I'm Comin' Home

[Originally written 2009-01-18.]

The weekend has really gone by in a blur. This morning consisted of sleeping in, followed by a shower, packing, and checking out of the Ace Hotel. We walked out into the brisk and chilly morning weather to Mother's where I put in our names for brunch and crossed our fingers. The brunchtime crowd at Mother's is a huge conflagration of retirees and trendy hipsters who want to sit at the bar and swill martinis until their Eggs Benedicts are ready.

The hostess warned me that it would be 45 minutes to an hour and a half. I acknowledged that that timeframe was exactly on par with what my expectations were. The chilly minutes ticked by slowly. We killed time by wondering a couple of blocks over to the Willamette River and its Stark Street Ferry memorial. The 2nd Avenue vinyl store didn't open until noon.

We eventually got a table and I was finally able to sync up with Toni and Scott, and brunch didn't last nearly long enough to get fully caught up. We broke up at the end of the meal, Toni home to tend to her bairn, Scott off to get ready for the wedding he was in town to attend.

We said our good-byes, but not before getting a virtual laundry list of places to see before we left. With three hours to kill, it wasn't likely to happen, but we did manage to get to Henry's 12th Street Tavern. With its huge array of draft beers and the Steelers-Ravens game on every TV, it was a great place to sit and chill until the time came for us to collect our bags and head out to Union Station and get home.

There remains a ton of stuff to do in this town. Even if I lived here, there wouldn't be enough time for me to see and do and eat everything that can be seen and done and eaten. I crossed the river for exactly one trip and that was to see titties. The Delta Café remains un-done, and we also skipped out on getting another Red Star at the Red Star Café.

On the upside, this weekend I think I completed my tithe to Stumptown for the year.

Once the train pulled into the station, I had to make the time to take a righteous whiz. This probably cost us dearly in my plan to have a quick jaunt to catch the bus, but my clock says we would have missed it anyway and my bladder thanked me. It was time for Stef to draft a contingency plan.

We hoofed it most of the way through nighttime Seattle until catching a convenient bus to Westlake, where we proceeded again on foot to Palace Kitchen, the official restaurant for whenever we get back to Seattle after a trip. Monk and I had the Abbey Wheat, and I had the royale burger as I usually do. A good meal was definitely in order, since four hours on a train was enough to make us grouchy and tired. We walked back to Westlake to catch one of the last 545s of the night. I was surprised and humbled to see that Michael Kaplan was also waiting to board. He has recently gotten a zany-looking new mobility device. I wouldn't call it a wheelchair and I wouldn't call it a Segway. It's kind of both, and it makes him look like a total badass. I was too scared to go up to him and do the annoying fanboy thing.

In all, it was a good trip. Pics are up on Flickr.