I sometimes regret that we live so close to Seattle and it is just so darn easy to travel to and from The Emerald City. It means that we usually just go to Seattle for the day. Hahaha, I know that sounds jaded and that we are filled with a great degree of ennui about this beautiful city. We aren't. It's almost as fresh each time we go downtown as it was the first time.
No, I was thinking that I'd become lazy about getting out and doing things. I was sitting around last night and wondering what we would do tomorrow. I knew we could make a trip to Seattle to go to the bank. We could just as easily go to the bank in Renton so going downtown wasn't the only option. But, hey, it's Seattle and, what the heck, it's so easy to get to and, yada, yada, yada.
So I went Googling and, as I've done before, I pulled up the map and plugged in Westlake Center. I then began looking for what was there that we hadn't visited before. In the back of my mind while I was doing this were those two young Coasties (fresh water sailors or shallow water sailors) we'd met on the Link a couple days ago. They were a couple of young kids coming back to their ship, the USCGC Midgett.
Photo curtesy of USCG
 |
| USCGC John A. Midgett |
That kinda fueled my interest. It was fun talking to them; one was from Michigan and the other from Maine. Really nice kids.
Fun Facts: The cutter they are serving on was named for the Late Chief Warrant Officer John A. Midgett, Jr. He received the Gold Lifesaving Medal for his heroic rescue of 42 crewmen from the torpedoed British tanker Mirlo, in 1918. Interestingly, more than 150 living members of the Midgett family have made the Coast Guard a career, including more than thirty still on active duty.
Whoa!! That's a lot of Coasties for one family!!
USCGC Midgett is the 12th and last of the Coast Guard's fleet of 378-foot High Endurance Cutters. She is the 3rd in her class (Hero) to be named for outstanding Coast Guardsmen. Commissioned in 1972, she was decommissioned in 1991. The Midgett was fully re-commissioned in 1993.
So to start looking I knew the kids had gotten off at the Stadium Link Station and walked over to where their cutter was berthed so I looked around the area along the port behind SafeCo Field and, viola, I found the base. And the base has a museum!!
Fun Fact: In the title of this blog I called the Coasties The Hooligan Navy. The Navy's epithet of "Hooligan Navy" for the Coasties dates from the 1920s and was due to the Coast Guard's flexibility in enlisting men discharged from other services to rapidly expand their force for enforcement during the Prohibition Era. It has endured due to the high proportion of prior-other-service enlisteds they still get and has become a term of pride with the Coast Guard.
Hahahaha!! A swing and a hit!!
So now I knew we'd be heading over to the bank downtown and then we'd make our slow way on over to the Coast Guard Base Seattle and its Coast Guard Nautical Museum Northwest.
Woo, woo!!
Quick!! To the Link!!
And in a flash, we were downtown in The Emerald City heading to our bank.
There's just so much to see that the city itself is just a visual treat. Like this light outside a hotel.
You're gonna get a lot of the city today. The day was just great. Blue skies and the mercury was around 50. What more could you ask for?
And because the skies were blue and the light intense there was a great contrast between the lit areas and those in the shadow and that is gonna increase the contrast and make taking pictures difficult. Honest, a couple clouds to soften the light would have been appreciated.
Hahahaha, but it wasn't so.
The First Reflected Window Selfie!!
Hahaha, we didn't waste any time, did we!! This one was just too easy.
See what I mean about the contrasty light!! A beautiful day but . . . one that photographers appreciate but with a grain of salt.
Fun Facts: A grain of salt is an idiom which means to view something with skepticism, or to not take it literally. Hah!!
Theories to the phrase's origin include Pliny The Elder's Naturalis Historia, regarding the discovery of a recipe for an antidote to a poison. In the antidote, one of the ingredients was a grain of salt. An alternative account says that the Roman general Pompey believed he could make himself immune to poison by ingesting small amounts of various poisons and he took this treatment with a grain of salt to help him swallow the poison. Here salt is not the antidote but taken to assist in swallowing the poison.
Finally, the Latin word salis means both "salt" and "wit", so that the Latin phrase "cum grain salis" could be translated as both"with a grain of salt" and "with a grain (small amount) of wit". Hahaha, I prefer the latter.
