Off To The Underground Tour

I had spent the earlier part of the day by taking the ferry to Bremerton and then visiting the aquarium at the pier. I am tired and catch a few hours of rest before taking off for the night time activities. I want to take the much talked about 8:00 pm adult underground tour at pioneer square. I leave the B&B after six, walking down the 30 slippery stairs in the front of the house and start down the long hill on Madison towards the city. I want to stop off at BofA to pickup some more cash. I walk about 15 minutes and after a successful retrieval of cash at BofA stop to grab a cup of coffee at Starbucks. It is raining as it has been since Wednesday at noon and it is time for something hot to drink.

I must wait in line for a few minutes. There are about 5 people in front of me. I order my coffee and I do a preemptive strike and offer my name for the cup. The tall girl at the counter then smiles with a little smirk and says "Nice to meet you Alan, my name is Julie. You know Alan, [pause] we are a small store and i really do not need your name; but for you i will put it on the cup." she writes "a-l-l-e-n" on the cup and then says as an afterthought "did i spell it right?". I tell her "no, it is a-l-a-n". She is smiling that "we are having fun now smile" and passes the cup off to the right.

I miss the route 12 bus so i opt to try out route 11. It looks like the route 11 bus is a better fit because it goes to pioneer square where the tour will start. I should get there early enough to get something to eat; perhaps at the Thai restaurant i ate at a few days earlier. The bus ride town town is uneventful and we are getting close to pioneer square. It looks like another block and i will exit the bus for a perfect landing. Suddenly, the bus driver takes the entrance to the highway that passes over the pier area downtown. I about die when I see his move. This is an unwelcome event that could delay my timely arrival at the underground tour. I quickly check my iphone for a map of route 11 and see that yes indeed there is another bus stop showing down the road. Relax dude. We travel for about 10 minutes on the highway crossing bridges and at about 7:15 pm we arrive at the last stop. I anticipate that the bus will now return to the city and continue back to pioneer square. Unfortunately, the bus continues in a South Westerly direction entering a residential neighborhood. That is cool, because the bus must go back to pioneer square at some point. I still have time to make the tour if the bus turns around soon. Right?

A half hour passes and the bus is still heading in a southbound direction passing from the nice neighborhoods of the coast into run down neighborhoods on the inland. Originally a full bus back at the city it is now down to just me and some guy that blasts music from an iphone. he leaves the bus, but not before getting an earful from the bus driver about rules on music on a bus. It is time for me to fess up to the driver, admit my crime and find out what my options are. i move to the front of the bus and tell the driver that i missed my stop. He asks me which stop and I tell him downtown. He says "say what? downtown. that was like 45 minutes ago". I tell him I am just a stupid tourist. What more can i say?

The bus driver is a nice guy and asks me where I am from and we talk about the weather. At this point it is after 8:00 pm and my hopes of going to the underground tour are very much smashed against the shores of the sound like a boat caught in storm. I ask the driver "when are we going back to the city?". He says "not anytime soon. I will be going on break soon. But, you get off at the next stop and take the 120 route on the other side of the street and that turns into the 11 and you will be back to where you came from in no time." Mystery solved; Route 11 turns into another route downtown. That is how i ended up here in Southwest Seattle. Would have been good to know ahead of time.

I get off at the next stop. Like, what choice do I have? Not a bad place but not a good place either. I stand in the bus shelter for a few minutes to get out of the rain with the other riders and survey the landscape. A black guy in his teens comes up and asks me where the bus goes. I tell him that I really do not know. With my luck tonight I do not want to mislead him. He could end up in Portland with my information. I hear him on his cell phone call someone and in a pissed off tone tell them "Yea, the %&^%^$# robbed me and then they dropped me off in the West side with no money." I start to slide away from him at the stop all the while checking the other denizens of the bus stop for other potential threats to my person.

Back across the road are real Mexican and Vietnamese restaurants. Not tourist restaurants but the real deals from real working folk. I check my iphone for the schedule on route 120. The bus will not be here for another 35 minutes. I am hungry and the badlands restaurants are looking better by the minute. I really do not want to eat here but I am getting desperate and my tummy is talking. I cross the road and start to peer into the Vietnamese restaurant when I see a bus coming down the road. It says up top that it is the 23 that goes to downtown and Broadway. I make a quick executive decision and jump the bus just as it is getting ready to pull away. Better to take something that is going somewhat my way than stand around and get shot.

After a lengthy drive back North on the back roads route I get lucky and the bus really does go to downtown Seattle. I jump off in the Pike market area around 9:00 pm. Really hungry now, I see a bar/restaurant that is open. Not many restaurant options this time of the night in downtown Seattle. I decide to take a seat at the bar and start my order with a NA beer. The bar tender delivers the bottle and and I ask for a glass as always. After I get my glass I start to sip the beer and hear the strangest sounds emulating from a guy two seats over. Sounds something like a cross between Sylvester the cat and the mad hatter. As I take a peek across the empty seat between the two of us I find that I am looking eye ball to eye ball with a certified class "A" bum. What the heck is going on here? My man is dressed in the classic dirty green jacket with long matted dirty greasy hair and missing teeth.

Unfortunately, due to the peculiar circumstances of the bar I make the classic rookie mistake of making eye contact with a bum. He is sitting in front of an empty mixed drink, hissing and spitting through his missing teeth and repeatedly throwing down 10 and 20 dollar bills and then picking them up again. What is he doing here? What is he doing with the bills? Why would the bar tender let him stay? Why me? The bum is now staring at me. I am feeling trapped. After what felt like days the bar tender comes over and says to him "no, you are not getting any more to drink. you have had enough.". the bum says something, but I am clueless as to what he says because it just sounds like spitting through a straw.

