We’re heading out on a cruise! The first stop for our Alaskan expedition is a flight to Seattle, where we’ll board the cruise ship for the week-long journey. It’s generally recommended that you arrive the day before your cruise, so flight delays don’t mean you miss the boat. So we took a direct flight (nice!) from Kalispell to Seattle, and landed just a few minutes before Alex and Kaitlyn on their flight from Salt Lake City.
Now we had a day in Seattle, without any real plans. The weather was gorgeous, and as we were riding the train out of the airport to our hotel, we were talking about things to do. I said to the group, “You know, Julian lives somewhere in Seattle… we should see if he wants to meet up for lunch or something.”
As it turns out, Julian lives a few blocks from our hotel! I called him up and (although it was a workday) he said he’d love to get together for lunch. We asked for a recommendation and he suggested a sandwich shop called Potbelly. We walked two blocks from the hotel and he was already there. Lunch was amazing… I’ve officially named Potbelly my second-favorite sandwich shop in the world.
Apparently Julian doesn’t even keep his car in the city; he just goes everywhere either on foot or on his electric skateboard. To demonstrate, he showed us how he travels around the city. He rides the skateboard in traffic along the streets. I think it has a top speed of at least 30mph, which is plenty fast to keep up with the cars. In this photo, he’s zooming through the intersection with a bus right behind him. It was really cool to watch.
Alex and I both gave the skateboard a whirl, and it was a ton of fun to ride. There’s a little handheld remote that controls the speed, including forward and reverse (for slowing down or stopping on downhills). As with any skateboard, you just tilt the deck to turn left or right. Here’s Alex cruising along, although the photo looks horribly boring:
I think if I lived downtown in a city, like Julian, I’d get one myself. As it is, a skateboard on the rural highways of Bigfork wouldn’t be that useful.
As the ladies wandered Pike Street Market (a hopelessly crowded tourist magnet), we guys walked along the shoreline.
We probably covered a few miles, and after a while we met up with the gals. We continued our walk of the downtown area, and eventually ended up at (where else?) the Space Needle. We wandered around the base, but all agreed that thirty bucks a person to ride to the top was kind of excessive. The park at the base is nice, though, and we spent some time chatting and relaxing. As the afternoon wore away, Julian decided he needed to get back to work.
It was awesome to spend a few hours with him. He zoomed off on his board while we started the trek back to the hotel. Along the way I snapped some shots of the cityscape and buildings. Here are a few of the more interesting ones:
As often happens, I said to myself “I should’ve brought my good camera!”. Instead, I just had my cell phone and had to make the most of it. The city was really cool, and it was a gorgeous day to walk along the sidewalks and take in all the hustle and bustle of Seattle.
After a delicious dinner, we retired to the hotel and made sure we had everything ready for the big cruise tomorrow…