Rackbits

I was supposed to write an update yesterday. I had everything set up, a lot of nice photos and a story to tell. Instead I decided to have a few drinks. And a few drinks inevitably leads to a few more drinks, something that is not conducive to writing. Or coordination. Instead now I have to write another wall ‘o text to make up for this.

I’m writing this on the 20th, on the night of my last full day in Chicago. It has been an epic trip so far, and it’s good to know I have quite a lot ahead to look forward to. It’s also good to know I have a lot to return for, the many things I had to miss out on simply because of time constraints (and a few things that were unfortunately closed while we were here, more about this later).

On the 18th we started the day with an Architectural river cruise which took us from the start of the Chicago river near Lake Michigan and went up and down both branches of the river.

An interesting fact about the Chicago river is that it flows backwards – it flows away from Lake Michigan. The lake is the cities source of drinking water and for a time the river was the cities dumping ground for waste. You can probably see that this did not end well. When a lot of people got sick from waterborne illness the city decided the best course of action was to reverse the flow of the river. This was done in the late 19th century, from about 1850 through 1900.

The departure (and return) point of the river cruise was right near the entrance to Navy Pier, which immediately gave us another place to explore once the cruise was over.

The pier used to be a naval aircraft training pier among other things, but after falling into disuse and being abandoned many times over it was eventually turned into an public space with food, entertainment, rides and lots of other outing magnet type things. The pier is also a popular place to launch cruises with a lot of cruise boats lined up along it’s walkable side.

After some lunch we decide to head off in search of something to explore, or to see if we can get a better vantage point for taking photos of the city. The idea came quickly to walk to the famous John Hancock centre, as it boasts the best view of the city from it’s 94th floor observation deck.

For reference it’s the tall black building with the wider base and tall pointy antennae on the top, on the right of the photo below. The photo was taken from Navy pier facing northwest-ish.

To quickly summarise the building, it’s the 4th tallest building in Chicago after the Aon Center, the Trump International Tower and the Willis Tower (formerly the Sears Tower). It has a distinctive facade with x-shaped cross bracing which provides the building’s structural strength without requiring internal columns.

Aside from the view the building also boasts the fastest lifts in Chicago travelling at 32kph and they get from the ground floor to the 94th floor in 40 seconds.

Once at the top you are greeted with an excellent view of the city skyline unrolled in front of you. Like the Willis/Sears Tower you can walk around the entire floor getting a full 360 degree view of the city. There are markers, photos, and even an audio guide which help point out the various points of interest and landmarks that can be seen from the deck. There is also a small open air section which is disappointingly indoors, understandable as we are not at the top of the tower, properly outside would be strange. I was hoping for a roof level observation deck but no such luck.

I also found that there are quite a few small spiders that live on the outside of the tower, up against the glass with their webs strung between the beams. I tried asking some of the spiders why they were living so high up but the glass is quite soundproof. I’d imagine it’s because of the view, which is quite stunning.

After leaving the John Hancock centre we made our way towards the loop, walking down a stretch of road known as the magnificent mile. It is, for all intents and purposes, the shopping drawcard of Chicago intended to compete with the likes of New York’s 5th Avenue.

This part of the trip was pretty much all walking with some stopping and photo taking. I have an unusually strong aversion to shopping of any kind and don’t care for the retail aspect of this walk but something this area does have is a lot of pretty buildings to look at.

Getting back to the loop, we find ourselves outside a parking lot that had recently been taken over for the filming of Transformers 3. This time there is a small crowd gathering at every vantage point, so we stop to investigate. As we both had unlimited travel passes we decide to head into the L train station which was conveniently right next to the lot. As it so happens our timing was perfect, and we were about to watch a scene from the movie being filmed.

As it turns out our idea was not at all original. This crowd is unusual for an L train station, at least in my experience, and nearly everyone here was waiting and watching the lot.

Like I said above our timing couldn’t have been better. Just as I get a good vantage point, we are told by one of the production crew plebs that we could not take photos or videos during the filming and that there was going to be an explosion that would be quite loud. Bracing in anticipation the filming starts minutes later. A loud explosion followed by a number of soldiers rushing out guns blazing. They rush around the debris firing towards the overturned bus in the photo above, then they rush up that parking ramp stopping near that overturned dumpster.

