What Lies Beneath...

As I lay sprawled on my hotel room floor blow-drying my walking shoes, I do not believe that Seattle is only the 44th rainiest city in the country.  Winter has come to the Pacific Northwest, forcing me to search out rarely used scarves and mittens in a feeble attempt at keeping my Texas blood warm.  For the last tour of the season, of course.

I had vowed to make the most of my last trip, despite Arctic conditions, and it was for such purpose that I volunteered to take my small group around The Emerald City.  We visited the usual:  Space Needle, Pike Place Market, and Pacific Science Center.  The latter was celebrating its 50th Anniversary with a raffle for lifetime membership, which of course I entered.  And lost.

I then suggested a tour of the Seattle Underground, something I had been wanting to do but had yet to find the time.  My group agreed, possibly because I neglected to mention it included bathroom humor, rat-infestations, and the Bubonic Plague.

I was just happy to be out of the rain.  Although sloshing through the streets of Seattle was an appropriate way to begin, given that the city started out as a town built at sea level with streets made of sawdust that regularly flooded with sea water and sewage.  The tide was a twice daily answer to the settlers’ original question as to why the Native Americans had left such prime waterfront real estate vacant.

My group was happy, too.  Probably because they had opted for a lunch of Hennessey instead of a sandwich.  They remained some of the happiest people I have ever traveled with for the rest of the tour, proving that alcohol isn’t always a depressant, especially when consumed socially before noon.  They were from the Virgin Islands.

The chipper and overenthusiastic tour guide led us underground, obviously, but not before giving us an extensive history of Seattle’s plumbing woes.  The town’s 1000 outhouses were emptied twice a day with the coming of the tide.  Self-cleaning toilets, how terribly…modern?  The head plumber from England, by the name of Thomas Crapper, came to help out and forever lend his name to the popular American slang for toilet.  He brought in porcelain bowls, built a makeshift sewage system, and left Seattleites with the interesting dilemma of toilets that created an Ole Faithful of human waste if flushed at the wrong time of day.  The newspapers began printing the tide charts to help locals schedule their bowel movements.

All of this was not what my group was expecting, and we had yet to descend underground.  Fortunately there were no remains of this…crappy part of Seattle’s past for us to view.  Not so fortunately, this was because the entire town had burned to the ground, courtesy of a careless carpenter who had never learned how to properly extinguish a grease fire.  Or maybe he was just tired of exploding toilets.

Either way, the carpenter can share the blame with the unfortunate coincidence that aside from the large amount of wood and turpentine in his cabinet shop, the store above his was a paint store.  Also a very flammable substance.  His neighboring building had been empty until the day before said fire, when they filled it with barrel upon barrel of fine whiskey.

Did I mention their Fire Chief was also out of town on business?  At a meeting in San Francisco learning new firefighting skills…you know, in case your city ever catches fire.  The volunteer fire department also ran into another snag when they realized that building water lines out of wood wasn’t such a great idea.  So Seattle burned to the ground.

The city planners took this misfortune as an opportunity to fix the plumbing problem, informing local businesses it would only take 7 to 10 years to raise the city.  Only.  So the businesses disregarded the city’s plan and rebuilt at the original sea level, while the city moved an amount of dirt greater than that used in the digging of the Panama Canal to raise the roads and sewage system 15 to 30-feet.

Soon shopping in Seattle became a triathlon event.  Walk out of store onto sidewalk, stroll to nearest considerately installed wooden ladder, climb 20-feet.  Cross street, climb down ladder on opposite side, heaven help you if you bought an iron stove.

Years later the businesses and the city agreed to split the cost to raise the sidewalks, and everyone’s second or third story became their street entrance.  The ‘Underground’ stayed in use until people started dying of the Bubonic Plague in the early 1900s.  Turns out having millions of rats living beneath your city was about as great of an idea as building the town level with the tides.

Although many a Prohibitionist rumrunner used it to their advantage in the 1930s, the Seattle Underground remains out of use to this day.  Now the only things moving around beneath the city of Seattle are tourists.  Quite a few of them too…

The Beginnings of the Gypsy...

