More America

Home alone, I found a female hummingbird trapped in the garage. On this trip my mom taught me how to clean the hummingbird feeders and how she makes the food. The males are so gorgeous and fly right between us as we sit in the hot tub.

Oh, hot tubs, how I miss them. They don't exist in Germany. Or, if they do, no one I know has one.

As I took photos and video, I realized these things are more like bees than birds, the noise their wings make. I won't show you the video because I flailed around a bit trying to save myself.

Later I couldn't find the bird, she must have found her way out, but I realized my car's windows were open, and the horrible thought occurred to me that she might be in the car, and start buzzing around my face while I'm driving. Thankfully she was gone.


     
She's about half the size of my fist, and for her size, has a huge weapon.




     
For years I've been longing for food to be delivered to my house in little white boxes. I finally got my wish, I was eating out of those boxes again.




     
Our first trip downtown. I was thrilled that the viaduct is still there, Seattle's double decker highway with spectacular views of the water and the mountains. They're replacing it with a tunnel, which is nice for residents, but a pity for commuters like me.




     
There's my favorite building center left. I have a photo of me riding Baasha in front of it: )




     
Now you believe me?: ) Circa 2004.


     
Oh dear, what happened to Groundspeak!? What is this "Geocaching" company? And Google here at Lake Union?




     
It's true, they've changed their company name to Geocaching. Ugh, I hate it. But it makes sense. Groundspeak doesn't mean much to the average person.

We met up with Bryan again, a really nice founder, and discussed business. There are some shady things that happen by geocachers and J is trying to make them right. Bryan was extremely grateful for his work.

Bryan tells us in 2020 they will celebrate 20 years and have the biggest block party ever. J told him to coordinate with their receptionist Sven, a German guy, who will be familiar with the holiday schedules in Germany so people with kids, or teachers like J, can make it.

The cool new thing took me a moment to grasp - there's a TV screen with live cache finds. So, an image of the globe, and then every 5 or 10 seconds, it zooms in on a location and announces which cache was found. Amazingly, more than half of them were in Germany! Per capita, geocaching is more popular in Germany than any other nation. But the caches here are HARD...so on our Seattle trip we raised our standards to "over 10 finds being a good day, over 20 a great day." That's my thing, J disagrees with me that 5 make a good day.




     
Across the water from Groundspeak (I'm just gonna keep calling it that), houseboats. Floating homes! We saw so many, in so many areas of Seattle, we learned there is even a community called Lake Union Living Aboard Assoc. Lula.




     
I want this one.




     
Or this one. Almost all of them have boats as well. Oh how I love being on the water in a tiny craft.




     

What the heck, Fremont.



     
I had to laugh cuz after J entered the correct code to unlock the "newspaper bin" - he didn't know how they open. I guess these things don't exist in Germany, I'd never noticed.




     
Then we visited Epic Team Adventures to do our first escape room. A friend of mine helped create this company and I was excited to try one of his rooms. We picked the easiest one. And FAILED. And we were a team of 6! And we're not dummies! Ugh, that was hard. ETA has won awards in the escape room community, perhaps that is why. In retrospect, it was fun, even worth the money, but afterwards I was annoyed for days that we couldn't solve all the puzzles.




     
Afterwards we ate at a Hawaiian place (they are suddenly a thing in Seattle), and I was delighted when not only my escape room guy showed up, but also my dear friend pictured above, who I used to be so close with until moving away. He's got himself another BMW, this one was amazing - the interior doors light up like a space ship, and you can even pick which color for the light effects. Funnily, his license plate is APP DEV, cuz that's what he is: )

My heart was in pain as we said goodbye to him yet again. He was one of the best things about life in Seattle. My husband needs a chance to get to know him, but both my friends on this day are married now and raising children. Phantom children, I've never seen them and cannot imagine them.




     
One of our last geocaching trips, in a gorge near my parent's house by the water that I swear I've never been in, but J says we were, 10 years ago. It sounded like a jungle in there, and all the trees were still naked except for thick coatings of moss.



     
I found a pink trillium, but my camera could not capture the color.




     
This is for Aarene. I used to hate salmon berries, well, they taste great when ripe enough, but they clamber over the trails as bad as blackberries and make riding painful. I used to carry loppers on my saddle to get these out of my way.




     
Ferns went all the way up the maple trees. Like, all the way to the tippy tops!




     





     
The place is called Shorewood on the Sound and although right next to where my parents live, and where I spent my teenage years, I cannot recall this neighborhood.




     





     





     
I imagine if you're from a dry state, and you see this creeping green, it could be disgusting. An infestation of fur that threatens to take over all other life forms.




This is a mostly deciduous forest, which looks bleak to me, but the birdsong was nice.

It's fun to go through these photos and videos again. Just a little more to come...