Spring in Seattle

Usually, I go to see Brian in August, but this year I decided to try visiting in the spring thinking I would avoid all the tourists. Wrong! They had people flocking to town for a Mariners/Padres game, a Roots of Recovery convention, Alaskan cruises, and the opening of Phantom of the Opera. 

Two things I noticed about Seattle the minute I got off the plane - the humidity and the foliage... everything is so lush and green. This little red car was practically encased in leaves. The owner probably has to get out the weed-wacker several times a year so he can get the car in the driveway.

The other thing about Seattle are the hills. Everyone thinks it's really steep in Denver, but they don't have anything like the steep sidewalks in downtown Seattle. When you have to put little ridges in the pavement to keep people from catapulting down the hill, that's really steep.

The first day, I took the early bus out to Redmond so I could stop at River Trail Roasters to do some sketching. The special that day was a Dirty Chai - spiced tea with 2 shots of espresso. That totally cured any residual jet lag! Then I walked along the Sammamish River Trail to Brian's house. All the trees and flowers are blooming in Seattle right now. If it wouldn't have been a little misty out, I would have done my sketch along the trail. 

Seattle is an incredibly bike-friendly town. Even though it rains a lot, bikers just throw on a raincoat and head off. When I was on the bus, I noticed the bike lanes are separated from traffic with double white lines and little poles set into the pavement. The scary thing though is that half the poles were either missing or lying flat on the ground. It sounds like my neighborhood where drivers go down the road with the left wheel in the driving lane and the right wheel in the bike lane. Denver doesn't bother putting up poles. 

Brian and I spent the day playing some new board games he picked up at his Las Vegas gaming convention. I even managed to beat him once. Then we took the new light rail down to Capitol Hill for our annual Mexican dinner at Fogon's. Luckily, Redmond is the first stop on the new line, because by the time we got downtown, the train was packed - both the seats and aisles. We had to wrestle our way to get out the door. I'm glad the train is so popular, especially since it just opened last month; but they need to run it more frequently, at least during rush hour.

The next day, I hit the ground running. I'd heard about a troll statue under a bridge in the Fremont neighborhood. So, after consulting Google Maps, I hopped on a bus to find it. I was kind of shocked at how huge and menacing it looked all made out of concrete and with only one eye - not warm and fuzzy like the wooden troll in Breckenridge. I'm not sure I'd like living next door to this statue even if he is supposed to be good luck. But the sign said you could make a wish. If it was a good wish, you were supposed to turn to the right. If it was a bad wish (in other words, you wanted something bad to stop happening), then you were supposed to turn to the left. I made a good wish.

My next stop on this little adventure was the Gas Works Park. I'd heard about this place from some of my Seattle Urban Sketcher friends. Well it looks exactly as it sounds - an old gas factory that they've turned into a "scenic sculpture" for a local park. 

This park actually has incredible views, probably because the gas factory was originally built on Lake Union so they could use the water for transportation and waste dumping. BTW, that bridge in the background is the one the troll is sitting under.

On the way back to the bus, I stumbled on the Burke-Gilman Trail. I've always wanted to rent a bike in Redmond and bike downtown along this trail (it's very long). It would have to be an eBike though, because I wouldn't be able to keep up with the commuters.

On my last day, I got up early to check out Pike Place Market before it got crowded. I picked up a Mystery Mocha at Ghost Alley Espresso and then walked through the market where vendors were setting up. There are very few fruit and vegetable stalls in the market, but flower sales are very popular (these bouquets were only $20!).

It was so nice to walk through the market without all the crowds. But I discovered that most of the people were down at the original Starbucks getting coffee. I can't believe they were all standing out in the rain in the switchback queues waiting to get into the shop. There are other Starbucks and independent coffee shops on every street corner in Seattle. Maybe Starbucks should start selling Lightening passes like they do at Disneyland, so people can skip to the front of the line.

I took the new pedestrian walkway down to the waterfront. It's very impressive and even a year later is still very clean. 

The designers incorporated a lot of seating and entertainment features into the walkway like this set of slides you can take to cut off the corner. If it wouldn't have been wet from the rain, I might have slid down one myself.

