Markets, Museums, and Monuments on Memorial Weekend.

There are many beautiful Rhododendrons in and around Seattle

You can’t beat a bit of alliteration. I was glad to get to Seattle and find I still had the late spring bank holiday off work. In a change to our original plans we stayed at home instead of heading East. The long weekend started with an enormous waffle breakfast at a local diner. I should have taken a picture, oh well; I’ll have to go back!






 Laurie and John have 3 lovely furry children,
 an English bull dog (Beulah),
a dachshund (Rex),
and a Himalayan Cat (Bella).




We went to Pike’s place market and had a quick wander around but the place was packed so I didn’t do much buying or photo taking. I have now realised I get off the bus on the other side of the street from the market so I can go in at quieter times for a photo or two hundred. I did have a very yummy honey and lavender ice cream... yum! (you can tell it was already shaping up as a good food day! [Although I haven’t had a bad food day since I’ve been here, Laurie is a fab cook]).










Later on Saturday I did the ‘Underground tour’ highly recommended for anyone visiting the city. A fun and slightly sardonic look at Seattle’s early history.

Some of those wooden pilings sit under this
brick wall. Notice the floor 3ft below? This
doesn't have any supports underneath!

To give you a brief outline of the story ...  Seattle began when the early non-native settlers arrived in 1851, which means the Clifton suspension bridge (built 1831 to 1864) is older than Seattle.  It started as a wooden town built on sawdust foundations on a mud flat with all the incumbent plumbing issues you can imagine would arise from living below or at the high tide mark. An unfortunate fire provided the town a chance to start again.

This is a piece of Seattle's original plumbing solution.
A single wooden pipe running from hill to sea.
What's going to happen at high tide?

One of the entrances to the underground, with other people on
another tour waiting to go in...

The council demanded building in stone on wooden piers sunk into the mud, and raising the level of the town. Those who owned the land obviously wanted to be able to start their businesses back off ASAP so refused to wait till the street level had been raised. The compromise was that they were to build doors at the ground and first floor of the building. Three-thousand five-hundred wooden pillars were sunk in for foundations. The council built 10ft + wall around all the buildings at the edge of the sidewalk. They then filled in between the walls to create raised streets, unfortunately they didn’t have enough money for the sidewalks so they spent 14 years raising these up, in the meantime people had to go up and down the ‘curbs’ on ladders while they paved the top of the tunnels. The point is these old sidewalks still exist around some of the buildings so you can go on a guided tour of the ‘underground’. Highly recommended!

Saturday finished with Chinese in the international district (yum yum yum!)

The pergola at pioneer square 



On the ridge you can see commercial forest that is being cut for timber

Sunday was road trip day. We travelled to Mt. St. Helen’s (about 150 miles away). It was awesome, eerie, and ‘brisk’ (if you are English) - aka freezing.

The main river valley that the mudslides drained through, the streams have now started eroded their courses through the top ash layer.



Dead tree stumps on the ridges

The observation platform

St Helen’s erupted in May 1980 and killed 47 people including some of the scientists studying her. The blast zone is still clearly visible 33 years later, although life is beginning to take over again. Before the eruption the surrounding area was >200 year old trees and the surrounding area is still very beautiful. Some of the outer slopes have been developed now for commercial forests but closer in is designated national monument and there are a number of observatories for visitors. The closest visitors Centre is Johnston Ridge at 5.5 miles from St. Helens and the surrounding ridge are still sparse and covered with dead tree stumps. My happy thought was that they reminded me of grave stones. The route up only opened on the 11^th of May and there was still high snow drifts around the highest observation station. St. Helen’s began misbehaving earlier in 1980 with small earthquakes every few minutes so they knew she was up to something. The eruption started with a massive landslide that sent a tidal wave down the surrounding valleys. There was then a lateral eruption through the side of the mountain spraying massive boulders across the landscape and flattened 200 square miles of forest. The ash plume was 7 miles high. Not to mention the wave of lava, melt ice, and mud that later cascaded down the valleys. From a scientific point of view the eruption cleared up a number of volcanic conundrums and they are still learning about how life returns to such devastated areas. As you can tell from the photos I had a nice trip!


Before and after the mountain blew

My new red raincoat and St. Helen's

Laurie, John and I in the 'brisk' breeze



 Monday was a quiet stay at home day. I did meet the lady I may live with when I come back and I also did some work – sigh. Wednesday I gave a talk at work and today was my first practical lab day. I actually got to hold a pipette! 

One week gone, eight hours behind, 50 minutes to Seattle.

Freeway Park

As usual my lap top is objecting to foreign wireless networks so I haven’t been posting quite as much as I wanted. Those of you on facebook have had a bit more to go on due to my succumbing to the darkside (yes I bought a smart phone), but as patient as I am even I can’t write a blog from a phone keyboard. [Anybody willing to point out where the punctuation should go in that sentence, please go ahead!]

 

Freeway Park

 

 

Today sees a week of my trip already gone. Tuesday saw the final throws of my cold and the resolution of jet lag. I’m still waking up at 5:30 am but I have started to feel human in the afternoon! I’ve been leaving the house at around 7am-7:30 each day so really 5:30 is not a bad wake up time except for weekend days like today – sigh!

