This flight wasn't perfect but I've certainly had worse. Boarding in Dayton went very smoothly and we were even on the ground in Atlanta a little ahead of schedule. But "our gate" was not yet open which meant we were later to the gate than had we landed on time (So they said.) but that mattered not a bit. The plane to Seattle was one flight attendant short and would not be boarding at its appointed time. The gate assignment had already been changed from the one originally announced and it would change again while we waited. Since the plane was already parked at the gate of second choice, this required towing it around the end of the building to the gate of third choice. I'm certainly curious about the logic in that but doubt I'll ever know. The crowd cheered when the required flight attendant arrived and we prepared to board "quickly" and "make up some time" in the air. After the one hour wait for the attendant, the plane took off an hour and a half after the scheduled time and landed two hours after scheduled. Airlines simply do not use the same clocks as the rest of us.

This is the new War Memorial Park at Tacoma Narrows. It's new because the new Tacoma Narrows Bridge occupies the site of the original 1952 park. Tacoma Narrows has world wide fame from the 1940 collapse of a bridge barely six months old. A news reel of the day shows it all. In 1950, "Galloping Gertie" was replaced with "Sturdy Gertie" and folks liked that so much that they built another beside it in 2007.