In early spring of 2007 I decided to quit my job, sell my house along with nearly everything else that I owned, and to live out of my car while traveling the country. These are my stories (and pictures) of life on the road.

Monday, August 6, 2007

Bye Bye Seattle

After spending a few weeks in the Seattle area it was time to say goodbye on Thursday. I had a great time while I was there and I just wanted to thank everyone for their hospitality.

My reason for being in the Seattle area in the first place was to do some work. Buck offered me work for the last two weeks in July a couple months ago and the way things worked out I was able to take him up on it. He kept telling me the place was a run down pit in our e-mail conversations and he had me a little bit worried, but once I showed up I found it was a pretty clean shop after all, though I never could convince Buck of that. I had a great time working with Buck and Ted; it was a laid back atmosphere and a fun place to work at. Once we got past the whole o-ring fiasco and the Escort with a cracked flex plate that twisted our tails for a while things were great. Still though, I'm getting pretty used to not working so I was happy when my two weeks were up and I could go back to just being a bum again. Buck and his wife Nancy were even kind enough to invite me over for a Barbecue at his place one Sunday.

I needed a place to stay while I was in the area and since Buck and Nancy had a new born baby their place was out of the questions. Thankfully Sarah came to the rescue since she had a couple friends who only lived about 20 minutes away from the shop. She called them up and they said they'd be happy to put me up while I was in the area. I got a long swimmingly with Tim and Katherine and I really enjoyed their company. The gave me some great restaurant recommendations, took me out for great Sushi, gave me a great haircut, and Tim even invited me along on a great 4 day bicycle trip in the San Juan Islands. It was just great! I couldn't have asked for any better hosts.

I wanted to get back down to Olympia again to meet up with Mr. Pico himself, Tom Roberts, but it just didn't look like it was going to work out. That is until I found a bunch of roads washed out at Mount Rainier and I had to return through the Olympia area. I gave Tom a call on short notice and he said he'd be happy to put me up for the night. I got to his place Saturday evening just in time to fire up the grill and get cooking. While Tom was cooking the ribs we ate fresh out of the garden cauliflower as showed me his new building he's putting up that will be his new storage, testing, training, and play center. The building is coming right along and it looks like it's going to be very nice when it's all done. Unfortunately I showed up after Tom got done doing all the trenching earlier that day so I couldn't help out.

After an excellent meal of pork ribs and fresh broccoli Tom remembered that he was out of milk so we hopped in his souped up Mustang for a 'quick' drive to the store. Wow, what a rush! That was by far the fastest car I'd ever been in and Tom knew how to handle it. Very impressive! We spent the rest of evening chatting a little and Tom showed me some of the powers of the Pico scope, which truly is impressive.

The next morning it was time to hit the road again and begin my trip south down Hwy. 1o1 to northern California for a quick visit before returning to Portland for more work. Thanks again to everyone that I met during my stay in the Seattle area, you all made it a memorable stop.

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You've reached the end of the page but that's not the end of the stories. If you want to read more (and who wouldn't!?) then click on the archive links to the right hand side of the page. They're listed by month; the adventure starts in May.

The February archives aren't actually from this trip but are previous adventures I've had, which are worth reading as well.