Day 6 - 06/07/2008

I forgot to set any kind of alarm, also figuring I’d be waking up as early as I have been, and was shocked when I awoke and my cell phone said it was 9:10. I showered quickly, and Leroy was making breakfast. We talked over breakfast about work and our families, having a good catch-up time. They had other friends coming into town this same weekend, but who were only available for the day. So Leroy & Karen left to collect them from the airport around 11 a.m., and they would be back early in the evening.

I stayed around the house for the first couple hours, updating yesterday’s journal and uploading pictures. I had said I wouldn’t, but I decided it would be smart to check my work e-mail. And it was a good thing I did because I found a couple things requiring my attention, and so I quickly took care of those. Hopefully that’s all there will be.

Karen had printed off some information from the internet for me on the Museum of Glass. I had seen it in the AAA Tourbook, but since they don’t have many street-level maps (none of Tacoma) nor directions, I was glad for the printouts. So I set out, planning to visit that and a few different areas.

I started with the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, one of the largest suspension bridges in the world. The original bridge opened in 1940, and broke in a windstorm a few months later due to design failures. It reopened in 1950. I got pretty close to it, and took a lot of pictures. They had signs posted about no pedestrians crossing the bridge, so I didn’t go very far out.

I tried to follow the directions to the museum from the printouts, but the streets are not well marked in Tacoma. So I drove around for awhile, getting rather frustrated, when I saw a sign. Not a sign for the museum, but for an Open House. This was too much of an opportunity to pass up, so I followed the many signs and stopped in front of a beautiful home. I have long been thinking about the possibility of moving to Washington (among other places). There’s an excellent MBA program at University of Washington, I have family and friends here, and I like the climate.

I introduced myself to Mark (the realtor), and we talked for awhile about homes, our respective states, and other things. He started to show me the property, but I interjected and asked for the price. $425K. I think it was big enough and had enough potential to be worth that much, but it was a fixer-upper on top of this. He was gracious and showed me the house anyway even after telling him that I was only pre-approved for $200K (it’s not like he was showing it to anyone else right then anyway). He also gave me another perk about living in Tacoma. I had heard Seattle was bottlenecked with traffic, and this was a major deterrent to me considering a move up her since my job would likely be in Seattle. That’s where our Deloitte office is, and probably any future private industry employers. Tacoma has a metro-type system for $60/month that takes you right into downtown Seattle for only $60/month. Tacoma is over 30 miles from Seattle. I get about 32 miles/gallon. At $4/gallon, assuming 20 work days per month roundtrip, that’s about $160 in gas costs. And then thinking about time spent in traffic and parking costs in Seattle just adds to it all. Maybe I've been thinking about this a little too much.

Mark and his wife Oanh (pronounced “one”) are a realty team, and she was hosting another open house a few miles away, and that house was only $278K. He encouraged me to check it out, saying it didn’t need much work. It just seemed worth checking out, especially since they made it a practice to keep their open houses going until 5 p.m. (most close at 4 p.m., and it was almost 4:30 p.m.). He also gave me their business card stapled to an Elected Officials guide, so I could know more about the state.

Mark had given me verbal directions over to Oanh’s open house, I had repeated them back to him, and I got there without getting lost. I was so proud of myself because I was really starting to get my bearings in this city. I met Oanh, and she was very sweet. I saw the house and loved it, except that it was only two bedrooms with one bath. If moving was a possibility for me right now, I might have put in an offer.

I left there, and decided to try once again for the Chihuly Bridge of Glass (since the museum was about to close, the bridge was the only option). This time I made some better guesses on street names and found it! I had been so close the whole time but didn’t know it because they weren’t any big signs on the museum advertising what this huge conical building was. I found free parking on the street, and asked a guy milling around on the street about how to get up to the bridge. He directed me to a winding stairwell with very narrow steps. I don’t like steps like that. They have similar ones outside the Ponderosa Chapel at Hume Lake, and they’re very annoying because quick ascension/descension is made difficult by the slight vertical progression made for the comparably drastic horizontal progression. And the main reason I take stairs is not for the exercise (that’s the secondary reason), but because it’s typically quicker than waiting for the elevator if less than three floors (the actual number of floors varying based on the number of elevators present, the speed of such elevators, and your physical shape). Enough of that side rant, back to the Bridge of Glass.