 

 

 

Freeway Park

I am staying with the lovely Laurie and John who are making me feel very much at home. Laurie and I work close to each other in the center (ish) of Seattle. That is 0.7 miles to Pike Place and 1.4 miles to the Space Needle (according to google maps on my smart phone [!] ), or alternatively a parks width away from the convention center. I have been enjoying a quick walk through the park every day; it has a lot of tall trees and a lot of concrete paths which I will appreciate when it is raining next! In the UK they would pull down any trees that grew that well but in Seattle where the sky scrapers are designed to withstand earthquakes I guess they can cope with a few tree routes. For those of you who like to know these things I am working at the Benaroya Research Institute, which is on 9^th Avenue and Seneca (more on work later). Next door they are preparing to build a 30 (?) floor building by digging a 70ft hole, and I thought I had escaped the building work at Southmead Hospital.

Yes - Freeway Park

 

View out the building at lunch
(Freeway Park from 2nd Floor!)

So far this week we (Laurie and I) have driven, bused and trained into work. The journey takes the best part of an hour but is fairly pleasant (especially with my – you guessed it – smart phone). I have so far seen Mt. Rainier (perfect name) half and one times, the first half I wasn’t sure if it was a mountain or a cloud so it doesn’t really count. I also get a good view of the docks, whilst coming into the city from the south, and a fab view of the Seattle skyscraper skyline. I haven’t yet succumbed to the tourist instinct to take a photo because I am surrounded by commuters, this week I may just hang up my pride and go for it. On Friday I achieved independence in the shape of 1) getting myself home by bus all by myself (although in fairness the buses do announce the next stop) and 2) buying international postage stamps from the UPS office. With such exciting progress in just one week who knows the heights I might reach next week!

 

View out of my office window!

Which neatly leads me on to work. First weeks are always hard, either you feel overwhelmed or you have a lot of tedious paperwork to fill out, if not both. By the grace of God  I have not been feeling overwhelmed, somewhere in the past few months I have discovered the art of taking each day as it comes (then again I haven’t got much choice). Alas, God has not released me from the toil of tedious paperwork. I’ve spent long time staring out the window. The high/lowlight of the paperwork was the online course in research ethics which took me about two days to complete. This is good because it actually gives me a background to understand the legislation and the systems (not to mention the layout of US grant applications). In some ways I wish there was something similar for the UK. This was bad because I did it at the beginning of the week when I was still suffering ‘I should be asleep now’ syndrome so I’m pretty sure most of the content went in one eye and out one mouse-clicking-finger in to the ‘quiz’ that I had to take after every section. I guess I know where the information is when I need it. My favourite part of the safety induction was the earthquake instructions, Laurie assures me that she has been on the twenty somethingth floor of a building during an earthquake and they sway quite nicely. My building has only four floors (a baby amongst giants) so I should be ok. I had not really thought about the fact I am living within driving distance (less than 150 miles) of Mt. St. Helen’s – day trip J.  Paperwork aside it has been a good week, I have already enjoyed being in an environment filled with immunologists and started learning about flow cytometry. Flow cytometry is basically a very clever way to identify different cells and even automatically sort them, particularly useful in easy to get at complex fluids like blood. The machines combine clever engineering, lasers, electrical currents, more electronics, fluid flow, and data crunching software to produce pretty graphs which of course tell the scientists clever things. Of course the machine was actually broken this week but how is that new?

This weekend we had lunch in Panda Express
(I had Orange Chicken and Honey and Walnut Prawns)
Happy Me !

Departures and Arrivals

The day finally came for me to pack my trunk and say goodbye to the circus. Desk at work tidy, suitcase packed (weighing in at exactly 23kg – my limit), house somewhat clear. I had a nice evening with Mum and Dad and got Skype working for them. I woke up this morning at about 6am because it was so sunny and I was worried I had overslept but at least I got to have a nice relaxed unrushed morning. Mum and I caught the Heathrow express and got to the airport in time for a coffee. A hug goodbye, a few tears, and it was time for security (which only took 10 mins). Terminal 5 is ok but has a distinct lack of Battenberg cake, which is a shame as I wanted to bring some over. I also got to the gate too early really. We departed Heathrow at 4pm (the flight was supposed to be at 3pm) but at least from there it went smoothly. I was sat in seat 36G on whatever model I was flying on. I recommend it. Just behind business class and in front of the kitchen. Next to the toilet but because there was no one behind I had guilt free seat tilt and could put my bag under my seat (not the one in front) so I still had leg room. I watched ‘Quartet’ and ‘Hansel and Gretel’ for my in flight entertainment, and read Mimi’s thesis introduction and my guidebook. I also slept a couple of hours. On arrival we queued to get through immigration. We had a nice border official – he was actually cheerful and chatty! Despite the fact I almost died of shock they let me in and I was reunited with my intact luggage (always a relief to see an undamaged suitcase on the conveyor). I eventually met up with Laurie at the airport after a little bit of a false start (we were waiting for each other in different places). Had a nice meal and unpacked. It is now 6am GMT or 10pm Seattle time (I would have been up for 24hrs without the few hours of sleep on the plane). My laptop won’t connect to the wireless yet (what a surprise) but I can post this from Laurie and John’s computer. Time most assuredly for bed... looking forward to the next few weeks meeting Seattleites and getting over jet lag (which I’ll blame for any typos)!

testing, testing, one, two, three...

I am currently five days away from departure to Seattle and have, thus far, packed my hair clips. I have a door full of sticky note chores to accomplish before I leave (one is done by beginning this blog). I have never been to Seattle, I have never met anyone who lives there (at least as far as I know), and I have never done a single experiment that involves actual human cells. Despite this and the fact that I have only had three hours sleep I am feeling cautiously optimistic. I trust in a god who can defeat death. I'm only moving 4700 miles away, what could possibly go wrong?