I spent my first morning in Seattle back at the Greyhound bus station trying to find the whereabouts of my bag. As I said in my previous post, it was to take three days before the bag arrived.
In the afternoon, I walked around the downtown area of Seattle, including Pioneer Square and Pike Market. This part of the city doesn’t seem to have changed much since my last visit which was back in 1979. One thing I did notice was that the trams that used to run along the road next to the piers have gone. These trams came from all round the world, including Melbourne.
Night with Friends
In the late afternoon, I returned to the hostel where I was picked up by the husband of a family that I knew in Sydney. He is a senior executive with Boeing and the family lived in Sydney for over nine years. One of their daughters was a friend of my daughter in went to the same school.
We drove out of the city to their houses which is situated on Lake Sammamish.
The house is very spectacular, and so is the view across the lake to snow covered mountains in the distance.
Before having dinner, my hosts took me on a boat ride along the lake. It is a very pleasant place to live.
We had an excellent conversation over dinner, talking about Boeing and a range of other subjects, which of course included Trump.
I told my hosts about my visits to Seattle and the fact that I seemed to always be in the city when the weather was fine.
I first visited Seattle in July 1979 when I visited a girl that I had meet in London. She was in London studying at the London School of Economics as part of her university course at Bellingham.
Over the years, I returned to the city a number of times to see her. In all but one occasion the weather was fine and sunny. This is amazing given the city is famous for its wet weather.
We talked about the changes that have occurred in Seattle over the past 30 years. Back then the major employer was Boeing and essentially, Seattle was a ‘one company town’. Of course Boeing is still a major employer, however companies like Microsoft, Amazon and Starbucks are major employers now.
My host’s son, who lives next door, took me into Seattle the next morning. He is one of the many young people who are working in the IT sector. He works for Amazon, and will be taking a posting to Australia to work on their ‘Cloud’ product.
Tour of Boeing Assembly Plan
The next day, I took a trip the Boeing assembly plan which is located north of the city.
On the way to the plant the guide gave some background information to the history of Boeing and its founder William Boeing. One the interesting facts he told us was that the Boeing soon after the establishment of the company was a vertically integrated airline operation. The company made the planes and also operated them. These made the company extremely profitable. The government passed antitrust legislation that forced Boeing to split up. He also told us that the company went very near to going bankrupt as a result of having to abandon its supersonic plane. During this period, the number of employees was halved. There were signs, posted around the city saying, “will that last person at Boeing please turn out the lights”.
After arriving at the plant, we spent some time in the information centre. This contained a number of exhibits including jet engines made by Rolls Royce and GE and a flight simulator.
We left the information centre on a bus which took us to the assembly plan. On the way, the guide told us that the building is the largest building by volume on the planet.
After we got off the bus, we were taken along a long corridor which runs under the floor of the plant. We then boarded a lift to which took us to the viewing platform which overlooks the area where the planes are assembled.
The first area we saw was where the 747 is assembled. The scale of place is extraordinary. There are thousands of workers in the building at any point in time. However, as you look down you only see a few workers at any point.
We then moved on to the area of the plant where the new 787 Dreamliner plane is being assembled. This is the first commercial plane to be made primarily with carbon fibre. It is very light and is more efficient in terms of fuel usage compared to planes made with aluminum.
I have flown on 787 from the Gold Coast to Singapore on Scoot Airlines and was impressed. It appeared to be a very good plane.
On the way back into the city I chatted with the driver. We talked about the fact that the cost of airline travel has hardly changed over the past 30 years. He told me he and his wife travel to Thailand every year and that they have been paying virtually the same price for the tickets over that period.
In the evening I headed back the Pike Market area, where I found another gastro pub and had some excellent brown ale and a meal. The craft beer in Seattle is excellent.
Back in the hostel, I chatted to some English girls who are studying at Calgary University as part of their British University studies. One of the girls told me that her father was brought up in Sunderland. I gave her a link to my father’s POW story. I noticed that it had a lot of hits since then.
Bag Arrives
In the morning, I received a message from Greyhound that my bag had finally arrived in Seattle. That was such a relief. For a while there, I thought I had lost it for good.
I took the light rail to the bus station. The bag contained most of my belongings including the bike seat and the tools that I needed to reassemble the bike. Once the bike was reassembled, I headed back to the hostel.
Flight Museum
Next I took a bus out to the Museum of Flight which is located next to Boeing Field, south of the city.
This is a very impressive museum. It is on both sides of the highway passing the field. On one side there is a covered area. This is where a number of planes are on display. These include, a Concorde, Airforce One that was used John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, there is also B29 that dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
There is also a 787. The volunteer guide told me that this was one of six test that were built. It is possible that the plane could, however it this particular plane was known issues with the mounting of the wing to the fuselage. Of course, this fault was corrected on the production planes.
The main part of the museum is on the other side of the road. It contains a large number of exhibits including a replica of the Wright brothers biplane.
It also contains a number of fighter planes including some MIGs and a Phantom. This is a seriously dangerous looking aircraft. I recall chatting one of these planes up close when I was working the Department of Defence. I was out on the airfield at Fairburn in Canberra when Phantom was going some take off and landing exercises. The noise was extraordinary.
Museum of Pop Culture
Next morning, I walked from the hostel to the Seattle Space Needle, this was built in 1962 when Seattle hosted the World’s Fair. It is still one of the major tourist attractions in the city. In the park in which the space needle sits, there is a Museum of Pop Culture. That was the reason for my visit.
The museum building itself is very interesting. It was designed by Frank Gehry and features his trademark odd shapes and use of exotic materials. This building is not as big or as impressive as some of the other buildings designed by him that I have seen, for example the one in Bilbao in Spain, however it this is still quite impressive.
The museum contains a number of interesting exhibits including one on Jimi Hendrix who was brought up in Seattle, before he moved to London and became a Rock Legend.
When I visited the museum there was a special exhibit on Star Trek. The exhibit points out that Star Trek was quite innovative and somewhat controversial in its day. For example, it featured the first interracial kiss on television and featured Russians working with Americans during that time of the Cold War.
On the way back to the hostel I took an indirect route taking in some streets that I had not walked for on before. This area is undergoing major change. Buildings are being knocked down and been replaced with apartment blocks a new office buildings. It is really becoming a trendy place to live and companies like Amazon are moving into this area.
Meeting with a Young Cousin
In the evening, I caught up with a young cousin who lives in London. She works for Microsoft and was visiting Seattle for a conference of the developers. It was great to catch up with her and her chatting about her job and what it is like to work for Microsoft. She is a very interesting and clever woman.
Heading South
My original plan had been to travel from Seattle to Vancouver by ferry and start my ride from there. However, due to the time I had lost as a result of the bag issue, I decided to skip going to Vancouver.
In fact, I realised that the ride San Francisco was probably going to take at least 25 days and I don’t have that much time. I decided that I would take a train Kelso and the bus to Astoria.
After checking out of the hostel, I rode down to the Amtrak station in King St. It is a very impressive station, with white marble floors and walls.
The Amtrak train was very comfortable. However, an issue with Amtrak trains is that they are inevitably late. This is due to the fact that they share the tracks with freight trains that are a much slower and as a result, delay the Amtrak trains.
Fortunately, despite being late, I was able to make the connection with the bus to Astoria.
Flickr Links
Boeing Plan
Museum of Flight
Museum of Pop Culture
Other Seattle
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