The Chihuly Bridge of Glass is an actually Bridge between the Museum of Glass and Union Station. This bridge has three main display areas of glass art, all made by Dale Chihuly. The first is a set of huge display cases of individual works of glass art (vases and such) on either side of the bridge. Secondly, there are two huge towers with chunks of blue glass hanging off at random points from the circumference like bells on a rope. And finally, there is a covered area, the Seaform Pavilion, where the ceiling is enclosed with thousands of individual pieces of glass art.

Driving around downtown Tacoma was very interesting. I saw some runners all over with numbers affixed to their clothing for some kind of race. And twice I saw a bride with entourage in tow walking the streets. I wonder if that was for some kind of photo shoot or something rather than an actual wedding. She didn’t look nearly annoyed enough to have to be walking around downtown in her wedding dress for that to actually be her wedding. I also encountered three guys tying blue and white balloons to street posts and rails everywhere, and noticed from their shirts that they were supporting a Democrat for Congressional election. I didn’t go up and ask any further questions. The architecture of the whole city was fantastic. I took pictures of so many homes and buildings because I was just in awe of the beauty around me.

I returned to my car and drove out to Point Defiance Park. There’s also a zoo and aquarium there, which I had little to no interest in (more on that tomorrow). I was looking for the hiking trails and gardens. They weren’t easy to find because I followed the initial signs that said “Point Defiance Park.” I would learn tomorrow that you need to ignore those signs. I parked in Lot A by the zoo, and started walking. I found a couple of short trails, and ended up turning around because they dead-ended into residential areas.

I walked back up to where I had seen some people walking around some old railroad cars. I got up there and started to take pictures. I asked a guy to take a picture of me with the train I was next to, and subsequently introduced myself. His name was Bufford, and I asked him where hiking trails started. He said he had just been back deeper in this area to have a few beers, but that if I followed the railroad tracks, that there would be some hiking trails. He was a pretty interesting character.

I found a whole old-fashioned railroad set up along with the Cabin Six Museum, all there to commemorate the logging industry that used to be so popular in this area. I moseyed quickly through the museum, but moved on to find some hiking trails. I found some, and had the best time walking around taking pictures and enjoying the scenery, especially the fallen trees and exposed root structures. There were a lot of forks in the trails, and no markers whatsoever, and I was very quickly lost. I don’t think I should be allowed to go hiking alone anymore. I kept walking around, and eventually found some people and ask them how to get back to the zoo, and they pointed back the way they had come. That got me to an unfamiliar paved road.

I was about to pick a way to go, when I looked across and saw Puget Sound and a rock beach. I decided to just go over for a little while to take some pictures. I walked along a trail near the road, because going any farther toward the beach would have led me off a cliff, and it’s one of my personal goals not to do that this trip. I walked and soon saw a father and son who looked like they had just gotten down there, though, and noticed that this area had enough of a grade (albeit a steep one) where I apparently could get down and back up. I figured if they had done it that I could, too. I had some trouble, and skidded a couple times, but moved quickly enough not to fall forward. I was pretty proud of myself for making it down, and then noticed a plank staircase a few meters off in the distance that I would have stumbled upon if I had hiked a little longer. I took a few pictures, and then took the stairs back up, and asked some more people for directions to the zoo. They pointed and I walked. I returned to my car pretty tuckered out, and started the drive home.

I stopped to get gas at Arco for only $4.11/gal, and then the bank to get more cash. Finally I drove by the Seminary to get some daylight (as much of it there was on this cloudy day) pictures of the place.

Leroy and Karen weren’t back when I returned, so I decided to watch Amazing Grace, which I had seen lying on the Entertainment Center in their soon-to-be family room. I got an hour into it before they returned home. I was hooked because it was such a fascinating movie.

Karen heated up a frozen pizza for dinner, and we talked and ate for quite awhile. Realizing how late it had gotten, we quickly formulated plans for church in the morning. Karen graciously volunteered to iron my clothes for church (and I NEVER refuse someone else’s offer to iron), and Leroy told me their Sunday morning routine. They usually leave an hour early and go to Starbucks to either read or talk. I thought about that for a moment and thought it was so ingenious. I think as families, we get so stressed about getting ready for church and rushing out the door in the morning, that we already have our hearts and minds distracted by the time we get to church. By taking an hour or so before church to just go relax, I think that would do wonders for preparing ourselves for worship. I think I may start doing something similar for myself when I get back home. We said good-night, and I finished watching the movie before retiring myself.