Seafair 2007

This is currently my third summer living in Seattle, but for some reason or another I have never celebrated Seafair, apart from watching the Blue Angels overhead on my lunch break at work. So this year I decided to commit. I took Friday off work in lieu of spending the entire day on Lake Washington drinking beer and enjoying the festivities.

We woke up super early Friday morning in order to make it to the Kenmore launch point by 9 a.m. By this time, the gray weather had turned into a typical Seattle downpour. I was totally discouraged, but all the weather reports promised the nasty drizzle would stop by mid-morning, so we sucked it up and climbed into the boat.

The ride was damp, cold and windy. Even for Seattle, this was ridiculous weather for the month of August. We shivered in our sweatshirts and huddled under beach blankets. Luckily, by the time we reached the 520 bridge the rain had stopped and we even glimpsed some blue sky in the distance. Things looked promising as I cracked my first beer of the morning.

After finding a spot on the Budweiser Log Boom we were slowly able to shed some of our layers. And around 11 a.m. the glorious sun began to shine just as the KeyBank Air Show began overhead. We watched the Hydroplane Qualifying races, the Patriots Jet Demonstration Team, the Fat Albert C-130 Demo and of course the U.S. Blue Angels practice. It was super fun to be so close to the action, and even better to be drinking beer and skipping work at the same time.
Later that afternoon we barbequed on the back of the boat – a fabulous idea that I hope I get to try again soon. They we settled in for a few more hours of sunbathing and drinking. It was a glorious day. Now that I’ve experienced this part of Seafair, I’m thinking that I will definitely have to check out some of the other festivities like the parades, live music, art shows and festivals.
The only downfall of spending an entire day on the water drinking? Complete and utter exhaustion by 11 p.m. I wasn’t even able to drag myself to a bar after dinner and the thought of drinking another Bud Light made me want to puke. Ah, I guess life could be worse. I think I really could spend my entire life on a boat in the sun – which I plan to do for basically every weekend for the rest of the summer! Sweet.