Well! On the whole this has been a whirlwind weekend, but yesterday, until the evening, was actually pretty low key. I spent much of the morning working on photos an writing about Friday evening, so by the time I was done getting ready, Ivan was out. Having no idea when he'd be back, I sat down to watch the Robin Williams documentary on HBO -- and that was exactly when Ivan came back. I watched the movie anyway, which Ivan clearly had no interest in. He spent a lot of the afternoon reading on his phone, either at the dining table or in the guest room.

Quick aside: Shobhit was camping all weekend at Triangle Recreation Camp outside Granite Falls, and although the previous forecast for Seattle's weather yesterday called for several hours of rain and all we got was a brief period of light rain for less than an hour in the late morning -- and a brief spritz in the evening while Ivan and I were up the Space Needle, as you can plainly see in the photo above -- at the Triangle Recreation Camp, Shobhit said, it rained non stop for fifteen hours. What a bummer. In retrospect it sort of makes sense for a day like yesterday, for their to be more rain right by the mountains. Shobhit said he did enjoy the camping, enough that he's even thinking about going back over Labor Day weekend. It was just disappointing that over an August weekend when he would normally get to swim in a river, he couldn't even use his camper stove because it wouldn't stop raining.

Okay, back to yesterday. Ivan and I agreed to leave at 6:30 to go over to Aviv on 15th Avenue, just a short walk from here, for a falafel dinner. He actually introduced Shobhit and me to that restaurant last year and I do quite like it.

With some time to spare, he suggested walking down to Broadway before hopping on a bus. We went into a nearby Starbucks so he could buy a heated chocolate chip cookie. I got myself an iced chai. And then we hopped on a #8 bus down Denny Way to Seattle Center.

So here's the thing about the Space Needle. Ivan told me earlier yesterday he had only been to it once before, in 2007 when he visited Seattle for the first time. He hasn't gone back since. I, on the other hand, have gone countless times. And I mean "countless" pretty literally: that collection of 15 separate photo sets represents 16 separate visits, and does not include every time I've gone. Even that time with Grandma and Grandpa McQuilkin in 1992 wasn't my first; Grandpa Minor took me before that once, I think maybe in 1990? I can still remember Grandpa complaining about how expensive it was to pay $6 to go to the observation deck. Last night's cost each for us, and this was after a $10 discount for going after 8pm, came to $28.88 with fees.

I can't remember how much tickets were when I first moved to Seattle in 1998, but I do remember either the first or second year I was here, they sold an annual pass, and I pounced on it. The deal was insane: for what I want to say was something like $100, I coul use my pass to go up the Space Needle at least once a day for the year, each time bringing up to three gueses. They didn't offer the pass the next year and I told many people it was because they saw how much money they were losing every time I went. In any case, I did not take photos each time I went up that year.

There's a similar scenario with 2009, the next year they sold an annual pass -- this time allowing only one guest each time, not three. Still an incredible deal, even with it being comparatively a lot more expensive: I want to say it was $140 or something like that. Anyway, in that collection of photo sets, three of them are from that year; the first set representing two visits, which both occurred in February, the month in which I purchased it. The final one was during Pride, the one year I thus had the ability to get shots of the Pride festival from 500 feet up at no extra cost.

I suppose all this is to say, I've probably been up the Space Needle at minimum 25 times. I've eaten in the restaurant at least three that I can remember: that visit with Grandma and Grandpa McQuilkin in 1992 when I was 16; one time in the late nineties I ate up there with my cousin Jennifer and timed it perfectly for the revolving floor to make one complete revolution during sunset; and . . . shit. Now I'm blanking, but I could swear I ate there at least one other time. But have I eaten there in the 21st Century? I'm not sure I have.

For a while I totally expected I would this year or next, as the intent had always been for the Space Needle's renovated areas to include the new restaurant with tables set atop the glass revolving floor now replacing the old one. I guess that got delayed too much, and that worked out for me: instead of having to pay far more to eat a meal just so I could see the glass floor beneath my feet, right now there is no functioning restaurant and a visit to the revolving floor level is part of the observation deck ticket.

Ivan's and my tickets were timed at 8:00, but that's merely when we got in line. The line was long; it must have been at least 8:30 by the time we got up the elevator -- but, much like my long-ago visit with Jennifer, that timed it nicely with the sunset. The new observation deck glass walls are pretty damn cool, too -- you can walk right up to them and nearly look directly down, as they tilt outward as they go up. This includes glass benches you can sit on and get selfies with the view behind you, as Ivan and I did in the photo at the top of this entry. That shot is not as clear as it looked on my phone, which is a bit of a disappointment; it's the one shot I kept of the two of us together, and I kind of love the drizzle on the glass -- very Seattle. As I said, it sprinkled for just a few minutes while we were out there.

And then, we nearly missed the revolving floor level. I had gotten into the elevator line thinking that took us down to the revolving floor. Good thing I asked the lady working that elevator, who then showed us to the curving staircase that we could walk down. And we spent several minutes down there, the only disappointment being that by then it was pretty well dark, so there's really no daylight in any of the photos (or videos, as you can see above) I took of the stem of the Space Needle below us, being lit up with huge lights from the ground.

It was still very cool though, and even with insane price hikes over the years (although as I noted to Dad last weekend: this is simple supply and demand, and they can charge what people clearly will pay -- and even at these prices the lines were very long), it was totally worth it. I got a full photo set of 53 shots -- by quite a margin more than I've ever taken for any other photo set, actually. This, obviously, would be because of this renovation more massive than any since I can remember -- certainly through the 20 years I've lived in Seattle.

Now, as I write this, I have yet to caption or even tag any of the photos for this photo set. I did manage to caption the much smaller number of photos from this morning's Store to Farm Bike Ride, but you'll read about that tomorrow. I just haven't had time. I fully intend to, I just don't know when I'll get to it.

The night was so pleasant, and by then, dry again, that Ivan suggested we walk home, and so we did -- although he dictated the route and we went all the way back up Denny, which I found to be an odd choice. We turned south on Broadway and he said, "I want people to see that I'm back in town!" Okay whatever, he left to go back to Bellingham this morning. (I did not see him today; I had to leave far too early for that bike ride.)

So now I guess I'll just leave you with the super hokey photo they took of us as part of the touristy rigmarole when you head toward the elevators on your way in.

[posted 10:22 pm]