I’m not a fan of the Transformers franchise but seeing this being made, and the locations it is being filmed in has made me want to see this movie. It was also good seeing the various locations that Dark Knight was filmed in (a fair amount of it was filmed in the Chicago loop).

After this we head off in a random direction and end up back in Millennium Park. We decide to give it another walk through to check out the pavilions and other scenery that we didn’t see the first time through.

From this bridge, designed by Frank Ghery, you can get quite a nice view of the city skyline from many different angles. Aside from providing pedestrian access across the expressway the bridge also acts as a sounds barrier keeping the park quiet. From the park side, you really have no idea that you are that close to a major road. The moment you get on the bridge near the road you can hear it’s distinctive sound of rumble of continuous car traffic.

Walking southwards away from Millennium Park I made an unusual discovery, a Paris Metro style subway station entrance. This is an entrance for the Van Buren St subway station. It’s probably styled like this because the park it is in is styled after the parks found in Paris. This definitely caused me to do a double take, and was strange to see after having seen the real thing when I was in Paris three years ago.

I know I promised more Quakecon stuff but I’d rather do a write up about my first two days in Chicago. I also promised to do daily updates but you can clearly see how well that has gone. Leaving the Hilton Anatole at the eye bleeding time of 6am, we headed to DFW airport for our 8am flight to Chicago. Compared to our previous flights this one went bye in a cool 2 hours, feeling pretty much like landing mere minutes after takeoff.

One short shuttle bus ride downtown and we are out our hotel, the Hilton Palmer House, situated in an area of Chicago known as the loop. The loop is ringed by the ‘L’ Train system, an elevated train system that is iconic of this city.

As with all of our travels, the first step is always to get your bearings. Walking out the front door with nothing more than a sense of adventure and hunger for food, we headed out into the unknown. Our hotel is a couple of blocks from Millennium Park, an L train station, three hop on hop off tour bus stops, lots of food places and some excellent views.

For lunch we grabbed some hot dogs followed by some Chicago style pizzas. Cliched, I know, but cheap and tasty.

Our first afternoon was then spent figuring out what we wanted to do, how we can get to anything further than walking distance, and anything else of interest. Chicago has an extensive mass transit system run by the CTA, who provide unlimited ride passes for their network. For $23 USD you can buy a 7-day unlimited ride pass which gets you access to the ‘L’ train, CTA busses and subway network.

With time drifting through dusk towards night we headed to the Willis Tower, formerly the Sears Tower, the tallest building in the United States. It has 108 usable floors of space and the 103rd floor is dedicated as the SkyDeck, a publicly  accessible observation deck. In less than a minute you go from first floor to the 103rd floor, at a speed of nearly 30km/h. Upon stepping out of the lift you are immediately greeted with a panoramic view of the city spread before you. My command of the English language is not good enough to give the view it’s due description so I’ll leave it to the photographs.

Day two in Chicago started with our Hop On Hop Off bus tour of the city. The tour took us on a tour of the downtown and surrounding areas of the city. I didn’t take many photos from the bus itself  because it was impossible to get decent shots without getting lots of other heads in the bottom of the frame. Nonetheless I did take a few including this shot of the skyline including the John Hancock Centre on the right and a fragment of the Lake Point Tower, located near the Navy Pier, on the left.

It was around 2:30pm when we decided to head to the suburb of Oak Park to do the tour of Frank Lloyd Wright’s home and studio. Designed and built in 1889, it is a precursor and experiment for a lot of design ideas that would later become the ‘Prairie style’ of architecture.

The house is quite beautiful and shows many traits that would later make Frank Lloyd Wright famous. His use of horizontal elements, like Roman Bricks, inbuilt furniture, the use of optical illusions and space compression in order to make rooms look larger and prototypes of what would later become his distinctive art glass are all to be found here.

Unfortunately I couldn’t take photographs inside the house.

We left with plans on going back to Oak Park to do the guided tour and take more photographs of the area including the numerous houses designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

A short drinks break and a quick search of the internet (free wifi is common and quite convenient), we head off in search of dinner.

Also I managed to capture EVIDENCE that Chicago is really a domed city with the sky being held up with large support towers. Observe the lightweight tower going through the cloud layer and connected to the skybox.

Or maybe not. I still like the idea of a domed city, though.

