Seattle

On Wednesday morning I headed out of Portland and towards the great state of Washington. Within a blink of an eye, I was there. Seriously, I had no idea it was that close. All their freeway signs that show upcoming intersections are in the shape of Washington heads. How cute.

The drive up north wasn't beeeeyooootifull since it was on an industrial highway but there were lots of trees. Hella trees. Big trees. Which I like. I took my time since it wasn't going to take as long as I thought it would.

(Some dude just coughed in my face. Thanks, dude).

In Seattle, I was planning on meeting up for food with Quinn, my old roommate. My GPS time was off though so I kept overestimating my arrival time. The traffic started getting heavy in Seattle but then I cruised into town around 1:30PM (only took about 2 hours from Portland). I drove through downtown then over to Queen Anne Blvd. All the cars were parked with their butts in, I found that strange.

The food was good (BBQ pork sandwich at this restaurant that changes themes every month. this month was route 66. they were playing the audio version of grapes of wrath in the bathrom). The conversation was good. At some point were discussing grad school and Quinn said, "Why do you want to go to grad school?"

I stopped. Why did I want to go to grad school? For the paper diploma? For the massive amount of loans I will need?

Then he continued. "Is it to start all over somehwere new?"

BING. Yes. Yes, that's the exact reason. I've been feeling somewhat... lost the past few months and I think I'm just ready for something different. Hence, this trip. I've never lived further than 2 hours from the Bay. I've never lived in another state. I've been lucky enough to have traveled alone around the world and I think it's convinced me that I can pretty much live anywhere and thrive.

The secondary reason being that my parents would be very happy about it. That's pretty important too.

After lunch, we headed to Quinn's dad's pottery place. I needed to use the CPU to work (I KNOW). Yeah, I was pretty annoyed about that too. Why is it that someone from work has contacted me every single day? They always start the conversation with, "I'm sorry to be bothering you, I know you're on vacation..." THEN STOP CALLING ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I stopped answering my phone on Thursday.

My plan was to see a bit of Seattle before taking off but Quinn pointed out that I should leave before the traffic got heavy because of commuters. Boo but true. I found Portland to be a little bit more quaint than Seattle but it was nice too. Quinn mentioned that no one in the northwest honks and once he honked at an old man (after he moved back from SF) and the old man rolled down his window and said, "I wonder what you would have done if you didn't have that horn!" Man, old people are aggressive.

The drive to BC was awesome. It didn't take as long as I anticipated, only about 3 hours? But that's another story.