On Saturday we met my friend for lunch at Justin's favorite teryaki place, and when I say place, I really mean hole-in-the-wall. It really is good though. After that we headed to Greenlake and walked around and learned that rollerblading is making a comeback. People of all ages were just rollerblading around like it was 1995. It was fantastic.
Later we all met another friend and headed to Everett to watch the Spokane Chiefs play the Silvertips. Our seats were six rows up and slightly to the right of center ice. Uh-may-zing. We were just about the only Chiefs fans there, and of course Justin, Audrey, and I wore our jerseys. It was kind of fun. Random guys kept coming up to us and half-whispering, "Go Chiefs!". It was like being part of a secret club or something. The game was really good even though Spokane lost. The worst part was when the Silvertips scored and they blew this ridiculously loud train whistle like four times. They scored five goals, so that's like twenty earsplitting whistles. By the end Audrey was looking around all wild-eyed and holding her hands over her ears. I felt bad about that, but she still loved the game.
After the game we parted ways with our friends and headed back to the hotel. Audrey had been looking forward to "fwimming" for about a week, so we made our way down to the pool. She had a lot of fun and I got her to jump in and go under water, which was impressive. I don't think she would have cared what we did to her as long as it didn't involve train whistles. She's still talking about how the train was yelling at her.
The next day we just wandered around Seattle Center since our hotel was only a couple blocks away. After that we headed back over the mountains. The worst part of the trip happened when our car got sideswiped in North Bend. We had stopped to walk around at the outlet mall and when we got ready to leave we noticed that our car had gotten hit. No note or anything. We did notice that the car parked one space away had front-end damage remarkably similar to the damage on our car, so we call the police. They came and checked it out and determined that it "probably" wasn't that car because it would have bent the wheel rim and the molding. Really? You know for sure that it would have done that even though you have no idea how they hit us or if they stopped before they scraped the molding or whatever? Justin wasn't so sure either since there was blue paint transfer on their car and silver paint transfer on ours. Also, the measurements of all of the scrapes and dents matched the ones on the other car.
Anyway, it was all very frustrating and ends with us having to use the majority of our tax return to fix something that someone else caused and was too chicken to fess up to. I guess we can be thankful that it happened at a time that we were expecting our refund. It's just frustrating since we've had similar things happen to every vehicle we've owned. Maybe it's God telling us not to put so much pride in possessions. I just have to think of it that way. In the end all of this doesn't matter. I mean, at least we have a car and money to pay for the damages. We could have gotten our car stolen in Seattle or we could have gotten into a wreck. I just need to remember to put things in perspective.
So, basically we had a great weekend minus the fender bender. It would take a whole lot more than a dent in the car to ruin a good weekend in Seattle.
"My wife and I just prefer Seattle. It's a beautiful city. Great setting. You open your front door in the morning and the air smells like pine and the sea, as opposed to bus exhaust"
--Ron Reagan
