Portland and Seattle, roses and Dick's

July 18, 2007—I didn’t remember to take any pics of Clayton the night before, so here is one of him leaving for work on his bike (yeah NM license plate!!)

He had told me of the famous Portland Rose Garden, with the most different varieties of roses in the world including a test garden of new hybrid varieties, so I of course I had to stop and smell the roses:

I also took many, many pretty pictures.

Here is Portland as I was leaving—very pretty town!

And then here is Seattle. I was nearly killed about 3 times on this drive because Washington drivers don’t pay attention. And I consider myself a good judge on this since I had been driving every day now for about a month and hadn’t had any trouble!

I arrived in Seattle early and spent some time at the nearest library to work on my blog until my dear hosts, Jenn, Grace and Chris, got off work. Jenn and Grace then took me on a tour of their neighborhood on Capitol Hill down Broadway to Dick’s Burgers, since apparently we all needed some Dick’s in our mouths.

We were also accosted by a Nick Nolte in his mug shot look-alike homeless man, Showing off the shower radio he had bought at the dollar store but now required another dollar in order to buy batteries to make it work (what a conundrum!). He alternated between shouting “I’m the king of rock and roll!!” and shoving the radio in each of our faces so we could see the mirror on it and saying “You’re cute. See how cute you are?”

After dinner we headed to a party at our other friend, Mark’s apartment and out in the new hippie-yuppie area of Freemont, an area which has apparently declared itself the center of the universe.