Observations

In the few days that I've been in Seattle, I've started to note some major differences between my old city, Dallas, and my new one.  Keep in mind that these are just surface-level observations, but I thought they were noteworthy :)

1. Without Seattle, Subaru and the Toyota Prius would not be in business.  I rarely saw Subaru's or Prius's in Dallas.  They are so prevalent in Seattle, Will and I have come up with a game where we guess how many we will see in a span of five minutes.  Creative, right? Or, could be the fact that we don't have t.v.  If you are wondering, we typically see one Subaru per minute out of our front window.

2. There are a ton of bike commuters and walkers.  Even when it's raining outside, there are runners, bikers and walkers all over.  Very different from Dallas.  Oh, and yesterday evening, I saw a commuter on a uni-cycle!  Not kidding...he was going up a steep hill on his way home on a uni-cycle!

3. The weather.  Not much needed to say here, this is an obvious difference.  I have only sweated twice since we moved here, once on a bike ride, and on my run today.

4. Trees and hills...everywhere.

5. And...coffee shops...everywhere.

6. The age of cars and houses.  In Dallas, we lived in the oldest neighborhood in the city, everything else in the suburbs and most areas of the city were new or re-developed.  The culture in Texas is to knock down old buildings/houses and build new ones.  Not so in Seattle.  Most all the houses here are older and people tend to remodel rather than re-build.  And, it seems Seattleites use the Melanie and Will Agenda when it comes to replacing vehicles.  Run them into the ground, then replace.  Need I remind you of the posting on Will's Jeep hitting 200,000 miles?!

Oh, to give you a car example, I've seen three of these vans within a few blocks of our house in Seattle, never saw one in Dallas.

http://www.motorhomes-for-sale.com/

7. People are more expressive here. Example.

Fire hydrant on our street.

And I'm only getting started!