A Day in the Life...

Having been on the road for a week now, I am compelled (by popular demand) to lay out for you what a normal day looks like. So that's what I will do; but you have to realize before I even start that every single day has, of necessity, so much uncertainty to it that the concept of a "normal day" is entirely artificial. Nonetheless, you asked for it, and I will tell.

I wake up on a couch. It's a futon, actually, and I've already woken up a few times already. (I don't mind.) I am staying with some very kind people I hadn't met before I arrived and the quiet bustle of their typical morning routine is enough to arouse my barely conscious attention for a brief moment. But now I am up and ready to approach the day.

I have a morning routine of my own. Everything I own fits inside my backpack, but the fitting is a trick and takes some time. I want to be a low-impact houseguest, so when it's all arranged, my possessions sit neatly as an upright and filled backpack in an inconspicuous corner. Armed with my daypack filled with electronic gadgets (which will have their own post in due time), a book, a journal and miscellanies, I take a walk to the bus stop.

I asked a few people I thought would know if Seattle's public transportation was any good. They said it wasn't. They were wrong. Other than the very rare occasion a scheduled bus doesn't show up, I find the Seattle public transit system to be efficient, ecconomical and convenient. From what I can tell, almost every part of the city is accessible this way (some by means of the "water taxi"), and their website makes planning your trip mindless. Even when one finds he needs to catch a bus at 3am, it's there waiting.

Even with the whole city open to me, my destination of choice via the metrobus is downtown. It's a beautiful cosmopolitan area perfect for people watching and finding whatever your heart desires. Most often, my heart desires coffee (the experience, not the drink). There are usually two or three of these coffee shop experiences per day where I unfold my keyboard, prop up my Nokia and milk the free WiFi for everything it's worth.

What would a day in a foreign city be without galavanting around as explorer? My favorite means for such is walking and taking it all as it comes. When in a bus or car, looking more closely at any new discovery must be a very decided action. You have to park (very tough in this city), get out to investigate, then return and re-enter traffic. So you stop less. When on foot, a curiousity is effortlessly explored. And such finds often include a great new cafe, a curiously cavernous bookstore, historic sites, interesting art, or new people to hang out with.

One peculiarity of my exploring preferences that I've found is that the exploration is done just as much when seated as when walking around. For an intellectual (meaning a person who enjoys thinking, not implying anything else), exploration is at least as much a mental pursuit as that of the traditional understanding. I can walk around the city all day and uncover phenomenal treasures, but without a backstory and historio-cultural context for my new discovery, it's merely pleasing to look at. This is why a significant portion of my day is spent reading about the things I've discovered.

Speaking of reading, several of my evenings have been whiled away in Seattle's eerily modern library or the commercial equivilent: Barnes and Noble. When you carry everything on your back, you have to pack light; so books are brought sparingly. Fortunately, books are available in abundance in this country, no matter what city your in. So the remaining half of Harry Potter that I didn't have a chance to finish is being chipped away at, one fine evening at the Barnes and Noble cafe after another.

I can't say where to fit this into the chronology, but each day includes a fair amount of various interaction with the people I've met. Sometimes this means hanging out with the people with whom I'm staying. Sometimes this means meeting up with old friends in town. And sometimes this means a night on the town with new friends I've met. This is perhaps the most unpredictable part of the adventure--and perhaps the most enjoyable.

The day ends as I find my way back to the futon (usually by bus). I sneak in as quietly as I can so as not to wake the other couch surfers. I unpack my bag, unfold my sheets, plug in my gadgets and fall asleep with only a small thought of what tomorrow will bring. After all, tomorrow is another day and so far, none have been like the last.