My last goal before I went to the airport was to find a quiet place to sit when the tourist traffic gets too intense and I found this pretty little covered waterfall garden just a couple blocks from my hotel. There were only a couple other people there both peacefully working on their laptops. I pulled out my paints for one last quick sketch. But wouldn't you know it... 4 visitors from Italy wandered in totally lost, but still blocking my view as they pulled out their phones for selfies. Oh well, I guess if I want true peace and quiet, I need to go someplace remote like Antarctica.

Happy Spring...NOT!!!

I updated my Walking Bucket List to include dog-friendly parks within easy driving distance, because I needed a motivator to get out walking and Charlie was a willing participant. So, I took him over to the Prairie Dog Park on a beautiful spring Sunday morning. Two days later, we got a ton of snow. I can't seem to get adjusted to this weather, but at least I got to try out my new raincoat (it wasn't that cold, but the snow coming down was really, really wet). 

They are building a new bike trail near our neighborhood, so I went on a short ride to check it out. Along the way, I rode through a golfing community and saw this yard art. While it looks small in the photo, this rusty golf cart sculpture was actually about 4 ft tall. I'm not sure if the homeowners bought it or constructed it themselves, but I thought it was clever.

On Monday, I was at the mall when I heard a commotion down at the Lego store. They had just launched their Star Wars promo, and there were almost 50 people in line waiting to get in (mostly male Millennials). For a minimum purchase of $160, Lego was giving away a limited edition Darksaber, but only to adults 18 and over. I find that interesting, because when I tried to go to Legoland, adults can't get in without a child. I think Lego should forget selling to kids and just market their products to adults, because those Millennials were carrying multiple shopping bags out of that store. I'm sure they all got a free Darksaber.

I've been itching to go to the movie theater for months, but the offerings have not been to my taste. The Devil Wears Prada 2 was finally released this week, so a few ladies from the neighborhood went to the afternoon show. I couldn't believe how expensive it's gotten. With matinee rates and a senior discount, my ticket was still $14! I miss the days when we had $5 Tuesdays. The movie itself was just OK - a typical sequel with all the original actors, but an underwhelming script. To me, the funniest line in the movie came from Stanley Tucci when commenting on the son of the Runway magazine CEO, "What can you expect from someone dressed head-to-toe in performance synthetics." That sounds like he's describing my wardrobe these days.

I spent most of the past month reading the complete Hillary Greene detective series (22 books). I really enjoy Faith Martin's writing style and the cleverness and intelligence of her protagonist. In contrast, most of the female characters in Amazon's First Read books are dumb as doorknobs. But for the April reading challenge, I was supposed to read a book of poetry. I considered just reading a Dr Seuss book, but then I stumbled on one of John Lithgow's political satires called, A Confederacy of Dumptys: Portraits of American Scoundrels in Verse." The book was extremely easy to read, because Lithgow has an amazing skill for pairing rhyme and sophisticated vocabulary. Plus, the snippets about each scoundrel were very entertaining. I tried reading one of the other books in the series, Trumpty Dumpty Wanted a Crown, but it was too depressing. Thank goodness, this month we're picking a book based on a season in the title.

Painting Class

Hudson Gardens started a new Artist in Residency program, and as part of it offered an afternoon painting session. When I signed up for the class, it was 60° out; but the actual day of the class, the temperature had dropped down into the 30's and it was threatening to snow. That wouldn't have been a big deal if the class were being held in a real building, but as you can see from the photo, we were in a tent. It's hard to paint when you're shivering.

Acrylic paint isn't really my expertise. My mom used to love it, because if you make a mistake, all you have to do is let the paint dry and paint over it. We were given 2 canvases and told to paint the entire background in any color we wanted before painting an actual scene (that step was easy). Since I'm taking an online watercolor class painting mountains, I decided to try painting mountains in acrylic. It didn't turn out too bad, except for the fact that I wasn't trying to paint the mountains gray. No matter how I mixed the colors, they all came out the same shade. By the time I got to the second painting, I was getting tired, so I just started using whatever paint was left on my palette (hence the orange rocks; yes, those are supposed to be rocks in a blue canyon).

The previous day, we woke up to a sun-shiny day (note the blue sky). I went for a bike ride, and Bruce pulled out the ladder to clear away a nest the birds were trying to build under the eaves. But both of us got caught in a mini-hail storm before we were finished. See all the mini-ice pellets on Bruce's back? The weather around here...sheeeesh!!!

Happy 73!