Quakecon 2010 is over and it was a whole lot of fun. Unfortunately the internet was quite flakey even going down for quite a bit of the con so I didn’t have any opportunity to post anything on the site.

The second day of the con was again mostly spent at the various demonstrations and talks that were given. The day started with the ‘Building Blockbusters’ panel with Todd Howard from Bethesda Softworks, Tim Willits from ID Software, and Vince and Jason from Respawn Entertainment. Unfortunately the only information I could get from the Respawn Entertainment guys was that they were working on something that ‘if it were another project it would be a sequel’ possibly hinting at their first project being a spiritual successor to one of their last projects made with Activision.

Some of the attractions of the Exhibitors hall included more extreme cooling using liquid nitrogen (no accompanying power outages, though),

Bethesda had a huge exhibit demonstrating their upcoming games Fallout New Vegas and Brink. The large silver metallic object on the left of the next photo is a spacecraft from Armadillo Aerospace. It’s quite a small craft, not yet capable of suborbital flight, but it’s a tech testbed which fits into their incremental process for design.

After spending some time in the exhibitors hall trying to win free stuff (I got a couple of t-shirts, one for Fallout New Vegas and one for Brink), we headed to the Rage presentation. This is some of the first proper gameplay that will be shown of the game. The game will feature customisable guns and vehicles, both of which have a decent level of progression and difficulty in obtaining parts so make the process more rewarding and satisfying.

Among other things the game will feature a lot of unique enemies and a decent variety of arenas to fight them in. I want this game in my life.

The game is getting released on the PC, xbox 360, and Playstation 3 and to demonstrate how well their console versions compare to the pc version they demonstrated all three running at the same time on three different projector screens. They had three people playing the game at the same time roughly keeping up with each other. It was quite amazing seeing the both consoles and the PC rendering the same amazing graphics and running at the same smooth (60FPS according to ID) framerate. This combined with the Rage engine port to the iPhone really shows off how good a game engine programmer John Carmack is.

The photo above shows the PC version on the left and the xbox 360 version running on the right. Dodgy photography aside the two projections were virtually indistinguishable with no obvious performance penalties on the 360 version. There was another projector running to the left of these two showing the PS3 version of the game. It too was running just as well as the PC and 360 versions and ran the demo quite well.

Part two coming soon, including swag photos.

My trip to Quakecon began yesterday, with our morning flight out of Seattle to Dallas Texas. The flight, despite being 4 hours long, disappeared very quickly as I read World War Z. If you’re a fan of the Zombie Survival Guide you will like it.

Because of time zone differences we landed around 5pm Dallas Time, and then spent the best part of an hour and a half just getting out of the airport. Eventually we made it to the Hilton Anatole, the hotel hosting Quakecon, and before we knew it we had our room.

With our room sorted our next task was to find the Quakecon registration queue and join it. With memories of last year’s epic multi-hour wait in the queue the night before firmly burned in I fully anticipated being there until two in the morning. Fortunately the queue was small, fast moving, and before we knew it we were fully signed up Quakecon BYOC attendees.

With the events not beginning until the following day, we grabbed some food and headed to sleep in anticipation.

Day 12 begins, and we head down to the BYOC and Exhibition hall to check out the sponsors booths. On the way in we can’t help but notice the gigantic queue formed that spills out of the room and around the hallway, far surpassing the queues of the night before.

After making our way past the horde we headed into the exhibition hall, where all of the Sponsor’s booths are located.

This year around Bethesda Softworks have a much larger booth than last year with demo machines for Brink, Fallout New Vegas and Hunted: The Demon’s Forge.

After wandering around, playing games on machines provided by the vendors, and watching the unveiling of the prize cars we headed off to the Level Design Panel to see the first of the game development panels. The panel had level designers from iD, Bethesda, Splash Damage.

Afterwards we headed to the Main Stage to watch the iD software welcome and John Carmack’s keynote. The welcome was, as always, given by iD software’s CEO Todd Hollenshead.

Sadly this year there was to be no new information about Doom 4.

The introduction was followed by John Carmack’s annual keynote. Because of the merger with Zenimax John was able to take on a more technical role within iD software and as such his keynote was a lot more technical than last year’s was.

