Raincharm’s Weblog

Let’s just not talk about work for a change.

Let’s talk about the weekend walk.
13 miles, 12 on a training walk and 1 to get home from said walk.
298 steps was the HIGHlight. That is the number of steps from the Puget Sound at Golden Gardens park to the top of the ridge and back into surface streets, or maybe not.

The walk started at Green Lake, up to Phinney Ridge, down into Fremont, over to Ballard, along the sound to Golden Gardens, up said steps to Crown Hill, back through Greenwood, north Ballard and back to GreenLake. – and then home to the UDistrict.

Start – the walk leader was late-ish. She had been at a bar the previous night selling Jello shots as a fundraiser. (My fundraisers seem so lame now.) Ended up spending the night at a friend’s apartment in Seattle instead of driving the 20 miles home. But didn’t sleep (well). The alternate leader, who was supposed to be helping out at the bar, but couldn’t because he got called in to work, showed up to walk as well – just off of work so no sleep either. An interesting start.

Up to Phinney Ridge gets the blood pumping. Then an easy walk down hill into Fremont – the Center of the Universe. This was the weekend of the Fremont Arts Festival, including the (in)famous Solstice Parade.

We walked through set-up for the fair and some floats, but who was thinking of the parade. I was in the middle of getting acquainted with a women that was in her 3rd year of recovery from breast cancer. We have many commonalities with kids, etc, so it was fun getting to know each other, and for me – I learned a lot about the recovery side of the disease. So – on we walk. One woman with us noticed a bunch of bikes leaning against each other and thought someone was having a swap meet. I noticed a man in a wet-suit, and we were fairly close to the water …. Then the woman I was chatting with said, “Is that just body paint?” – Oh yeah – the Fremont Parade, as all of the bicyclists poured out of the warehouse where they had been getting decorated! (see the link if you need more explanation.)

On along the Sound to Golden Gardens. Beautiful walk, nice temperate day, sailboats out, but not too crowded down here. A rest, snack, and then the stairs beckon. It is reported to be 298. I did not count them myself. I found it easier to focus on whatever was in my view at that particular moment, and not look up or down. The stairs are certainly the fastest was up, and in the end I would not have guessed the almost 300 number. But there are a few breaks of 30-50 feet where it traverses across a road, or dog area, or to the next logical location to go straight up again.

Lots of people out and about as we wended our way back towards Green Lake. There was a walk for epilepsy, the Fremont festival, and the first weekend off for most school kids and their parents. A great respite from everything else. I called Carl at the end, and then thought better of putting him into the traffic – and walked home, alone. Time to check out the flowers and fauna in the neighborhoods.

No great pictures like the Marquis. I have got to get used to carrying the camera again. Enough of my babble for now.

This entry was posted on June 22, 2009 at 9:36 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.