What’s a Sixer, you ask? Well, in my life, the term “Sixer” refers to a six-person trip involving, me, my boo, and our friends Brianna, Vern, Kevin and Jenna. Kevin, Sean and Brianna are all friends from high school, and I’ve just been lucky enough to inherit them (and their awesome partners) through marriage – thanks Sean!
Our trip to Seattle in June was the first of (what we hope will be) many Sixers. The trip was an amazing, food-and-beer-filled friendship extravaganza that spanned over an extra-long weekend. It was also a nearly year-belated 30th birthday trip for Sean and Brianna. The Sixer was also designed around some of the items on my 29 list, of course.
7. Ride on a train
Ok, don’t laugh, but before June I had never actually been on a train other than a transit train. I needed to change that. So, instead of flying straight into Seattle for the Sixer, we flew to Vancouver, met up with Kevin and Jenna, and took the Amtrak down to Seattle. After that smooth (and ridiculously cheap) ride, I have no idea why anyone would bother driving between the two cities.
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| So much train-induced excitement!!! |
Also, Kevin and Jenna were excellent train buddies! We sang some 90s pop, visited the snack car on many occasions, napped, and laughed. So great.
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| Train oatmeal: breakfast of champions! |
8. See a professional sports game
While in Seattle, I double-checked off this 29 list item by going to a soccer game and an MLB game. While the MLB game was super fun (and I discovered the nectar of the gods that is Pyramid Breweries' apricot ale, which is special because I don’t like beer), I’m focusing on the soccer game.
The match was between the home-team Seattle Sounders and the Vancouver Whitecaps. This was by far the most fun pro-sports spectator experience of my life. The teams are rivals, the energy was palpable, we were festively tipsy (see item 9), we had great seats. I loved it.
But my favourite part of the whole game was probably seeing how excited Sean was during the game. Sean has played soccer his whole life (as is evidenced by his very awesome bum, if I do say so myself), and has always wanted to see a pro game. I’m not exaggerating when I say he was more excited than I was on Christmas morning ’89 when a Cabbage Patch Kid awaited me under the tree.
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| Somehow, the only picture I have of Sean at the game. Trust me, he was WAY more excited than he appears here! |
9. Get day drunk
Ah, the daytime buzz. A perennial favourite. This happens so irregularly in my life that I thought it deserved a special spot on this list. During the Sixer, we managed to get day drunk via an epic 4-hour meander during which we wandered from our rented condo to Century Link Field, the venue for the soccer match.
This was an amazing crawl. We had no plan, and nothing but time. The first stop took us to – get this – a bar filled with all kinds of retro pinball machines. All kinds. There was a 1950s/60s surf pinball machine, a “get-in-a-bar-fight” pinball machine, and my favourite, a weird 1980s alien-attack pinball machine, "Revenge from Mars" with weird video graphics.
Another favourite was Von’s 1000 spirits. This was by far the classiest stop along the way. We had these life-changing asiago savoury beignets:
Oh, and the cocktails were great. If I recall correctly, this place was also a distillery. I had a house-vodka martini that came as a glass full of cotton candy, which was “melted” table-side (by pouring the vodka over top). And I can’t remember quite remember how it happened, but Jenna won the chance to spin some wheel for a free drink! The last stop on our daytime pubcrawl was also memorable. It was a really awful bar – the kind of place that had a clothesline covered in ostensibly donated bras, and played pop-country music. And it had a mechanical bull. A mechanical bull that Kevin rode. Yep - that happened.
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| Like a boss. |
10. See the Pacific Ocean/11. Ride a Ferris Wheel
Of course, the Atlantic Ocean was on the 29-list, and so was the Pacific. I spent the whole weekend by the ocean, but the best view I got was from the Seattle Great Wheel on the last night of our trip. I have to admit, riding a Ferris Wheel was on my list, but I didn’t expect it to happen during the Sixer. I hadn’t realized that Seattle had a ferris wheel – it was definitely a new addition since the last time I had visited that fine city. Of course, that's part of the beauty of the Sixer - you never know what's going to happen! The six of us paid the unsurprisingly expensive fare and hopped on.
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| The sun sets over the pier |
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| The lovely B demonstrates her excitement for the ferris wheel ride! |
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| Waiting in line for our ride... |
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| The view was worth the wait |
I could post so many more pictures here that don't fall within "the list" - we made an epic brunch, ate so many great meals, shopped hard, went swimming, and Sean and I visited with our other friends Coleman and Andrea in Vancouver (which included a nighttime visit to the Vancouver Aquarium). I won't get into it all. However, this one shot can’t go unshared: our classy last-night-in-seattle convenience store “charcuterie” spread.
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| All class! |
All in all, the Sixer was a great weekend spent with fantastic friends. The fact that I got to knock off a few items from the 29 list was really just a bonus.
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