The harsh light gave me some interesting shots, though.
And I'm never too far away from getting reflected buildings.
We had plenty of time because it was such a beautiful day that I thought we'd sorta stroll on over to the Museum. Heck, it was a little less than two miles.
EZ-PZ, right!?!
Hahaha, right!!
For such a great day, there wasn't a lot happening on the streets. It was 1047 when this picture was taken and you can see the streets are relatively car-free.
I guess, when I think about it, the downtown traffic isn't that bad. I mean, it's a damn sight better than what they have to endure in The Big Apple or, even, The Big Easy.
Reflections . . . There's some interesting things to see if you simply look up . . .
. . . and down, like in this alley for example.
Great light, eh?
Same subject, different angle.
The light, she is a-beautiful!!
Non e' che a destra?
And a ferry; there's always a ferry waiting to jump into your picture. And they're fun to ride.
That's North Admiral, near Alki Beach, across the Bay.
See the tripod just to the left of the people on the left? We saw plenty of these today. They had surveyors out on a lot of corners . . . surveying. That tripod was supporting a level which surveyors use to determine elevation. You'll see why they were out today later on.
It really was a great day for a walk and for taking pictures. A city dog going for a walk.
The harsh, strong light back-lit everything.
And we finally made it across the street. Hahaha, like I said, we were meandering.
We were heading down Stewart towards the Pike Place Market. Seattle is a tres-nouveau city and very trendy and very rich.
And, sometimes, it is an-amaideach (in the Old Irish, very silly.)
The sign says it is an antique store but . . . I think they deal with antiques and just some general silliness.
Post Alley is a trendy walkway that parallels First Avenue and is a loose collection of shops, restaurants and, even, a store where you can buy some new pots and pans.
Down there on the right is the main entrance to the Pike Place Market and the Pigs of Seattle. Just in front of and to the left of the Sisters sign is the Pike Place Chowder restaurant that we ate in during our recent food tour of The Market.
The chowder was very tasty. If we ever get some visitors, we'll take them there for a lunch. Either there or we could go to O'Donnell's after we go up to the Observation Deck of the Smith Tower. Or . . . hahahah, there's just so much to see . . . and eat!!
Here's that kitchenware store. All kinds of fun stuff. If you're any kind of a chef, you'd have a ball in this shop.
Me? I'm sort of a chef, too. Except I'd be shopping in the microwave store.
The Market. Right there in front of the sign, the red and pink tent? Guess what kind of apple juice they're selling?
Did you guess organic because, well, it's Seattle? Hahaha, you're right!!
Oh, Seattle. Sometimes you're so predictable!
OK, it's already a well-known and extensively documented fact that I am cheap. I am one very cheap Old Man. So one of the things I like to do is stop in Beecher's and get a free sample of their curds and their Flagship Cheese.
Fun Facts: Their Cheese Curds recently took first place at the 2014 ACS Annual Competition. Woo, woo!
But, WAIT!! There's more!
The first wheel of Flagship, Beecher's signature cheese, was handcrafted when Beecher's opened its doors in Seattle's historic Pike Place Market in November of 2003. Flagship is a semi-hard cow's milk cheese with a uniquely robust, nutty flavor. It's carefully aged for 15 months under the watchful eye of the cheesemaker to fully develop its complex flavor and ever-so-slight crumble. This cheese took 2d place in Aged Cheddars, 12-24 months at the 2009 American Cheese Society Show. And it took Best Semi-Hard Cow's Milk Cheese award from the American Cheesemaker Awards in 2007.
Bottom line is, it's good. And free!!
What a glorious day. The Pike Place Market.
Here's what the Market looked like around 1907 . . .
And in the 40s . . .
And in the 60s . . .
And it was great in the Market. Not everything was open yet, it was, after all, only 1100 and the touristas were still groggily climbing out of the fart sack and slowly making their way to brunch.
Not all the shops were open and several were still in the process of opening. The great thing was that there just weren't that many people there!! We could walk almost a straight line through the Market.
