November 19 -- Everett

Zanny, Skip and I drove up to Everett after breakfast to tour the Boeing wide body plant in Everett, WA. This is the factory that make Boeing’s biggest jets, the 747, 767, 777, and the brand new 787. Security was very tight and cameras prohibited, so I don’t have pictures of the tour.

We started by viewing a promotional video, and were then bussed to the factory building past a group of brand spanking new planes undergoing final air testing and waiting for delivery. We saw airplanes with Qatar, Air India, Cathay Pacific, Air Canada, Emirates, Korean Air Lines, Lan Chile and Jet Airways livery sitting on the apron.


The building where the planes are assembled is the largest in the world as measured by interior volume. 30,000 workers labor in it, 1,000,000 million lights illuminate it, 911 basketball courts could fit on the floor; and each of the big hangar doors is almost the size of a football field. In the picture above, the building looks much smaller than it really is.

Inside, we saw the 777 and 787 assembly lines; the two 787’s in front of us were the first two ever to be built! The feeling of the place was totally different from Ford’s Rouge plant: the pace of the workers seemed less frenetic; almost phlegmatic. Also, while the planes do move on a sort of line, the assembly goes much slower than in a car plant. It takes a 777 something like 6 weeks to get from the beginning to the end of the line; it’s a three-day process for the 787. Compare this to Ford’s factory, which spit out pickups at a rate of 1100 per day.

After seeing the assembly plant, we went to the small museum there. Once we were finished, we had a lunch of fish ‘n chips at Ivar's, a Washington seafood institution. This particular restaurant was right next to the ferry, which we could see coming and going, loading and unloading.

Once we returned to Seattle, Skip gave me a tour of a Volunteer Park, an Olmstead green space not far from the house. We started out walking up a watertower there for a terrific view of Seattle, and then walked by the Asian Art Museum and the Arboretum.



At dinner, I met up with my friend and former paralegal Jake and his girlfriend, Martha. We ate a very good artisanal/Washington State ingredients restaurant called Crave on Broadway. It was great to spend time with them, and Jake had the great news that he will be a summer clerk in the San Francisco DA’s Office this summer.