I sleep in until 11:30, then coax Walt and Sherri’s espresso machine back to life for a coffee fix.

Lunch

A change of plans today. Instead of driving into Seattle with Walt and Sherri for a pre-show dinner, we go out for lunch at a place in Issaquah called Sushiman. I remember coming here a number of years ago with L and Sherri – I think that was probably my first trip to Seattle. If memory serves, at the time Sushi and I were not on speaking terms, and therefore I think I had beef udon soup instead – it was still pretty good.

But today, Sushi and I have an ongoing relationship, and therefore I was looking forward to getting intimate with some raw fish for lunch.

Possibly as a consequence of the whole north-western Puget Sound proximity thing, the sushi offerings are heavy on the crab and salmon accents. This is not a problem – it’s great. During lunch we develop the diversionary tactic of eating sushi: You say, “Look – a moose!” and when everyone at the table turns to look out the window, you pop the oversized sushi in your mouth before it disintegrates.

After lunch we check out the nearby Gilman Craft Village (http://www.gilmanvillage.com/) and also Boehm’s chocolate factory, which is unfortunately quite close to some major road construction, a massive on-ramp. (http://www.isspress.com/isspress/back/041702/new.htm)

It helps if you have maps

During the afternoon we make plans to drive in to Seattle for the concert. Walt prints out some maps, we go over the route to take, and after a quick tutorial on the care and feeding of Walt’s car, L and I are ready to venture into the unknown and drive into town!

After almost immediately turning the wrong way – the freeway on-ramp was on the left, not the right – we recovered and made our way East on I-90. No sign of the gasoline fire from yesterday, thank goodness. No Mariner’s Game traffic to make driving more difficult than it had to be. We were lucky. I-90 turned North and merged with I-5 without problems, but we soon discovered that we were in the rightmost lanes and the exit we wanted was on the left(!) and, oops, we’ve passed it already. L grabbed the map printouts and after rejecting a few possible exits we found ourselves heading for the Canadian border without our passports.

OK, it wasn’t that bad. We exited the freeway somewhat north of where we needed to be (i.e. just off the edge of the maps we had) but using the skill of guesswork we navigated back streets until we recognised a major street name and snaked our way back to a parking building, one that we figured was located nearby to the Paramount Theatre.

The three other people accompanying us into the parking building elevator were also waving Yes tickets.