Hockey Night In Seattle

[bigmacbear]

gmjambear and I decided we needed to get out of the apartment yesterday, so we went to Key Arena for the first time to see the Seattle Thunderbirds face off against the Portland Winter Hawks. I know that men in general in the Northwest tend to wear facial fur more so than back east, but dayum, there were a lot of bears in the stands. Not so much among the players though, as this is a junior league with players in their late teens and early twenties. The game had the feel of an old and bitter rivalry in high-school football, complete with chants of "Portland sucks!" Portland won, 5-2.

One look at the facility tells me Key Arena was just not meant for the big leagues. In order to fit a regulation-size rink in the facility, they had to tear out massive quantities of seats (and it looks like those seats are permanently gone, not just rolled up out of the way and shrouded by curtains, so the same may also be true of a regulation NBA court).It's no wonder the Sonics are unhappy with the facility. Couple the small size with the traffic issues (surface streets with backups that snake back a mile or so onto I-5) and you have a recipe for disaster.

On the way out we decided to make a run up Queen Anne Hill, so I could show Gary some of the spots that ciddyguy and I visited on our walking tour of Queen Anne back in September 2005, and also so we didn't have to deal with the slog back to I-5 on Mercer Street. We drove by Kerry Park and around the Highland promenade, then down the other side of Queen Anne to Aurora Avenue, and followed 99 through the tunnel and viaduct back to First Avenue where we hooked up with I-90.

We'd just had bratwurst for dinner, so as we got back to Renton we stopped in for a snack at Shari's, a nice little all-night diner out on the Maple Valley Road by the 405. Not a bad way to spend an evening.