Today I traveled the last stretch of the Oregon Trail, meandered up a sleeping volcano, and assisted an 80-year-old man with a broken nose to the hospital.  Last week I chased a lost woman through the Redwood Forest, had a flirtatious conversation with a 69-foot tall man, and visited the World’s Smallest Park and Leprechaun Colony.  Last month I danced with a Rockette on the stage of Radio City Music Hall, recovered a samurai sword from the guards at the 9/11 Memorial, and climbed atop a giant troll.

Just another day at the office.

I am paid to vacation.  Rather than the doldrums of an Office Space existence, trapped in a cubicle day after day, my office is a moving motor coach traversing coastal road, mountain range, and city street.  I explore local attractions, sample new cuisines, converse with quirky yet fascinating people.  Then I am required, by job definition, to communicate all this newfound knowledge.  As in, I have a microphone.  And a guaranteed captive audience for every bad joke, every irrelevant story, and every odd historical fact I choose to share.  For those of you who know me (probably everyone reading here, since this is a blog and not a reality TV show), you can understand my astonishment.  And feel something akin to pity for the unsuspecting oldies who climb aboard the motor coach with me and my microphone riding shotgun.  I love every minute of it.  

BUT.  Before you stop reading due to intense job jealousy…let’s be real.  I am taking others on vacation.  This is quite a bit different from going on vacation yourself.  Making 40+ people happy, 24-hours a day, for days on end, is no easy task.  I have so many (cough horror cough) stories…lost people, lost luggage, cancelled flights, broken down buses…  And while my life might not resemble Office Space, it definitely looks a lot like that George Clooney movie, Up in the Air.  Which, if you remember, ends with him sad and lonely.  But let’s not focus on that…there’s still time.  As a sweet little oldie on every tour reminds me, all the while giving me a sympathetic look that says I’m clearly destined to end up living alone with 10 cats unless I change my wicked, wandering ways.

It’s true that the traditional white picket fence family will probably take me a little longer to find.  Maybe because I spend close to 200-days a year on the road.  But I have made creative substitutions.  For example, my traveling prevents me from keeping so much as a plant alive in my apartment.  So I have “adopted” a 400-pound, 10-foot long sturgeon named Herman at the Bonneville Fish Hatchery as my pet.  I have a “mom” in San Francisco, a “dad” in Knoxville, a “brother” in Seattle, and friends (without the sneer marks, those are real) all over the country.  I also have a “boyfriend”, the aforementioned 69-foot tall man and lumberjack.  Who has a rather large pet of his own:  a big blue ox named Babe.  I will refrain from mentioning normal-height men in my traveling tales, but they’re real, too.  And strategically located. ;)

Maybe you think is a terribly pathetic way to live.  Maybe you have the same freak genetics that I do and think it sounds like an adventure.  And a great way to rack up frequent flyer miles.

Believe it or not there are quite a few of us ‘professional gypsies’ out there.  People who breeze through airport security and can pack a suitcase faster than most people can drag theirs out of the closet.  We see a flight delay for what it truly is:  a traffic jam on the daily commute where it is both socially acceptable and legal to have cocktails while you wait.  We see a hotel as a home where someone else washes the linens and makes the bed.  A home that buys you more shampoo if you run-out, and gives you toothpaste if you forget.  Most times I even find my dirty clothes picked up off the floor and my toiletries straightened on the counter.  Name one person in your home that will do that.  (I can almost hear my dad sighing as he reads this and realizes how much time he wasted parenting me.  Love you Dad!)

The last and most challenging truth about being a gypsy is that it forces you to develop the ability to be alone.  Which is daunting for many, and for some, impossible.  Despite traveling with a busload of my beloved oldies, I am often alone.  Dining alone, sleeping alone (well usually…), and visiting some truly romantic destinations alone…it’s not for everyone.  For this I am grateful.  It keeps me employed.  On the other hand…

Niagara Falls is breathtaking late at night when parents and their screaming children have gone and you stand alone, hearing nothing but the roar of the Falls.

The people I have met would have passed me by if I had been too engaged with those in my comfort zone to listen to the life stories of those outside of it.

Traveling alone forces you to enjoy things for no one’s sake but your own.  To feel only your emotions.  To hear only your thoughts.  Alone does not mean you are lonely.  After all, if you don’t enjoy your own company, why would anyone else?  And by finding your own way through the unknown, you tend to accidentally find yourself.

So enjoy my explorations of self and the world.  And feel free to add your own misadventures and musings.