Live: You Often Forget

On Monday, Ron dropped me off downtown. He would spend the day working, I would spend the day exploring. I was running out of tourist sites to see in Seattle. I'd planned to spend most of the day at the Seattle Art Museum, only to find out that it was closed on Mondays. What did that leave?

I decided to go to the Fishermen's Terminal, hoping to see something of the bustle of a functioning port. And so from downtown I set out Westward on Second Avenue.

Second Avenue collided with the park known as Seattle Center. I walked through the park. I kept an eye out for the big silly fountain which I'd so enjoyed watching before. I walked slower, wondering why I wasn't seeing the fountain. Seattle Center isn't tiny, and I hadn't been there in over a year, but I didn't think I'd forgotten how to find the fountain. I looked around--there was no spray. I stumbled along slowly, looking about with growing consternation. Finally, I found a map. It said that I was right next to the fountain. I looked over a lawn, saw the hole in the ground, saw the dormant fountain within. Perhaps I hadn't forgotten. Perhaps the fountain just wasn't turned on for this wintry Monday.

Second Avenue continued on the other side of Seattle Center. I followed it up to the top of Queen Anne Hill, keeping track of it even when it devolved into a stairway. Close to the crest, it disappeared and I followed a parallel street--but a few blocks later, Second reappeared and I rejoined it. I traipsed down the hill, and came to a busy street. To my right, the street experienced a strange intersection. I experienced a frisson--I knew that intersection, and it was important.

I stole this picture from an ad for the Longshoreman's Daughter on the now-defunct website seattlesquare.com. It doesn't help to illustrate the narrative--I don't recognize either of these people. It's arguably an amusing photo.

I looked around at the street scene. My mind filled in details. On the other side of those buildings was a waterway. I'd been in a boat on that waterway. I'd looked up at a bridge. I'd recognized the bridge. It was the Fremont bridge, close to the Longshoreman's Daughter. Therefore, I was close to the Fremont bridge. By transitive property, I was close to the Longshoreman's Daughter. Quod Est Deliciandem.

I was a few blocks from my favorite breakfast place in Seattle, and I hadn't had breakfast yet. I have mixed feelings about my mind, but some days it really comes through for me.

Modern Industry

Breakfasted, I was soon waddling my way Westward through a warehouse district, walking along railroad tracks. At one point, I was walking along next to a large lot full of uneven dirt. Several men were there, putting a tarp down over one hillet. One of them carefully balanced a rock. The rock appeared to be just holding down the tarp, yet he adjusted its position again and again, trying for a perfection which was elusive and perhaps indistinguishable from mediocrity. He noticed me looking and smirked. I walked on, not knowing why I felt uneasy.

I crossed a bridge to the South side of the waterway. Just on the South side of the water, before the bridge touched ground, I noticed some stairs going down from the bridge. There was a sign claiming that the stairs were closed, but there was no obvious barrier. I snuck down those stairs to where they disappeared beneath the bridge.

Under the bridge, I could see that the stairs actually came down to meet another set of stairs from the other side of the road/bridge. The stairs had once allowed access to the ground, but this was now fenced off. Still, the stairs did give me a way to cross the street, and I took advantage of this. Later on, it seemed that if I hadn't done this, it would have taken me much longer to find my way to the Fishermen's Terminal. This is the sort of poor signage which has led to a nation of scofflaws, I'm sure.

Fisherman's Terminal

Leaving the bridge, following and losing a bike path, I eventually found my way to the Fishermen's Terminal. There were huge warehouses, whose labels implied that they were for the storage of nets. I wandered among boats, delighting in their grim functionality. Here was no polished teak, no cabins decorated with embroidered pillows, no brass polished by otherwise idle hands. Here was chipped paint, well-worn pulleys, well-used runnels. There wasn't an overwhelming smell of dead fish, but then one can't have everything.

Wandering around in search of sites of interest, I walked past a clump of fishermen who were stretching out a net on some poles which had been embedded in the ground to aid in this task. One loud fellow was driving home a point of argument, a point which the others were tired of hearing about:

"Because, you see, there's never going to be such a thing as an optimal spawning, see, and..."

"Logic? Logic can't refute this. Nothing can refute this. There's never going to be an optimum spawn. If you look at..."

I'd given up on the Fishermen's Terminal. The most interesting thing there seemed to be the fishermen, but there weren't any good hidey-holes for eavesdropping, and I really don't know what to talk about with fishermen. So I wandered down the road from the Terminal, and soon found myself in a railyard.

There I found something which shouldn't have surprised me, but did. There were airplane fuselages sitting on freight cars. Considering that Boeing is nearby, no doubt the local industry moves a lot of plane parts around. It's probably hard to transport a plane fuselage by plane--the one being as big as the other. I figure it's also tricky to fly a fuselage around without any wings attached. Really, train transport makes a lot of sense. I took a couple of pictures which totally failed to capture the scene, then ran out of film.

Maybe there's a good place to look for more film when you're in the middle of a railyard. I don't know what that place is, though. I walked back towards downtown.

Departures: Seattle: Live: You Often Forget

Modern Industry

Fisherman's Terminal