Fairly tame adventures, all things considered. Really the only thing that stands out was my number of layovers (two) and my bitter, bitter outrage at the price-gouging for food. When I saw they expected me to pay $8 for a sandwich I decided I’d rather be overcharged for something smaller, and ended up having chips, cashews, and a candy bar for my meal. And honestly, I wouldn’t even have had that much, except that by that point in the day I hadn’t eaten in about seven and a half hours, and I was a little afraid of passing out (one of the risks of my otherwise lovely low blood pressure).
I got into the Spokane airport around 1230, was freaked out by my brother’s doppelganger, and then delighted by my actual brother. So very good to see him again! I don’t know what your relationship with your siblings is like, gentle reader (if you even have any) but my brother and I are the sort of friends who can spend hours talking, or hours just sitting next to one another reading or whatever (“whatever” being typing, in my case). It’s pretty fantastic. I tell you this so that when I say we spent the next several hours not really doing all that much, I mean it in a good way. He took me over to Spokane proper so I could see the nifty park, and we walked for a while, and then sat for a while, and then walked for a while more. Then we went to go buy a movie he’d been hankering to re-watch (Tropic Thunder), picked up some food for a “heritage meal” (bratwurst, German-style potato salad, and sauerkraut, along with some fresh strawberries to represent Dad’s side of things) and then came back to the hotel to watch said movie. After that we headed over to the dorm room he’s moving out of and I helped him clean it. I know, I know- that sounds like not the most fun thing in the world. But you must understand, gentle readers- it’s the company you keep more than the activities you engage in. Not to mention it tickled the hell out of me to see the various reactions from the other dorm residents when they spied me. “Holy shit!” was, perhaps, my most favorite outburst. Well, that and the girl who did a sort of passive-aggressive thing (have I ever mentioned that my brother and I don’t actually look much like siblings? Especially with my hair red…)
I have to say that Spokane is not at all what I was envisioning. It’s a terrible thing, but the people of western Washington have a certain smugness regarding the superiority of their half of the state, and I’d always just sort of taken that for truth. But now that I’ve been out here, I have to say it’s actually quite lovely. And entirely different sort of loveliness- there is more openness, for starters, and more in the way of deciduous trees- but lovely nonetheless. And the city of Spokane itself seems to have plenty to offer by way of entertainment. So that’s pretty good: it always warms my heart to discover more good places in the world.
Sounds like a pretty good start to your travels. I would have to agree that: "it's the company you keep more than the activities you engage in". No doubt.
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