Seattle

I get dry skin on my hands sometimes. By the time we reach Seattle, the fluctuations in climate from San Francisco up the coast have started to take their toll. Palm swirls and finger prints, knuckle creases all stand out a little whiter where the moisture has gone. Well, it’s either the climate changes or the diet. Coffee and a cream cheese bagel for breakfast again.

Apparently football isn’t popular in America. They call it soccer here and say things like ‘hating soccer is more American than apple pie, driving a pick-up, or spending Saturday afternoons channel surfing’ (Tom Weir of USA Today). Now. Tom, I can’t speak about apple pie or pick-ups but I can tell you... we do plenty of Saturday afternoon channel surfing in England too.

Champ and I decided to conduct a mini-survey.

Our 2005 edition of the Lonely Planet Shoestring USA and Canada guide led us to a dead-end when we first arrived looking for our hostel. The hostel had moved. But we did find a queue of Barcelona FC fans outside a posh hotel and a big team bus sat waiting too. Turns out Barcelona had just been in town and demolished the Sounders, Seattle’s team, 4-0.

The Sounders pull the biggest football crowd in the States, at an average 30,204, just a fraction more than the Mariners’ average gate last year (28,761). They say Seattlites like their soccer, so we decided to put it to the test. We’d ask 5 people if they knew when we could catch the next Sounders game.

As it happened, the survey was put to bed with the first interviewee. We asked a valet attendant outside the Space Needle and he said he thought they were out of town let me check I think the next home game is on the 20th, and he confirmed with a piece of paper, the only piece of paper tacked to the wall of his cabin that read ‘Sounders Schedule’ in black marker.