This year John Carmack decided to do two entirely new things. He gave a demonstration of some tech he made up in short order – he had managed to port the Rage engine to the iPhone. It ran at 60FPS and had stunning graphics which were so detailed and crisp you wouldn’t believe they were running on a phone.

He also ran an entirely separate keynote to talk about Armadillo Aerospace and it’s partnership with Space Adventures called Rocket Talk. Both of these keynotes ran for two hours each and included Q&A sessions. The Rocket Talk session included talks from John Carmack about Armadillo Aerospace and Richard Garriott.

Richard Garriott was responsible for the Ultima series of games, as well as Tabula Rasa, and spent 12 days in Space including a 10 day stint aboard the International Space Station. At the Rocket Talk he tells his story in fine detail about the lead up and eventual trip to and from space.

After the Rocket talk John Carmack continued to talk to an ever shrinking group of fans outside of the halls (I was there, it was good), and I even had a conversation with him and a few others about mobile development and the Android platform.

The keynotes were over and I finally decided to make it back to the BYOC and fire up my computer for the first time during QC2010.

Day nine started early with our tour around the Boing Factory. Unfortunately the Boeing factory doesn’t allow cameras (or any electronics) to be carried while on the tour. As a result you’ll just have to imagine what it looks like from my vague descriptions.

The tour started at our hotel where we were picked up by a crazy New Yorker who gave us a brief background of the Boeing company and kept us entertained until we reached the Boeing ‘Future of Aviation’ facility. Boeing are quite proud of their history and this facility is their way to show their achievements especially those connected with their next aircraft, the 787 Dreamliner.

The factory tour itself started at 11am and after a short introductory video promoting Boeing’s past achievements and future developments, we were lead to the factory building. The factory building is the largest building, by volume, in the world. Many comparisons are drawn between it’s area and what it could contain, such as it is large enough to hold the entire Disneyland theme park and parking area within itself.

Within it’s walls the 747, 777 and 787 aircraft are produced. All three plane models appear to have at least six aircraft each in various stages of completion being worked on simultaneously on rolling production lines that move while the aircraft are being built. The building is divided up into bays which are all capable of making a 747, which is a huge aeroplane, look small.

The tour is guided and the guide herself was or is a Boeing tech who worked on the 777, and gave an interesting commentary on the workings of the factory.

After the tour we were given a choice of where we wanted to be dropped off, and we chose Pike Place Market in the Seattle downtown. Pike place market is full of good food, interesting stalls and shops and is a good place to people watch. We had a late lunch, we explored the area, took part in taste tests and generally relaxed. Unfortunately I still didn’t have my camera and as such I have no photos, however being unconstrained by linear time I do have have a photo from tomorrow which I’ll substitute. Just imagine it as a heavily overcast day, instead of being bright and sunny.

Day 10 started with a simple quest; to go out to nearby lands and eat a burger from Red Mill. We headed out for an early lunch to try to beat the legendary queues that this place inevitably attracts.

When we got there, the place was reasonably full but there was only a handful of people waiting on their orders and no queue. I decided to order a Blue Cheese and Bacon burger, a tasty combination of Beef, Blue Cheese, Bacon, Lettuce, Tomato and their Mill Sauce on a Kaiser Bun; and Ricci got a Cheese Burger which is Beef, American Cheese, Lettuce and Mill Sauce again on a Kaiser Bun. We also order a side of Onion rings and Fries to share, as well as chocolate shakes each.

After a small wait we got our food, and then we got to discover if it was worth the wait. It was definitely worth it, everything about my burger was tasty. The combination of flavours was delicious, from the salty and perfectly crisp bacon, to the sharp blue cheese, the smokey mill sauce, the fresh lettuce and tomato, the slightly toasted Kaiser roll. To top it off the onion rings really were quite tasty, nice and chunky with crispy batter that had good flavour and the slightly sweet onion.

While we were waiting I couldn’t help but notice the huge stack of bacon sitting in wait to be consumed. I knew, from watching Man v Food, that it would be large but much like the Boeing Factory tour only experience can actually show you.

Another thing I couldn’t help but notice is that this store, and there are a two in Seattle, is also the one operated by Babe Shepherd who also appeared in the Man v Food episode to guide Adam Richman around the Red Mill shop.

I mentioned earlier that there was no queue on the way in. During our lunch, however, the story had changed dramatically. There now was a queue that stretched out the door and halfway across the shopfront. I thanked our luck with timing as we headed out and back to Downtown.