Take a gander at the picture above . . . to get this shot, the one below, I walked to the windows in the back overlooking the bay and stepped out onto a small platform at the head of some stairs.
Those are the Olympic Mountains in the distance.
Same spot, you just swing a little to the right and you can get a shot of the totems in Steinbrueck Park. Not too many of the Valued Homeless there this early.
Then I swung farther to the left and got this shot of Elliott Bay with Alki Point there on the right.
Hahaha, the Bay is a kick!!
We then went back into the Market where we saw we could get some Raspberry Honey, Raw & Pure. Of course it is, this is Seattle.
Oh, and it's from the Northwest, too. That's a solid guarantee of purity. Uh-huh.
I remember being a bit surprised when I first came to the Market and saw all the fruit vendors. There are quite a few of them there, offering slices of peaches or apples or bites of whatever fruit is in season. I always wondered just who would come into the city to buy their fruit here and then, because I'm not always too fast on the uptake, I realized just how many people live here in the downtown area.
A lot!!
I really love the Old Timie look of the Market. The ceilings and the stalls. And, yes, the neon signs.
And the food. Don't forget the food.
There she is!! Rachel the Pig!!
Fun Facts: Rachel the Piggy Bank is the mascot of Pike Place Market. She's helped raise more than $200,000 since 1986. Legend has it that if you rub Rachel's snout and make a donation, you'll have good luck. I think it's more good marketing than legend myself.
Rachel arrived at the corner of Pike Place in 1986. She's a bronze cast piggy bank weighing in at 550 lbs. Rachael was named after a real 750-lb pig who won the 1985 Island County Fair. Her cousin, Billie the Piggy Bank, arrived in the Market in 2011 and sits on Western Avenue at the bottom of the Hillclimb.
And . . . Rachel was the inspiration behind the "Pigs on Parade" fundraiser throughout Seattle in 2001 and again in 2007 for the Market's centennial celebration.
As we left the Market, I happened to accidentally glance inside the DeLaurenti Store and saw a stack of Chocolate Chip Cookies!!
Oops!!
The die was cast . . . there was no going back (and I didn't get any real argument from Carol, either) and so in we marched and we got a Big Chocolate Chip Cookie . . . to go.
It was deleesh!! And full of big chunks of chocolate!!
Mmmmmmmm . . .
One of the many fun things to do is window gaze. It used to be 'window shop' but, let's be honest, I ain't about to buy much of anything downtown in these Tourist Shops. So I window gaze and enjoy the displays.
Like these. Very Seattle and funny.
And this one . . . sorta says it all.
See the guy on the left? The one wearing the Super Bowl Champion Seattle SeaHawks wool cap? You might be able to see the small flag in his left hand; he's a tour guide and, while we moseyed down First Avenue, his little group of intrepid Tourists kept pace, almost, with us. We lapped each other, several times, until we parted ways down near Pioneer Square.
It looked like he was giving them their money's worth as he was animated and cheerful each time I eavesdropped on his tour.
I appreciate the quality of light especially when it's reflected and sets up interesting scenes. Notice the building on the left . . . towards the top of it you can see rows of bright light playing along.
Whup!! There it is!!
There's the SAM!! Woo, woo!! Seattle and Art are synonymous.
There's the Hammering Man.
Fun Facts: He's 48 feet tall and 30 inches wide. He's one of a series of Hammering Men throughout the world in cities like Frankfurt, Germany, Seoul, Korea, NYC, LA, Dallas, Basel, Switzerland and Lillestrom, Norway.
Hahahaha, what an ingenious marketing idea. Combine two of Seattle's favorite drinking pastimes together into one bar!!
Genius!!
The SafeCo Center Building.
I get a kick out of the windows here and the way they reflect the light. Fantastic.
Plus, Carol thinks this is the Emerald in The Emerald City.
Makes sense.
The SAM on the left and 1201 Third Avenue looming over it.
Fun Facts: 1201 Third Avenue, formerly known as the Washington Mutual Tower, is a 772 foot, 55-story skyscraper in Seattle. It's the second tallest building in the city and the eight tallest on the West Coast. It was the world headquarters of Washington Mutual until the company moved into the WaMu Center across the street from it in 2006.
