I have now been in Seattle for over 48 hours and I have yet to see a Starbucks, not that I necessarily need coffee, but being that I am a block and a half away from their headquarters, I figured that the place would be crawling with them. Everywhere I turn in boulder I see them, so why not in their home town? But anyways, this is my frist time to Seattle and so far it is not what I expected, normally when someone explains Seattle, the only thing that you hear is how much it rains. But so far on the trip we have had a beautiful day and a day that was a little overcast, but no actual rain. Although I figure it must rain sometime because everything here is so green... In Colorado most things are different shades of brown and maybe a yellow is thrown in there every once in awhile, but here everything is a bright vivid green which is impressive. Not that I dont like brown, its just different....

We are in Seattle for 4 days of training and then we leave for our next stop. The first day, everyone checked in and by three in the afternoon, we were off to the University of Washingtons Pi Kapp chapter house for an informational meeting and dinner. The campus was beautiful, full of trees and students, because Washington is still in school.... muahaha The only thing that I did not like about the campus was that it seemed to have a lot of driving traffic around, and one thing that I like about Colorado is how pedestrian friendly our campus is, and Washington seemed to be a little bit different in that regard.

We parked and started walking to the fraternity house, and the greek row is full of behemoths of houses, some of them must hold up to 100 people! The Pi Kapp house was a little smaller, but it was still a very good sized house. Going into the fraternity house, we sat down and did some introductions then ate dinner. One thing that this dinner made me realize is how small the world really is, and ill tell you why.... In 7th grade, we had locker buddies who were our friends that we shared a locker with. That year, my buddy was Curtis Santianez. We were good pals and had a lot of fun, but then he moved, and I never heard from him again. This was before Facebook everyone, dont freak out on me.... But guess who sits next to me to eat dinner!? Thats right! It was Curtis! 7 years of never seing someone and then ending up in the same fraternity on separate campuses, it was a pretty awesome and a little bit of a surreal experience to see him. and another great chapter of PI Kappa Phi.

Moving onto today, we had somewhere along the lines of 7 hours of rule reading and lecturing which I will not go into immense detail on, but we did have a stellar lunch that was provided by a fellow Pi Kapp that lives in the area. The other cool thing about this meeting was that it was at the Flagship store for REI, and ill tell you what, this place was cool! Leading up to the entrance you follow a path through a forest area, past a waterfall, and the inside of the building is gigantic! This place had any outdoors anything you could ever need! REI is also the only place that you will consistently see customers in the store who wear helmets on a daily basis.

After REI, we had our first friendship visit with a non profit called The Arc. There was a catered dinner and a lot of different people to talk to and have a good time with, it was a really great first experience on the trip, and everyone was very nice and extremely grateful. This visit was also a really good time to get to know the rest of the guys that I will be riding with this summer. Although we have been spending a lot of time together, it has beed in confined areas with just us, and it was a good time to see everyone getting out and being active.

And that brings me to right now, it is 11:40 PM and I have to wake up at 5:30 AM for some activities so I am going to say goodbye for now. Sorry there were no pictures in this post, I will put somethings up in the photo gallery soon, so check in for updates, but until next time...

Enjoy the ride!