It's now August 6th, 3:57
AM. You probably think I'm crazy, but I am normally awake by 5:30 AM (now you
know
I am crazy.)
What I remember
August 4th, 5:30 AM
I wake up and wonder why am I awake after just going to sleep at 3:00AM the same day. I do the shower/shave thing and get
dressed but I have trouble finding my
birth certificate. A missing birth certificate, I think, would be a great excuse
for not showing up and then I'd be able to go back to bed.
Eventually I found my birth certificate, grabbed my bag and walked up the street to the
Mall so I could
grab some money from the
ATM. From there I called a taxi and cabbed down to the Greyhound station where I bought my ticket
and sat down to wait for my bus.
At 7:45 I board a bus with only 4 other people and I'm on my way to the land of
oppurtunity.
I had a bit of trouble getting through customs, they were giving me a hard time because I didn't have a return ticket.
I didn't have a return ticket because Greyhound in the US wants you to buy a ticket for a specific time on a specific day
and I didn't know when I'd be returning. Greyhound in
cool land just gives you a ticket with an expiry date.
I know now that they would've exchanged it for me if I wanted an earlier bus but at the time I didn't want to take any
chances.
Apparently my customs situation was aggrevated by the fact that I look
shifty and untrustworthy.
August 4th, somewhere around 9:00 AM
I am in Burger King in Blaine
WA eating a "croissant" for breakfast. What it really seems like is
white bread baked
in a croissant shaped mold.
Two ladies in a seat in front of me are talking about lawsuits and old ladies breaking hips. At a table next to them
is my bus driving spreading cynicism and dissent about his company. He then digs some pictures of Greyhound accidents
he's had out of his briefcase and shows them to the ladies.
The six of us (five + driver) get back on the greyhound and we're on our merry way back to Seattle. Along the way we pick
up a lot more people, my bus actually fills up somewhere between Blaine and Seattle.
August 4th, 11:30ish in the AM
I am in Seattle. The bus station is positively
squalid. They went for an
Irvine-esque atmo in the
men's room.
For a city as large as seattle I cannot believe what a disgusting run down place it is. Seattle was beautiful coming in, with the boats, and the water.
Nice of Greyhound to drive me through a beautiful city and dump me off in the ugliest part of town.
I'd planned on being able to just putter around seattle for a few hours before meeting up with everyone else but after half
an hour it became apparent that I wouldn't even be able to find my way out of the vicinity of the Station so I phoned
flamingweasel to get the low down on the blow by blow. Like
icicle I was quite surprised by his voice, but I must
admit my own voice came as less of a shock.
I asked weasel if there was a shopping centre or something nearby where I could kill some time but instead he offered to pick
me up. Most kind of him. In doing so he had to expose himself to the Greyhound station from hell. I will never forget
the sacrifice he made for me. Weasel, If you are ever in the
Vancouver Greyhound station feel free to call me and I'll
be happy to give you bus directions to my house ;)
I think it was another 45 minutes or so before I met weasel, he was looking for me inside the bus depot and I was standing in the street.
We drove back to his house where I met
WonkoDSane who disappointed me with his lack of southern accent but was much fun nonetheless.
Our beer run to
Fred Meyer (wow, alcohol in a supermarket) was mostly uneventful except for the flaming boat on the way.
BOAT ON FIRE! BOAT ON FIRE! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
The smell of burning boat wasn't really that bad, although I have no idea what lovely burning chemicals I was breathing in.
They must have had it under control while we were driving past, because by the time we got out of Fred Meyer the smell and smoke
were mostly gone.
The time of day from here on is unknown to me since I don't wear a watch. After we got back to weasel's and put his beer in the fridge
(buying beer cold is something else that's foreign to me) we did some juggling and then
icicle called. This time weasel, having
experienced the nightmare that is the bus depot and not wanting to be there any longer than necessary asked her to stay in a specific place
before we drove off to meet her.
After picking up icicle we realised it was 3:00, the time the meet was supposed to start. I, being
The Man offer to get out at the place we're
supposed to meet and find everyone.
The fountain is a big huge metal hemisphere in a pit. After walking around most of the perimeter of the pit and getting sprayed with a lot of
water I manage to find the first group of people{
p_i,
radlab0,
svaha,
psyicide} only because they had
Pseudo_Intellectual with them. Somehow,
pyrogenic managed to find
us and after we refused to move,
mojoe found us too. I followed mojoe back to the other group of people {
mojoe,
pyrogenic,
dwyn,
ideath,
unless,
wonko,
qousqous,
joyquality}
and waited there for the previous group and the people not yet in attendance {
flamingweasel,
icicle,
WonkoDSane,
prole}.
Once everyone arrived we took the monorail down to the market... more coming...