Light
And reflections . . .
And flowers. Pretty neat. You pass flower shops on nearly every street in this city.
Hahahaha, a girl can dream, can't she?
Yes! Yes, she can.
She just can't afford to buy is all.
The SafeCo Building. See what I mean about the windows. Go back, waaaaay back in my blogs and you'll see other, far more interesting, pictures of this Emerald.
The light was great.
We Are 12!!
Carol spotted these leaded glass windows.
Great architecture, eh? Look at the detail, the symmetry.
Hahaha, there it is again.
Remember, I've mentioned this before, but I display the pictures pretty much in the order in which they were taken. Oh, occasionally I will move them around a bit just for the story line but, normally, you gets them the way I tooks them!!
Carol suggested I do a series on the City in Reflection.
Hmmmmmm . . . do you think you could take it?
Hahahahaha!!
Light and sky
Seriously, you can have fun just looking in the windows . . . window gazing.
Love the jacket although I don't think I could quite carry it off.
The Federal Building and, next to it is the Exchange Building.
The Exchange Building is a 22-story (275 ft) Art Deco office building. It opened in 1930. That Art Deco style is something else!!
See!?!
Detail of the Exchange Building.
Stately, too.
Windows
There's the Smith Tower. I can't imagine having the apartment up there at the top of the Smith Tower, can you? What a kick that must be.
Just a detail of some of the artwork built into the architecture from the 30s.
See? A Seattle Street Scene.
You have to admire the detail they put into these architectural gems. Row upon row.
Hey, there's the oldest continuously operating restaurant in Seattle. Worth stopping by for a drink or lunch. It has a great looking bar that made the trip aboard a sailing ship around Cape Horn in the last decade of the 19th Century. Oh, and they have some great tiffany lamps, too.
Artsy-Fartsy Alert!!
Building detail.
The corner of Yesler Way and First Avenue. Yesler is famous for being the original Skid Row.
Looking west on Yesler Way towards the Bay and the Pioneer Square Hotel.
Along First Avenue . . . the sun was definitely a factor.
At the intersection of Washington Street and First Avenue. There's the J&M Cafe.
Fun Facts: The J&M got its name from partners Jamieson and McFarland, who opened for business in Pioneer Square in 1892. They sold out years later and moved two doors north to the preset location, hence their claim to fame as the Oldest Bar in Seattle.
The J&M served as a gambling and dancing establishment for the men of the Gold Rush. It's ceiling is pressed tin, rumored to have been installed by Italian craftsmen. The bar-back is Austrian mahogany - transported around the Cape in the late 1890s. Hmmmmm, I wonder if it was on the same ship as the bar in the Merchants Cafe?
Small world, eh?
Artsy-Fartsy Alert!!
A very pleasant and interesting Happy Accident. They occur every so often for me and are always welcome and appreciated.
BTW, a Happy Accident is when something good happens with my photography and I have no idea how I did it or even that I could do it again.
Love the light.
First Avenue Reflected Window Selfie!!
Never one to pass up a Selfie opportunity. Never!!
Light
Look at it!! How cool!!
Looks like a late afternoon sun but it was only 1150.
That's the Bread of Life Mission home in the building to the right. They've been providing services to the homeless for over 75 years.
Fun Facts: The Bread of Life Mission occupies the Matilda Winehill Block, built in 1890, and is a former hotel. This was the original site of Doc Maynard's 1852 'Seattle Exchange' general store. The nearby Squire and Maud Buildings were also built in 1890
Doors in Black and White . . .
Hahaha, I'm practicing coming up with Artsy-Fartsy names for my pictures. Hey, the names are almost as important in selling these goobers as the picture itself.
We're looking down Jackson Street towards, obviously, the Bay. You can get an idea of the semi-permanent building site that is Seattle's latest boondoggle, The State Route 99 Tunnel to replace the Alaskan Viaduct.
I say semi-permanent because it is scheduled to be finished in December, 2015 and, hahahaha, Surprise!! it's already more than a year behind schedule. They seemed to have caused all the buildings around the area to start to . . . sink.
