Trip to Seattle

(Wednesday, October 11th - Monday October 16th, 2000)

My dear friend Eugene had a long desire to move out of Buffalo to area that flourished with technology and rich in computer nerds and geeks. Seattle was one of the highest on his list. Either because his old friend, whom he knew since Russia, moved there and called for Eugene's earlier departure, or direct proximity of MicroSoft (that is planning on changing its name to HyperHard), made him quit his place of gainful employment here, abandon his loyal and loving friends (man, I can talk sweet about myself), and expedite his relocation there. In any case, I had to make sure he gets there and most important stays. I won't hide my not-so-secret agenda of seeing Seattle and foremost the Mount Rushmore. Get in the car and Seattle, here we come!

Wednesday, October 11th, 2000 11: something PM, we finally left Buffalo. Drive through New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, and even Wisconsin was either dark or picturesque enough. We drove pretty much all the way straight with a few short stops at night when neither of us could drive. After Wisconsin it got really flat and yellow, not really an exciting composition. Lucky for us speed limit increases along with boredom of the state.

First major stop, Rapid City. Name is extremely deceiving. Rushing to the Mount Rushmore. That was impressive! First sight of it made me pull over and just spent a few minutes enjoying it from the far. Monumental! I guess if there wouldn't this commemorative no one would know of South Dakota. Sad. At the parking lot of this "4 heads" we finished pork chops, that were so lovely prepared by dear Rita.

Thank you very much.

Every time we were stopping to get gas we were looking for ice, to keep them from spoiling.

Lots of pictures at the site.

It is a virtually true that great countries have this lean toward gigantism. It has not escaped the great US too.

Approaching Montana we realized that according to our trip meter there is only 400 miles left; however, map showed 800 miles. Interesting. The only deviation from the route was Keystone, SD. After hours of deductive reasoning and employing every known to us law of physics the only logical accepted wisdom was that tires are smaller than suggested size and we were driving all this time UNDER speed limit!

In Seattle we arrived Saturday morning. Great city.

We stayed with Ivan and Zulfia (sorry if I misspelled your name). They are great, and very cool and smart guys. Than we spent a day in Vancouver.

Flight back was a truly a red eye.