Friday night – takeaway Chinese, from this funky place in a nearby strip mall that we’ve been going to for years. Jen and I ordered something like $140 of food – I mean, there were 9 of us … but the fridge is still full of cardboard takeout containers with an inch of food in the bottom, and that’s not counting the extra rice.
Saturday – the ride. Megan’s great shots:
after a long hilly stretch
Flower break
start of the ride
The manifest, John & Megan at the first stop, “Dancing is sexy”, jewelry I wore to ride & the official shot glasses, and me & Dave outside Bill’s at the after party.
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On Sunday we walked to Cafe Flora to meet Joe & Terry for breakfast: fallen petals, cherry blossoms, and our table waiting for food. We split a cinnamon roll and an order of beignets that came on a nice lemon sauce. John said the roasted Brussels sprouts in his scrambler didn’t agree with him. I liked my sweet potato breakfast quesadilla once I got over that the eggs were on the outside.
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Then we took the ferry over to Bainbridge Island. The first walking trail we tried was basically a city park, with a 1-mile loop and dog walkers. Pretty cherry trees, though. And a girls’ soccer game going on that both Mark and John inspected. Mark was impressed that the field had artificial turf. We drove a little more and found a more wooded trail. We were a little bemused that there were manure rakes – I said we should leave the shit-shoveling to the equestrians, and fortunately it was pretty easy to walk around most of the piles. We kind of made a tactical error – decided to stop at the Bainbridge Brewery, but it was pretty lame. It said it was located in “Coppertop Park” which was actually an industrial park/strip mall. We used their bathrooms, then pushed on to the ferry and thought we’d get on the 4:35, but ended up having to wait for the 5:30. We got back into town, I drove and Megan navigated, and we recreated arguments-past on where to pull into the big car rental place to drop off the car, but after that the bus stop was right outside. Hopped on the bus and got back to Dave & Jen’s in time for spaghetti dinner with Chad & Lea.
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Monday, our last full day in Seattle, we kinda hung around in the morning and saw off Chad & Lea. Dinner was to be the traditional Deb-shops-at-Pike-Market&makes-a-meal affair. I inventoried the contents of the fridge to try to decide what to buy, still on a quest to use up leftovers. There was purple cabbage and spinach and lots of limes, so I thought slaw with a lime dressing on top of the spinach. There were potatoes and red peppers, so I thought maybe pizza with veggies. And, there were two bunches of kale, so I thought kale with peanut sauce.
Before we went to the market we met my old friend Bob Love for lunch at a bistro. We were grill cooks together at Spudnuts on State St. in the late 1970s – my first job in Madison. Fun, but took a little too long. We did a cursory walk thru the SAM sculpture garden, and then looped back to the market, where the desires of the serious shopper (me) vs. the drinking (me, John & Megan) and non-drinking tourists (Mark & Belana) conflicted a bit but I think we all had a good time. I bought grapes and pears and tomatoes and cheese and smoked salmon to take home. Went to the Italian deli for frozen pizza dough, and got a box of amareti and 5 little nougats. We bussed home, and I speed-thawed the pizza dough. Dinner was good but none of amareti wrappers flew, except for Belana’s.
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And I never used up the leftover Chinese take-out rice.