We noted about 6 places along our walk where there were surveyors out with their instruments measuring. Hmmmmm,
Wha . . . !?!?!
Speaking of government and dirty little holes in the ground . . . Welcome to the ugly side of Liberal Seattle.
Fight the Power!!
No real rhyme or reason, just, y'know, Fight the Power!!
Hell, yeah!!
Hahahaha, useless yet, still, useful tools.
We were finally getting close to the Coast Guard Station. You remember them, don't you? It was the original reason for this odyssey.
Well, it's getting closer.
This is the broad boardwalk on the west side of SafeCo Field. We're heading towards the Home Plate Entrance, and the Coast Guard thingie somewhere out that way.
Hahaha!! We made it!! It was a long haul and I do thank you for sticking with us but, doggone it, we made it!!
This is the place.
But I had to look back at The Emerald City once more before we went in. Hahahaha,
Gooooooo, 'Hawks!!
Silly us. We thought we'd be able to enter the Base near the museum. Sounds logical, right? Hahaha, wrong!!
No, we still had a block and a half to go before we got to the entrance.
But we made it. Good thing it was such a nice day otherwise this wouldn't have been happening.
Welcome!! U.S. Coast Guard Seattle.
Hahahaha, Carol was sure this was the small totem stolen from the Eagle Landing Park in Burien. She thinks they stole it, painted it black and then gave it to the Base.
I don't know. I have my doubts.
Addendum: Carol was still suspicious and went on-line and found this picture of the stolen totem from Eagle's Landing Park. You can see they are similar. I wonder if they were made by the same person. Well, it's a relief to know that the Coast Guard is not trafficking in stolen goods.
Photo Curtesy of Burien Parks . . . and the Internet!!
Unfortunately, I had to go to the Internet to get any pictures of the Base because they don't allow any photography on board. I even asked the OOD and explained what it was for but, no-go. Bummer.
The red-hulled icebreakers Polar Star, Polar Sea and Healy are home-ported here, as well as the 378' high-endurance patrol cutters Mellon and Midgett.
Photo curtesy of USCGB Seattle's web site.
I even had to crib this pic of the Museum itself from the Net. It's really a nice little museum, full of interesting artifacts and displays.
Photo curtesy of Coast Guard Museum Northwest's web site.
So, let's go in, shall we, and take a gander at some of the exhibits and displays.
They have numerous models of the ships, cutters, and boats that have been used by the Coast Guard.
It took a fair amount of gumption to climb into this wood and cloth plane and have it put into a rolling sea and then try and take off.
Uh, probably not me.
FYI, the Chelan.
Hahaha, crossing the Equator.
Oh, those silly sailors and their curious hi-jinks!!
Oh, you can tell this is old!!
Hahaha, a $1.49 for a model like this!?! Not today, bucko, not today.
I always wanted to be able to put together great models like this but usually ended up with a less than stellar version that I eventually blew up with firecrackers or burned in an agonizing blaze of martial glory.
Ah, youth . . .
I don't know about being out in a rough sea in a 240' Cutter. I think I'm less warm (Hahahaha) about being in that same size boat on ice patrol.
There's a certain elegance to these craft. Much like the old architecture, these are not only utile but with a becoming beauty, too.
There were a number of well-put together displays. This place was definitely worth the trip.
A Young Man from Cle Elum
Douglas A. Munro
Douglas A. Munro is the only member of the U.S. Coast Guard to receive the Medal of Honor. After his mother accepted her son's posthumous award, she, too, joined the Coast Guard and served for two years.
Munro received the decoration for his actions as officer-in-charge of a group of landing craft on September 27, 1942, during the Matanikau action in the Guadalcanal campaign of World War II.
I thought this interesting. Would Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and, yeah, Coasties put up with this kind of restrictive censorship today? This letter, written in late 1941 in a service attempting to get up to speed for the war they've just entered is, now, kind of humorous.
I can remember getting sarcastic form letters like this to fill out and send home when I was overseas in '68. Some things, some forms of black humor, are timeless.
