Got up and out early today. While Mo was showerng I headed up to the Granville Street Bridge to snap a pic of the "Limited Vision" sign. We wanted to hit the Russian sub that we'd missed on Wednesday. The ride over had been pretty quick on the Sky Train, but proved to be a long trip by car through town. I forget that most of the world is not as in love with freeways as California.

The russin sub, a Foxtrot-class sub, was well worth the trip out. It was small, cramped, smelled strongly of solvents and diesel and it was wonderful. The sub had been a training vessel for twenty years until it was decomissioned in 1992. Soon thereafter the current owners had gone over and managed to grease enough palms to purchase the sub from the ailing Russia. It's amazing to think that a little over ten years ago, this vessel was manned by people from the "evil empire" and now it was available to western captilists. The sub's crew was no taller then 5'8" tall. (Un)fortunately for me, at 6'2", I would have been ineligible. They passed out helmets early on in the tour. At first I questioned the necessity of the helmets, but after passing through the first portal and onto the main deck I found myself constantly bumping my helmet on projecting pipes and knobs. Midway through the tour the guide, who had been gruff up to this point, turned to me and asked quietly "how you doing?" Apparently he'd had a basketball player in the week before, a guy who at 6'11" must have been stooped over the entire time. As it was, I was lucky to find the occasional place to stand fully upright.

Mo and I made the decision to stop by the mall on the way out of town for some lunch before leaving town, a decision that would later prove somewhat questionable. I'd forgotten that we were a long way from the freeway, a freeway who's top speed was only around 58 MPH at best, quite often as low as 45 MPH. We had trouble finding the freeway after threading our way through town at a painful creep.

I pushed the rented Dodge Stratus through the speed limit all the way beck to Seattle. Fortunately for us, traffic was light on the weekend and crossing the border was fairly quick. We arrived at the airport with about 50 minutes to spared. Thinking of the nightmare getting our car had been, I figured that we would have to split up to have Mo check in the baggage, but checkin at Alamo was quick and painless and over in less than five minutes.

We managed to hit the gates exactly at the same instant the woman at the check-in desk said they'd start boarding. It turned out that we had about ten minutes to spare, but that was certainly closer than I ever want to cut a departure again. The flight on Alaska was pretty good--they actually had decent food and gave out whole sodas--a vanishing luxury on domestic coach flights. Oh the opulence of it. Poor o had been sandwitched between me and this big fat guy who had to wedge himself into the seat. He spent most of the trip being extremely loud and obnoixous, shouting to his family across the isle.

I wasn't quite sure who'd be picking us up. Roy had offered, but knowing this group it only ensured that he'd arrange for us to get picked up one way or another. Sure enough, Jen & Geoff came in to pick us up. We waited around for a while for our bags to be ready and were on our way, home at last. Apparently we'd managed to bring some of our weather with us--it was actually colder here than it had been up there. Summer was finally over. The Dawes and I discussed going out for my birthday that night, but we ended up making plans for the next day instead. I was in Home Deopot that night, getting materials for our Halloween party when the unreality of it all hit me: this morning I was in a different country, and here I am buying 2x4's on my birthday. The trip was just about right--I was happy to once again be home and in my own bed, but not completely sick of the road, willing to go out again.