2007 Nordic Knitting Conference Report, Day 0: To Seattle! Or, The Triumph of Hermione Granger

[lwood]

Hi! I'm back! Here's a report on my trip to Seattle with faeryl to the home of erynn999 and alfrecht for the 2007 (k)Nordic Knitting Conference. For the fiber-inclined, yes, I will speak much of yarn. For the non-knitters, I will speak much of not-yarn: amusing travel anecdotes and paeans to Seattle will also be found herein. Something for everyone, and I'll even break it up by days as wow I do go on.

[An aside: I've taken today off work to recover from the trip. O co-worker who might be reading: JK knows, and this day off is according to his policy. Go on and call him if you like.]

Day Zero: Thursday, 4 October. 'To Seattle!' or 'The Triumph of Hermione Granger'

I wriggled out of work a little early on Thursday, the better to get to the airport with faeryl in a timely fashion. With our pre-printed boarding passes, it was easy to make it through the front part of the airport and toward the gate for the hour and a half trip from SFO to SEA.

The crew for this one was a trip, from the pilot through to the stews, which always amuses me.

Our Pilot:

"Welcome to Alaska Airlines flight ### with service to Puerto Vallarta, where the current weather is 79° and sunny...

"Or it would be if we were going to Puerto Vallarta--but we're not, this is flight ###, going to Seattle, where the current conditions are 53° and drizzly. Wouldn't you rather be going to Puerto Vallarta?"

(whispered subliminally during takeoff) "Alaska Airlines is Number One!"

The Stews:

"For $5, you can buy our snack box, which features salami, cheese, crackers, sunflower spread, and even more crackers..."

Snack Service, at the seat ahead of us:

Stew: "Hey! Drinks are free if you can tell me the first word of the Declaration of Independence."

Passenger: "I, uh, um...er? 'We?' No, wait, that's the Constitution. Um..."

lwood, laconically, while fishing for a $20 for two drinks and a box. "'When.'"

Stew: "That's right! Put your money away!"

Passenger: "How'd you know that?"

Stew & lwood, in unison: "When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another..." I admit, we both spaced the second two-thirds of the first sentence/paragraph. My eighth grade teacher would have been ashamed, but we both came back strong on, "'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.'"

Strong words. I always recommend a re-reading.

Who knew that making it to the state championships of the Citizen Bee, and having an ancestor cult to venerate the Founding Fathers on the side would come in handy for a drink on an airplane!? faeryl and I had drinks on the airline (Finlandia vodka with cranberry juice is quite pleasant), and we got two-for-one on the "even more crackers" snack box. It turns out that sunflower seeds make quite a pleasant spread.

Oddly, this earned the admiration of the folks at seats around me. "You should be on Fox News!"

"NO! I would be on the anti-Fox-News, for real non-jingoistic Americans who are highly tolerant of geeks, freaks, and weirdos."

"Oh! Like Air America!"

--well, no, hopefully better than that, they kinda tanked. But, essentially--"Yeah, sure!"

It was a happy flight, and not just because I had free booze; the overall murmurous tenor was similarly good-natured.

And last, another word from our pilot:

"We sure have enjoyed having you on Alaska Airlines flight ### with service from San Francisco to Seattle. I'm sorry we didn't go to Puerto Vallarta. Should you ever want to fly to Puerto Vallarta, please request us as your crew, 'cos we sure do like flying there. Good night!"

The crew wasn't even done; they had one more milk run that night, Seattle to Tacoma, but that's just over the hill.

erynn999 greeted us in baggage claim, where we claimed my luggage and trundled it off into the autumn night.

I really do miss autumn; it's something California distinctly lacks (auntiematter will politely dissent on this point), skipping it in favor of a wet and rainy winter, and trees are left to drop their leaves as suits them, any time from October through--no joke--January.

Seattle, brooding on her fjord, has an autumn. Dribbly, drizzly, brisk and chilly, moderated by the ocean, but an autumn nonetheless. I do like that sort of thing (although I wished frequently that I had a windbreaker), and faeryl was immediately in love and would burble happily, and randomly, about pretty overcast cloudscapes the whole trip.

We realized between us that a 9:00AM start for each day of a conference that was forty-five minutes' drive away meant that we'd have to be up at seven--just like going to work.

Blast!

So, we each went to our beds, the better to knit on the morrow.

-- Lorrie

Comments

[maiagirl.livejournal.com]

Seattle is my home town and I do miss the autumns there. However, constant rain and dark for almost 6 months gets real old, real fast.

[lwood.livejournal.com]

Heh--Cleveland, too, is known for being steeped in overcast--some days, I kinda miss that.

-- Lorrie

[dasubergeek.livejournal.com]

Autumn in the "Upper Midwest" (let's just leave it as what WCCO calls "the five-state region", Minnesota, Dakota^2, Wisconsin and Iowa) was always my favourite time of year.

We DO have autumn down here in Socalistan, but it comes late (not until after Thanksgiving) and is very short. I know it's autumn when I feel the itch to make a nice, long-simmered ragu... and it's not the autumn of the Midwest by any stretch. (Autumn in Minneapolis means winter in Minneapolis, and that is Not Okay, so I'll live with June Gloom and one weekend in December.)