Here is Signalman First Class Munro's Medal of Honor.
Thanks, Doug!!
And an interesting display of WWII memorabilia.
Like this. Someone put a lot of time into making this memorable Christmas Card.
A landing craft. Not like any I was ever on.
My daughter, Michelle, is a BIG fan of lighthouses and plans trips to visit the lighthouses up and down the east coast. I thought she'd enjoy the displays about the Light House Service.
And these dishes from the Light House Service . . . which eventually merged into the U.S. Coast Guard. They were in existence from 1910 until 1939. Damn automation!!
Whenever I think of the Coast Guard, and it's not all that often, I think first of the cutters and then the helicopters. They're a very visible and useful tool used by the Coast Guard.
Ahoy, you Puddle Pirates!!
More light house stuff.
Fun Fact: They would have to, at times, cloak these lanterns with hoods to keep the sun from shining through them and unintentionally starting something on fire.
Oops!!
Some of these models were fabricated by the builder as part of the contract. They would construct the model and use that as part of their presentation and then give the model to the buyers afterwards. Interestingly, this practice started way back with the Greeks who, since they didn't have detailed plans, would build a model and then go over it making modifications with the navy prior to building the ship. The other craft were created from scratch by some very skilled model builders.
Very dramatic rendering of one of the basic jobs of the Coast Guard . . . rescue operations.
So Others May Live.
The creed of the rescuers. The U.S. Coast Guard's unofficial motto is "You have to go out - you don't have to come back," which alludes to the constant inherent danger in their Search and Rescue Missions.
Amen.
Hahaha, they'll always be watching out for us.
The Ship's Bell.
Fun Facts: A ship's bell is used to indicate the time aboard a ship and, hence, to regulate the sailors' duty watches. Unlike civil clock bells, the strikes of the bell do not accord to the number of the hour. Instead, there are eight bells, one for each half-hour of a four-hour watch. In the age of sailing, watches were timed with a 30-minute hourglass. Bells would be struck every time the glass was turned, and in a pattern of pairs for easier counting, with any odd bells at the end of the sequence.
Before the introduction of times zones, noon was not struck by the glass, but when the captain or officer of the deck confirmed local noon by the sun, using a sextant.
Finally, at midnight on New Year's Eve, sixteen bells would be struck - eight bells for the old year and eight bells for the new.
That is all.
The Roosevelt was the ship that took Robert Peary's Expedition to the edge of the ice when Peary made his first trek to the North Pole.
The Bear
The first Coast Guard vessel especially designed for icebreaking and navigating through ocean ice. Built in 1874, would you try and break some ice in this?
Hahaha, not me.
Here's the gentleman that was staffing the museum. It's completely run by volunteers. He joined the Coast Guard at the age of 16 in 1945 and, as he said, was just as happy as my Dad was when President Truman dropped the bombs and ended the war.
He evidently retired from the Coast Guard. He's about 86 years young now and sharp as a tack. He and I exchanged a few friendly barbs, y'know, between the Army and the Coasties.
As we were saying good-bye, I asked him if we could get his picture and he was happy to oblige. But before I could get he and Carol together, he had gone over to this guy and grabbed the cover off this fellow and placed it on her head.
He said all the gals (Hey! Lighten up!! Cheez, he's 86 years old, Man!!) like to put on the cap and pose with this sailor boy.
Oh, see that patch over the man's right breast? That was called the Ruptured Duck. They were given out at the end of the war as so many men were discharged and they still had to wear their uniforms but, doggone it, they were out of the service. They gave them those Ruptured Ducks so the SPs and MPs would know they had been discharged and leave them alone as they traveled home.
Evidently they weren't all perfect gentlemen as they traveled back to a normal life.
Go figure!!
Eventually we got the pose. And it just struck me that after talking with him for almost 45 minutes, neither of us thought to ask him his name for this blog.
Sorry!!
As a reward for visiting the museum, Carol and I each got a Million Dollars!!
The only caveat the curator gave us was that if we found someone who would cash it for us, we had to let him know.
