Gate bridge, a monolith we could only have claimed to have seen in pictures and on Microsoft Flight Simulator '98. We met up with Joe's friend Josh from Chinaclimb and his friends in Fort Mason for a sunny picnic, and watched the happy, beautiful people of San Francisco at play for the rest of the afternoon. In the evening we went out for Mexican, and Josh gave us a quick driving tour of the city, including the quintessential superbendy part of Lombard Street. Day 2 in San Francisco was spent taking time out from the relentless grinding boredom of travelling and exploring to read our books, check our email, plan the future and write this blog.
The Future
Tomorrow we head to Lake Tahoe.
No comments:
Post a Comment