I went to Everett, Washington on business this week. Ah, the glamor of business travel. I stayed at the Holiday Inn downtown, with a gorgeous 7th floor view of I-5. The weather couldn’t have been much nicer – a bit of fog that burned off by mid-morning, then sunny cloudless days.
Tuesday I went for a fish dinner in Mukilteo. Ivar’s is right next to where the ferry to Whidbey Island docks and about a block from Mukilteo Lighthouse Park. I ordered their “World Famous” fish and chips. Couldn’t help but notice the menu said “Fresh Fish Flown in Daily”. Struck me as a little funny; the restaurant is right on the water, but their fish is shipped in. Pretty sure the fries were frozen, but it was a nice meal. From my seat I could watch the ferry load and unload. The ferry came about every half hour. It’s a double-decker. I don’t know how many cars it holds, but I counted about 120 getting on while I ate. Plus pedestrians and motorcycles.
After I ate I checked out the lighthouse and the park. I watched a couple more ferries cross paths. The sun was setting, a man was fishing with his young boy, people sat around fires by the water. As it got darker, a line of boats came into the boat slip. It was a pretty sunset, with a crescent moon setting as well, over the distant peaks of the Olympic peninsula.
Thursday I drove up to Bellingham to have dinner with Phil. Hadn’t seen him for a couple years, it was good to visit with him. Bellingham is something like 60 miles from Everett. Phil is in Vancouver, BC, so we met half way. I told him I’d be at the restaurant by 6:30. Left the client’s office at 5:30, brought up the navigation on the phone and saw that with traffic it would take me an hour and a half to get there. As luck would have it, Phil had to wait a while at the border crossing so we arrived at pretty much the same time. It was a pleasant drive up I-5 along the coast of the Sound with nice views all around, once I got out of traffic.
I ended up with Friday off. There was a little mix-up with scheduling – the client wanted me there all week, but then they realized they had a charity thing going on Friday and they wouldn’t be able to meet with me. I decided to see if I could walk up to get a tour of Boeing, then head to the airport and see if I could get an earlier flight. On the way, if the weather was good, maybe I’d go up to the observation deck of the space needle and get a picture of downtown Seattle with Mt. Rainier in the background.
So Friday morning I headed over to sign up for the Boeing tour. They recommend buying tickets online in advance, but it looked like they had plenty of open spots for the 10am. In the lobby, they want you to use a kiosk to buy your tickets. Two of the three were out of order, and the working one got stuck in a loop after I put my credit card in: the little hourglass icon would spin for 30 seconds, then a screen appeared asking if I was still there. Lather, rinse, repeat. Defeated by technology again, I had to resort to a human. And who knows how many times my credit card got charged.
The tour was pretty cool. They run one every half hour. A short film (out of date), then off in two groups to buses. They take you to the assembly building, the largest building in the world. Eight big doors, each the size of an NFL football field. The building is rectangular, with the short side measuring a third of a mile. They herded us down some steep steps into a service tunnel, then half that third of a mile to a service elevator that fit a busload of people at a time.
From the basement up past the first floor, mezzanine, second floor, to the third floor and onto an observation balcony over the 747 production line. The tour guide gave us the highlights – two planes a month are built, the 747-8. Six million individual parts, half of them fasteners. The stages of production – how the wings are assembled, then the fuselage, and finally to “weight on wheels”.
Next we went back down the elevator, back down the tunnel, back to the bus where we rode half the length of the building to the 787 production line. Then down more stairs, hike another 1/6 mile to another elevator and to a third floor balcony.
The 787 is assembled from components shipped in from other factories. They arrive on modified 747’s, parts as big as fuselage sections. They use special equipment to unload the planes and cart the parts to the assembly building. There, the put it all together and produce five 787’s a month and will be ramping up to ten a month soon. They’ve done something like 25 so far, mostly going to Japan (ANA and JAL).
I thought it was a pretty cool tour and I’m glad I had the chance to go. No photography allowed on the tour, of course. Not even cell phones allowed.
After that, it was south on I-5. After four days of ideal weather, things reverted to what I assume is more normal – overcast and damp. No point in making the detour to the space needle, so it was straight to SEA-TAC and the glamor of returning a rental car, going through security, and hanging out in the concourse for a couple hours. But I did get that earlier flight.