People in the bar are now all looking and staring at the bum. There is a white guy and a black girl quietly sitting in a high stool table about 5 feet behind us having a nice conversation. Suddenly, the bum flips around in his seat and starts screaming violently directly at the black girl. His roar is terrible and I am feeling for the couple as they are forced to endure the tirade. The bum then marches out of the bar all the while screaming something unintelligibly and violently waving his arms. The bum passes by the front window along a row of outdoor bar tables and dashes off down the street. There is a long serious silent pause in the bar as everyone tries to take in what just happened. Suddenly, the black girl jumps to her feet and points at the bar tender and yells at the top of her lungs "I WANT WANT HE HAD TO DRINK!". The bar roars with laughter as she stands smiling from ear to ear in the middle of the bar room floor with her hands on her hips.

I finish getting something to eat at the bar and then decide to head on back to the B&B. What a night this has been and I am really getting very tired. My favorite route 11 is the closest exit back so I check my faithful iphone for the nearest bus stop. The stop is on Pike and Third street, but the bus is not going to be there for another 35 minutes. It is raining as always but now it is coming down even harder. I arrive at the stop and there is a building overhang where about 25 people are waiting for about 10 different routes. I lean back against the building and relax.

A guy standing next to me smoking a cigarette, dressed in an all black ankle length coat with white tennis shoes and looking very Johnny Cash like says in a Southern Drawl "there appears to be a severe shortage of cigarettes here in town. I could sit down with a box of cigarettes and make a fortune by selling them one by one.". He has got these big dark eyes and looks at me with a slightly twitched look of someone that is running away from something or someone. Since i am going to be with him a bit i ask him where he is from. He says that he is from Mobile and Dallas. Just then a guy and girl are walking by. The girl comes right over to me, bends down and takes what looks to be a very small cigarette stub from between my feet and the wall and says to her friend "a good one!". She then marches on down the street with her buddy and a new happy face.

Johnny in his Southern Drawl whistles and says "She has got some good eyes! She spotted that joint from 10 feet away". Just then a bum stops in front of Johnny and says "can you spare a cigarette?". Johnny say "no, but I can sell you one". This is not what the bum wants to hear. Johnny feels for him and gives him the half smoked butt that he is working on. The bum moves on and Johnny says "some times you just got to throw them a bone". Within seconds a girl and a guy that can best be described as sleep walking stops in front of Johnny. The girl literally holding the guy up says "can you spare a cigarette?". Johnny, turns to me with that big "told you so" grin. The girl says "my boy friend just had surgery and I am taking him home. I just had to go into the men's room to find him. He fell asleep on the toilet. Some guy came in and wanted to know what we were up to." Keep in mind that we are standing in downtown Seattle at 9:30 PM in pouring rain. What are these people doing coming out of surgery here and now? The guy has long blond wispy shoulder length hair with a slim figure and blue jeans that are barely staying on. He is slowly sliding downwards like the scarecrow on the yellow brick road in the wizard of OZ. With a blank expression and his eyes completely closed he pulls up his shirt to show a fresh scar down the middle of his belly. I tell the girl "you really need to get this guy off the street and home.".  She grabs his arm and leads the raggedy Andy man off down the street. Johnny says "back home people would get 20 years for what they do here."

There are all kinds of people swirling and mixing at the bus stop in the rain. There is a young couple passionately in love kissing all the time. There is a couple standing and talking.  The flowers  he bought her at pike market passed back and forth between them while they wait. There is a guy dressed in a skeleton suit talking to his drunken buddies. There is a Japanese girl with a yellow umbrella standing at the bus stop sign apparently enthralled with the down pour.  Many buses come and go. The night, rain, light, people all twirl together like a bad dream suddenly realized after you fall out of bed. Finally, Johnnies bus comes and he boards. The last I see Johnny,  he is silently looking back at me with a forlorn look through the dripping window of the bus as it pulls away from the stop.

My bus arrives and I am ready to go. I jump on and park myself about half way back in the bus. Just as the bus is pulling away from the curve a guy that is sitting in the front row holds up a cell phone and screams out "hey, who's cell phone is this?". The girl in the next row then yells back "it belongs to that bike rider guy that just got off". Everyone is peering out the rain soaked windows for the guy with the bike. "there he is" screams yet another rider on the left side of the bus.   The biker is now on the other side of the street about a half block up riding on the sidewalk. The bus driver gets with the team and yells "I'll catch him!". The bus driver punches it and we pull up parallel to the biker all the while doing about 25 miles per hour through the down town district.   Close your eyes and envision this: we are in downtown Seattle in a bus at night racing in the rain to get ahead of a bike rider on a sidewalk.  A group of people on the bus are banging on the windows on the left side and yelling "your cell phone, hey your cell phone" through the cold closed moisture laden glass windows.   The biker finally sees the commotion on the bus and comes riding over zigzagging across the on coming  traffic. A guy in the front of the bus jumps off with the phone and runs the wrong way around the bus to find the biker. Finally the two come together on the other side of the bus and biker gets his phone back. The biker very grateful to get his cell phone back then rides off into the night. The couple in love apparently oblivious to the commotion continue to kiss as we ride in the now silent bus back up the hill on Pike and then Madison.

I get off the bus at Madison and 19th sometime after ten, walk the two blocks back to the B&B and quickly fall asleep.  I guess tomorrow I should take the route 12 bus to go to the underground tour.