Friday evening the television news had said rain rain rain all weekend, and everyone was all surprised because apparently it doesn't rain in Seattle in the summer. I had hoped for clear weather, for mountain views and good wandering, but I was prepared for rain. So when Saturday cleared up right nice during the morning, we were both very pleased. We began at Ye Old Curiosity Shop, where I wanted to see the Lord's Prayer written on a grain of rice. We walked down to Pike Place Market and wandered through that, appropriately impressed. I bought a plumicot from a fruit stand and when I finally ate the succulent thing, decided the apricot parent had lent texture genes without affecting any of the superior taste of the plum genes.

At the northern end of the market, we saw a presumably homeless man with an African Grey on his shoulder. The man apparently didn't care to step the bird off his shoulder (whereas we've learned to pause for thought every ten or fifteen or twenty minutes to coincide with Blake's digestion), which was weird (and gross, particularly for the uninitiated). The bird had lived outside long enough (or recently enough) that it mimicked the street birds. It cooed like a pidgeon; it peeped like a sparrow. On Orcas Island we heard a 'tiel and sought it out in a store, where it lived in a too-small cage with no toys and called plaintively. I simply left the premises. Here, in contrast, the Grey looked in good feather, with a well-maintained wing clip, and while I wonder how a homeless person can either afford a Grey or keep it warm enough in winter, they did look well bonded.

We took the bus up to Fremont in the late morning. We'd found Rachel the pig in Pike Place and we needed to find the Fremont Troll, Lenin, the rocket, and Waiting for the Interurban. The last was easy, right off the bus on Aurora Avenue. I knew the statue had a dog (does Seattle allow dogs on buses?) but was surprised to see this dog had a human face. The statue is of four people, plus the dog-human, at the stop of a trolley line that no longer runs. Hence, they're waiting. True to report, people dress the statues, in t-shirts and leis and the like.

We ambled up North 34th Street and found my new favorite book shop, conveniently located only 1200 miles from my house. It's called the Wits' End, so you can say "Oh, I've got to have a cup of tea, I'm at my Wits' End." The first three children's books I saw were The Phantom Tollbooth, some Tintin and Asterix (I group them), and G Is for Googol, a math alphabet book that I bought for ZLT. When I told PLT that we had decided on a straighter course to the Pacific Northwest and no trip to Berkeley, I told him I hoped to see ZLT again before she learns long division. "Better be quick," said he. So a mathematical alphabet book seems about right.

The shop was flooded with sunlight from two sides, some of it reflected off the river. Open, airy, with an appropriately bookish oddment of a clerk gratified at our appreciation. We decided a cup of tea later in the afternoon would not go amiss.

Right after that, we turned a corner northward and began to climb a hill under a bridge. Here, MEWN called again, at first wondering how she dialed a 303 number to talk to folks walking toward the Fremont Troll. The wonder of cel phones. This was another in a long volley of messages that eventually resulted in not hooking up, unfortunately. When I told her we were on a walking tour of Fremont, she asked, or should I say she aghast, "Is it really a guided tour?" No.

We had hung up by the time we met the Troll, where I found my assumptions diverged considerably from reality. I had imaged the Troll to be on a major thoroughfare that you couldn't easily walk to. It didn't look as big as I know it must be--after all, it holds a VW bug in one hand. A large block in front of the Troll bore a graffito by someone presumably named Andrea; also someone had left a liter of Sprite. There was spray paint all over him, particularly in his eye--his single visible iris had been painted blue, baby blue. Does the Troll have a name?

Closer to the heart of Fremont we found Lenin, a bronze statue that came atumbling during that last summer. I only can remember the year by remembering Hurricane Bob, which struck Connecticut just when the USSR was crumbling, thereby skewing the news coverage. It's rainy and windy: there's a hurricane. Fine. Tell us what's happening in the Soviet Union. TJZ spent the 1990-91 school year in Leningrad, came home for a couple of months, and returned to St. Petersburg in the fall.

Anyway, the odd citizens of the republic of Fremont brought the statue to Seattle. It is the only known bronze by that sculptor showing Lenin surrounded by flames instead of holding a book or waving his hat, and this piece of history can be yours for some amount I forget. These odd citizens also bought a rocket, what the heck.

Walking into Twice Sold Tales exacerbated my movie extra sense. Anita lives in Capitol Hill, best that I can figure, near another Twice Sold Tales, so I got over that conceit right fast. Another good bookstore, this has a cat. I found Arthur Ransome's book of Russian fairy tales, though not Picts and Martyrs. I commented on the Stephen Fry book behind the counter, and this clerk recommended Hugh Laurie's books as the funnier. Really?

We found the Trolleyman's Pub, home of Red Hook Ale. Presumably the trolleyman is out waiting for the Interurban as well. We browsed through a few funky stores. RDC bought a Jesus-fish take off: a skeleton dead fish called "Reality" that I refused to allow on the car.

By this time we were feeling peckish, and whatever RDC was coming down with had attached lead weights to his feet. So we found another recommendation, the Still Life in Fremont Café. RDC wanted soup, and he got an excellent vegetable soup with a hearty bread, and particularly after Buca di Beppo, I wanted something Healthy with a capital Heh. I got an avocado and hummus wrap that I thought would be tolerable but turned out to be scrumptiously fantastic. We'd been going fairly light on the vegetables all week, and besides that it was good, my body craved red peppers and green onions and orange carrots...yum.

After lunch (RDC helped me out with half the wrap), finding the Fremont library closed, the afternoon half gone, and the sky clear, we thought the view from the Space Needle would be worth the effort. (We had decided to wallow thoroughly in the role of tourista.) We figured out a bus back to Seattle, got off when we thought we were close enough (the Needle's easy to spot!), and walked. We passed a strip club with this sign: "Déjà Vu--100's of Beautiful Girls and Three Ugly Ones." Those last must draw a lot more than their fair share of business. The Space Needle is indeed easy to spot, for lots of people: a 40-minute wait that would likely be longer (unlike the Museum's). We shrugged that off as not worth the effort (thus failing as touristas), watched some karaoke marionettes do Pearl Jam, and substituted the monorail for the Needle. I was not the first, I am sure, to hum the Jetsons theme thereon, except since I couldn't remember it, I sang the Flintstones' theme with "Jetsons" substituted appropriately.

I left RDC to nap as I scampered to explore the library. It certainly doesn't match the rest of Seattle in coolness, but I found some Robert Westall titles I'd not heard of and reread most of The Picts and the Martyrs, finally.

Napping and good noshing had refreshed RDC, so in the evening, from the Bainbridge ferry, we searched for Cascade and Olympic mountains, talked to more Seattlites who love their watery city, and examined the skyline. We were ready to join the throng and move here; by supper, which we found at Etta's (RDC had a sampler of oysters like he was at a wine-tasting), I suggested one last quick trip to Denver to pick up Blake, Boo, and our books before moving.

So it was a good thing it rained Sunday morning.

There's an allusion in that jpeg's alt tag that I know Columbine could get. Also there was a lot of wind. RDC's not wearing a duffel coat.