So, it was fun and it was worth it. Although I would have liked to have gotten some pictures while I was there. I didn't want to get into trouble . . . more on that later. You'll see.
As we were leaving I got this shot of the railroad lines . . .
The conductor sings his song again, the passengers will please refrain
This train's got the disappearing railroad blues.
Meh, seems appropriate.
Then I made a big mistake as I thought I could go up the street on the south end of SafeCo Field and get to the Link.
Hahaha, wrong!! With some disastrous consequences, too.
I had wanted to walk over to the Link using a different route . . . you know, see some new things. And we did. Like this giant mural on the Grocery Outlet.
And this sign. Hmmmmm, I wonder what they mean?
And this.
It turns out that there was no easy nor quick way over to the Link and we ended up walking several long blocks south just to be able to cross the rail tracks and then turn north, up towards the Stadium Link Station.
When we were finally able to make that turn the road narrowed and had no sidewalk. It had some solid lines that looked a bit like a bike path so we walked along the road on that . . . heading towards the Link station. Oh, and we were walking parallel to the Link tracks.
And as we walked I did what I had been doing all day long . . . I took pictures. Like this one of the Old Amazon Building on Beacon Hill.
Now, mind you, to take this picture I had to shoot across the tracks for the Link. I've done this before, y'know, shot pictures along the tracks for the Link. I've shot them in nearly every station along the line. I've shot pictures in the tunnels the Link runs through and, well, you get the picture (Hahahaha, I am too funny!).
I saw this, what appeared to be, interesting arrangement of buildings and fences across the tracks and so I took a shot. Turns out it wasn't all that good or interesting and, normally, I would have deleted it while editing for the blog. Hahaha, I know, hard to believe but, yes, I do, on some rare occasions, delete a picture or two.
So we continued walking when, BOOM!! a King County Sheriff's patrol car pulls up alongside of us with his lights on.
Oh, what the heck!! I was embarrassed and immediately angry with myself because I thought I'd put myself in line for a reprimand or, even, a ticket for walking along the side of the road. No one likes being corrected and no one likes being fronted by a cop on a public street and so I was angry, primarily with myself, for having gotten into this situation.
Hahaha, was I ever wrong. No, he didn't stop because I was walking along the road, no, that was a small part of the problem . . . he stopped because I was taking pictures . . . and he wanted to know what I was taking pictures of.
Yeah, that was it. He was suspicious because I had been taking pictures near the link power lines. And, yeah, I did have a picture of one of the big poles against the very blue sky but I deleted that in the edit because, like the picture above, it was boring.
So I was thinking, give me the talk and let me go but he was after something else. He had to have my name and then said we'd have to go back towards the street we just came from. I was a bit incredulous, and let it show, because it was farther back to the street we came from than it was to the Station we were going to. And I pointed this out to him.
Then he offered to drive us to the station. I know this sounds self-serving now, but had it just been me I would have told him no and left, but Carol was running on low and my route had really taken us out of the way. She was tired and so I said, sure, you can give us a ride.
Second big mistake. He had us in the car. Oh, he drove us up to the link and then asked me for some more information, Just so I can tell them who I spoke to. He asked for my name again and then my date of birth. I balked at this . . . I don't want to be in anything police-related. You get in and never get out.
I asked him why and then I asked him if I were being detained. Oh, his tone was still polite, but there was a definite change in attitude and demeanor, 'Well,' he said, 'I've been nice to you so far. I haven't asked for your ID or patted you down. But I can detain you for taking pictures if you'd like.'
Well, I didn't and so I reluctantly and resentfully gave him my DOB.
The upshot was, I was threatened for taking pictures.
You know I'm sorry to say this, but I think the situation is getting bad when the police start losing the support of people like me. Honestly, out there on the street and locked inside his car, I was a little bit afraid. Things can go south quickly if a cop feels you're being 'confrontational'.
I didn't used to feel that way but I do now.
Regardless of the uniformed bully, we still had a good day. It took me a little while to work through my anger and embarrassment, my feeling of being totally powerless, but I did.
It was a good day with one sad little glitch.
And, in spite of all that nonsense, life is good.
Hooah!!
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