Seafair in Seattle

Friday, August 5th, 2005. I left work a bit early and drove up to Seattle with no place to stay and no plans other than a loose agreement to meet up with some friends. But this is nothing new. My Seattle friends are notoriously poor at planning things beyond the current day's activities and they are hard pressed to do even this much. So, I arrived in Greenlake at around 8pm and pull up a chair at the Greenlake Bar & Grill. A half-pound burger and two Mac 'n Jacks later and I'm off and up out. The phone rings:

"Andy. What's up man? Where are you at?"
"'Sup Savvy, I'm at home. Have you talked to Silas yet? I think we're going out to the Georgia Dragon later on. You should call Sean. We might meet up at his place to pre-func."
"Sounds a'ight. I'll get ahold of the guys and call you back."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll call Mario and Bruce."
"A'ight. Later."

My friends, aka the Seattle Contingent, always play this telephone game:

"I'll call you then you call her and she'll call me. Then I'll call you to tell you she called me. If she doesn't call, then I'll call her to call you to tell you she hasn't called yet."

So, after this, I eventually met with the crew and we went out for a beer. It was great seeing them all again. Hard to believe that 4 months have passed since I last made it up there.

I stayed out until around 3am both Friday and Saturday night, getting no more than 5 hours of sleep each night. Now here's a story within a story. Did I mention that I slept in my car both nights? Saturday morning, I had to shave in the bathroom of the restaurant in which I ate breakfast. I slept pretty well, though. Friday night was spent out west of Ballard near the marina. I parked in the lot next to where all the houseboats were. I figured that no one would care if I slept there because they were all on their respective boats anyway. Quite right! No hassles, no issues. Still, I woke up around 7:30am for no good reason. Anyway, I spent the better part of the day sightseeing. I went up to Queen Anne, where I had an apartment back-in-the-day; I spent some time walking through the neighborhood remembering some old times. It was all good.

Then, evening rolls around and the crew is getting together for an outdoor movie showing in the Fremont district. "Goonies", that old '80s movie, is projected onto the side of a building. The lot is packed; people are sitting in the middle of the road to watch the movie. I am among them, with the crew around me. We sit and watch and chill, then head back to Sean's place for a beer... but wait! Is that the end of the evening? No! Another member of the clan mentioned something about going to Rick's (a strip club in the Lakewood district) and before I knew it, we were there... sightseeing.

This is where the story gets wild. Mario, one of the honchos at T-Mobile, went big daddy pimp master style and bought $300 worth of chips (like poker chips, to be spent at Rick's) for the table. He had no cash, just the card, so I had to front dude's cover. Hence, I was the first to help myself to the bucket 'o chips. Let the lap dancing begin! It was nuts! The chicks were drawn to the chips like flies. At any time, we had at least three girls with us at the table. Pimp master Mario (But I still call him "Sooooooper Mario", after the old Nintendo game). But five minutes before we were outta there one of the girls tries to get her full game on and get me to stay out. I was just looking around, enjoying the scene, when I spotted one of the dancers walking our way. I had just turned back to the table to get my stuff together and head out when she sat on my lap and asked "What were you looking at???" Long story short, brushed her off and made my way to the exit. Ah, Rick's. Don't think I'll be going there again. It was a cool experience being seen as Mr. High Roller, though.

So, a couple of hours later, I was back in the car for another nap. Woke up around 9am and headed back to Portland. A nice LOOOONG shower and then met with a friend for lunch then crashed super hard last night. It's now 8am on Monday morning, I'm back at work and feeling fine. A little sleepy, but fine. Good times were had indeed.