Our next stop was the Underground tour, a tour that takes a look at parts of the old city and journeys through the cities real ground level one level below street level. As the tour explains after the city was burned to the ground in an accidental fire, in order to solve the various drainage problems the city had they decided to build all of their buildings with entrances and roads one level above ground.  This is why many of the buildings in Seattle start on the second floor, where the first floor is the basement.

While chatting to the guide, appearing in the photograph above we got a recommendation for a place to have dinner, an Italian restaurant that we may have even walked right past without even noticing called the Pink Door. First, as it wasn’t nearly late enough, we decided to head to the Smith tower observation deck.

The Smith Tower was once the 4th tallest building in the world upon it’s construction, and for 50 years it was the tallest building west of the Mississippi. It has an observation level on the 35th floor complete with an outdoors observation balcony that wraps around the building giving an unobstructed 360 degree view, save for the safety cage.

By this stage it was getting late, almost time for dinner, so we headed to the restaurant recommended. It was located in Post Alley, right near Pike Place Market. This restaurant doesn’t even have a sign and it’s only identifier is it’s Pink Door. Fortunately I was told where to find it, opposite Kells Irish Pub. We ended our day with good food, wine and even by Australian standards, good Espresso.

And that basically wraps up our last two days in Seattle, a great city with lots of places to explore and good food to eat.

Tomorrow we fly down to Dallas, Texas where we begin our Quakecon 2010 adventure.

Given that our number of days remaining in Seattle is quickly shortening, we decided against weather and common sense to take a ride to the observation deck of the Space Needle. The Space Needle is a remnant  of the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair, and one of the few remaining, along with the Monorail.

Unfortunately the weather was not exactly providing perfect observation conditions. Fog lay thick high above the ground turning the view into a shifting grey blob. Despite this there were still quite a few people queueing up to get to the top of the tower.

We waited and watched and soon enough the fog lifted and the view of Seattle was revealed to us.

As a side note, I’m working on embedding photo galleries in my blog so I can post more photos without making my posts epic huge and even more unreadable.

After leaving the Space Needle we had an explore of the grounds. Right near the needle is a the EMP building, a museum founded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. It was designed by Frank Ghery, shares many of his building traits, and has similarities with other buildings such the metal panel skin.

The museum houses the Experience Music Project and the Science Fiction Museum. The Science Fiction Museum is full of props, costumes, models, books and information. Because of the dim lighting within the museum I didn’t take many photos. They had all sorts of cool and unexpected things like a t-rex control interface used to animate the t-rex cgi model for the original Jurassic Park movie and the portal generator used in the very last episode of Red Dwarf.

After lunch we headed downtown using the old Monorail. From there we walked until we ran out of interesting buildings, and then we turned around and headed back along another path. I knew the Columbia Center, which is the tallest building in the city, has an observation deck so we headed there to try to visit it. Unfortunately when we got there we found out it was ‘closed’. It wasn’t late in the day so all I can assume is that Sunday is a slow day in Seattle.

We ended up walking through Seattle’s International District (Chinatown, basically), through Pioneer Square, and back up north through the downtown past the Pike Place market and into Belltown.

By this stage it was getting quite late so we decided to trek it out to the last of the three Man V Food spots – Red Mill Burgers. We got there but not early enough, Sunday trading ends an hour earlier than normal, and we were stuck. I have decided to try for this again when they reopen on Tuesday.

Nobody told me this but Seattle is supposedly famous for it’s rainy/perpetually overcast weather. Today was no exception so we decided to take a trip to the Museum of Flight, located at the site of the original Boeing factory.

Amongst it’s aircraft on display are a British Airways Concorde, a 707 based Air Force One (the very one that Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn inon after John F. Kennedy was assassinated), and an SR-71 Blackbird.

The museum is situated right near the Boeing Field Airport and as such aircraft can be seen taking off and landing here. While I was ordering lunch my request was interrupted by a loud rush of noise. As I turned around I saw a US Navy jet racing down the runway and taking off.

After lunch we took a wander outside towards a growing crowd surrounding the fences separating the museum grounds from the runways. We could see, lined up on the runways, a group of Blue Angels F/A-18′s looking ready to go. Even from the distance we were at we could hear their jet engines idling. With perfect timing, just as we found a perfect spot to watch and get comfortable, they began to take off. Just as one group took off another came screaming down the runway with engines at full throttle.

