So. Seattle. Strange town. On the one hand I discovered it is the home city of not only Microsoft, but Boeing and Starbucks as well. And yet it is also full of bearded men playing the banjo. This post is spanning 3 days, so expect some length. (Actually, I have no idea what you expect having turned off the comments section. If you want to, mail me with a funky question at thomas@[the domain you're looking at]) and I promise to feature it in the next post!
First things first: I had actually planned on snowboarding this trip. Now, unfortunately there is a thing called climate change, so the irony is that my home town has seen the most snow ever and over here it’s… uhm… raining softly on the worst of days. Considering the state of the slopes so far, not much has happened in this area. However: adversity breeds opportunity. It turns out, this is the perfect opportunity to try out something on my list of “old fashioned hobbies”. (I discovered a couple of years ago that anything people were doing 100 years ago I usually love doing myself: tango, horse riding, fencing: did it, done it, loved it.) So, there were a few things still on my list, including… climbing. And so, we did.
As expected, we absolutely loved it. We loved it so much in fact, that we’ve done it twice in two days. Yes, I’m a bit sore now.
Let’s go back to Boeing however. Now, as a a kid I was actually not very much into cars, but airplanes? Oh yes. As it turns out, Seattle has this thing called the “Museum of Flight” which is actually even cooler than the Smithsonian in Washington. Let me tell you why. First off all, they have this thing:
That is a freaking Concorde. The fastest commercial planes ever built. The 4 Rolls Royce engines underneath? Massive. Going into the plane itself was my first taste of magic. Next to it there was this little puppy:
That is an “airforce 1″. This beauty transported Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon (amongst other people). It has an on board safe which at the time held the launch codes to enough nuclear bombs to wipe out humanity several times over:
Yes, it feels a bit weird thinking about it when you’re standing next to it. (Click on one of the pictures to see more stuff.) Anyway. The final piece, the mother of all boys dreams. The airplane of airplanes. I present to you the SR-71, aka the “Blackbird”:
This is to this date still the fastest manned aircraft ever built (Mach 3.2, more than 3 times the speed of sound). “If a surface-to-air missile launch were detected, standard evasive action was simply to accelerate.” Literally faster than a bullet. The “ceiling” (highest flying altitude of these monsters) was about 24 km. In any case, I got to sit in the cockpit of one, fulfilling my childhood dreams and making this trip worth it all on its own.
In about 6 hours we have to catch a train (yes, they do have trains in the US) to Portland. Very exciting.