Day 85-86
   
   7/21-22/01
   Seattle, WA
   
   In the morning I took another short ferry ride to Port Townsend, a
   quaint little town with a bit of character to it (as opposed to a
   strictly tourist town).  From there it was a ride through the countryside for
   the next several hours.  Plenty of hills are to be had here, often
   very steep, but always short.  Growing on the sides of those hills are a
   proliferation of mosses and ferns, and hiking is both a popular
   activity and great way to get an appreciation for biodiversity.
   
   A second ferry ride brought me to the city of Edmonds.  It took a
   while to pick my way through the moderately heavy traffic and into Seattle,
   where I immediately headed for the famous Pike Street Market to stuff
   myself on seafood.
   
   I checked into the Green Tortise Hostel that night, storing my bike in
   the basement under lock and key.  It's only a couple of blocks from
   the Market, but for some reason the neighborhood is markedly worse.
   
   I'm continuing to see a lot of wildlife, even here in the middle of
   the city.  While retrieving my bike the next morning from the basement of
   the hostel, I observed not more than five feet away, for the first
   time in my life, a pair of brown-necked crack smokers, in the process of
   lighting up a small glass pipe.  The door to the basement was in the
   alley behind the hostel, and apparently this species uses alleys as nesting
   spots.  With little interest in hygiene, the brown-necks can actually
   have necks in various shades of brown, depending on the color of the
   soil in the area.  Whether or not this particular pair was migratory, I
   couldn't tell - but they certainly were flying somewhere.
   
   My presence seemed to disturb their behavior not at all, and they
   appeared entirely unconcerned since their primary predator, the
   silver-breasted donut feeder, was nowhere in sight.  I would have
   welcomed even the non-pedigreed "faux" silver-breasted donut feeder, 
   such as is often observed patrolling shopping malls and the like, but 
   there were none to be found.  Exit, stage right.
   
   I toured the sights for a while here in the land of 
   two-coffee-shops-per-city-block, then went to see the Salmon running
   at the locks with a friend of mine, Alex Modelski, an intellectual 
   property attorney in the area.  There are windows below the water line 
   enabling public viewing of fish as they migrate upstream, and the season 
   had just started.  Since it was a Sunday and good weather, the locks were 
   very busy with recreational boaters all trying to get to the other side.
   It's a party, or a ritual, of sorts as dozens of boats of all sizes 
   (and costs - some are quite large) wait as the lock fills with water to 
   change levels.  One sight in particular caught my eye - a man and wife on 
   their boat, out for a relaxing Sunday jaunt, enjoying the sights.  They 
   were engrossed in conversation.
   
   Except not with each other - *both* of them were talking away on their
   cell phones.  Neither seemed to be particularly happy.

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