They have quite an excellent exhibition on the early days of boeing including a glimpse into the original factory floor that made their beautifully constructed wooden aircraft.

We both rather had a lot of fun exploring this place. I’m quite a fan of the subject matter and the opportunity to be so close to those FA18′s take off, to feel the sound resonate through your body, was just the icing on the cake.

We left the museum around 5pm, having taken a look through all of the exhibits. By the time we got back to our hotel room we were getting hungry again and decided to make our second Man V Food trek for this leg of the trip. With my memory of the Seattle episode fresh in my mind I decided that we should go to Beth’s cafe, home of the 12 egg omelette.

I ended up ordering the 6 egg Southwestern Exposure; an omelette made with 6 eggs, beef brisket chili, salsa, sour cream, and cheddar cheese; and which comes with a side of toast and a generous amount of hash brown. I managed to nom my way though the lot, leaving the place quite (read: extremely) full. I have to admit for a moment I did consider the 12 egg monster but in retrospect I’m glad I didn’t.

Aside from the huge food servings and it’s appearance in Man V Food, Beth’s cafe is known for having it’s walls completely covered in art made by the patrons. Anybody who eats there is allowed to stick their artwork to the walls.

With Beth’s cafe and the Crab Pot down, that only leaves Red Mill burgers left on my Seattle Man v Food quest.

Update: Later that night I took this photo out of our hotel window. Using a stack of bags as my tripod, I managed to get the camera stable enough for a longer exposure.

Day 5, our last day in San Francisco. Having recovered from the previous night’s entertainment we decided have a late breakfast and then explore the Marina district, effectively the last suburban built up area before the Golden Gate Bridge.

Coincidentally while we happen to be within walking distance of the Exploratorium, a science museum that was the brainchild of Frank Oppenheimer, on the one day of the month that they hold their After Dark events. Given this good luck and timing we decided to attend. At the very least it’s always funny watching a museum full of adults playing with the museum’s vast array of hands on experiments.

Notable discoveries include finding the sign that read “Don’t drink and climb. You might get hurt… or even spill your drink!” near a geometric climbing thing with more than a few drink wielding adults on it.

I also managed to find an exhibit powered by a Macintosh SE. Of course about a minute after sitting down at it I decide to see what would happen if I hit the multifinder menu. Let’s just say the application they were using didn’t do proper screen redrawing and I left it a little more incomprehensible than before.

By this stage it was getting quite late and we had an early morning flight to Seattle so we left and went back to our hotel for our last night.

Day 6 started early. Far too early. Six Thirty alarm to make it to the airport by 8 o’clock, and we didn’t even have any transport organised (because I’m that skilled). Fortunately transport problems are easily solved with the application of American dollars. Our flight was with Alaska Airlines who have something of a dodgy reputation, online at least, for quality of service. Unfortunately my already low expectations were missed when, upon checkin in, we were told we had to pay an additional fee just to have luggage on our flight. There’s only so much you can argue a point with the front line peons and I eventually conceded defeat and coughed up the extra fee.

One mercifully short flight in the most cramped aircraft I’ve been in yet and we were in Seattle. Once again our transport issues were solved with the strategic application of money and we were finally at our hotel.

It was now midday and we were getting hungry. With only a vague idea of what was out there we set off in search of food. Our random wanderings through downtown eventually took us to the Crab Pot, a seafood place (Shocking, I know) that featured on Man Vs Food. While they do have a normal menu their drawcard is their Seafeast; an assortment of seafood like Crab, prawns, Clams, Mussels combined with Corn on the Cob, Red Potatoes and sausage which is cooked with spices and served on a sheet of butchers paper. You are armed with a fork, a mallet and your wits.

Our lunch started and thus ended rather late. By the time we got out it was quarter to five (we both have no idea how this happened or where the hours went). The rest of the day was spent exploring the area and getting an idea of where our hotel was located relative to other attractions.

As it turns out our hotel room has a great view of the Space Needle.

I’ve had to delay writing up my day 5 post because I ran out of time and need to sleep before my early morning flight. Today was my last day in San Francisco, and tomorrow I’ll be flying northwards to Seattle.