Where in the world do the years go???? An Andy's Boot Daddy is not as good as celebrating with a Ted Drewes Cardinal Sin, but close enough.

Golden Anniversary

Well we made it - 50 years together. For our golden anniversary, we drove up to Loveland, Colorado to buy a love lock. Love locks are supposed to symbolize love and commitment (I'd say staying together for 50 years is quite a commitment), and Loveland is supposedly known as the Sweetheart City... at least according to their Chamber of Commerce.

Way back on my 60th birthday, I attached a love lock to the Pont des Arts bridge in Paris. But since that time, engineers have decided that adding all that weight to bridges tends to compromise them (those locks are heavy), so in Loveland, you're supposed to attach the love lock to a public art sculpture (there are 3 of them). We picked the LOVE sculpture, mostly because it was right off the interstate as you come into town. It's hard to tell from the photo, but the "O" had the most locks attached to it, probably because it's shaped like a heart. I managed to squeeze our lock in and take these pictures.

But after walking around the grounds for a while, I ended up going back to the sculpture and removing the lock to bring it home. I think I'd rather look at it once in a while than just think about it being up in Loveland.

So, after that little adventure, we drove down the highway and went hiking at Devil's Backbone. The trail isn't as rigorous as the name implies, but the day turned out to be really, really hot. Every time we stopped to take a break, Charlie tried crawling under the benches to get a little cooler. At least we had a nice breeze most of the day.

We planned to spend the night at a little cabin in Estes Park. The cabin was just outside Rocky Mountain National Park, so we took a short drive through there in the late afternoon. It turned out to be perfect timing, because we saw lots of wildlife. Luckily there weren't very many tourists at that time of day, because the ones that were there were stopping in the middle of the road, jumping out of their cars, and running after the sheep to take photos. I was afraid they were going to scare them all away.

50 Year Memories

I had brunch this week with my flower girl, who is now a grandmother of 6. Boy does time fly!

We met at the Oo-de-Lally Cafe - a quirky little coffee shop totally decorated in pink. I had a Milky Way latte and the strawberry/Nutella toast (those are chocolate chips dusted with powdered sugar on top of the toast). This is definitely not a place you go to if you are on a diet.

Fifty years ago, I was Missy's Campfire Girl leader. When she was rummaging through her mother's cedar chest, she found her old Campfire vest. We were both laughing trying to remember what the different symbols meant. When I got home, I tried Googling it and found out that most Campfire vests are considered antiques and have been donated to museums. I guess I should have kept mine rather than throw it out when we moved to Colorado.

In other news, I managed to get in 3 bike rides this week before the snow hit on Friday. Denver doesn't seem to get spring rain like the rest of the country; they get snow. But I guess moisture is moisture, which is good for the garden; but unfortunately, the freezing temps we got on Friday nipped a few of our plants. Hopefully, they are hardy enough to recover, especially the honey locust trees.

I'm always looking for small art supplies that will fit easily into my backpack or bike bag. Courtney gave me this little wooden palette that attaches to a tiny sketchbook and fits in the palm of your hand. I've seen people do tiny little paintings, but I can't imagine painting that small. I think you'd need a brush the width of a hair to do anything with much detail.

Happy birthday, Bruce!

Bruce celebrated his 75th birthday this week. It's really hard to believe that he's lived for three-quarters of a century. For his birthday, I gave him a new backpack since his old one fell apart. I should have taken a picture of him from behind, however, because you can't really see how great this backpack is. 

We decided to spend the day hiking in Garden of the Gods. It's a gorgeous place to hike, but unfortunately, I forgot that most school kids had the day off after Easter (Bruce's birthday), so the place was packed. On top of that, the UV was off the charts that day, so even though I was wearing a hat, I ended up with a raging headache. Even Charlie was looking for shady spots before we got back to the Jeep.

Two days later, Teresa celebrated her birthday. Usually, I'm in KC around then so we go out for ice cream, but this year I sent her flowers instead. They're pretty, but ice cream would have been tastier.

Even though we had a really mild winter, 3 of our plants in the backyard didn't come back. I bought some replacements at Lowe's and Bruce put them in (with Charlie's supervision). We're under massive water restrictions this summer, since we didn't get much snow over the winter. So, Bruce installed individual drip heads on each of the plants. That should be much more efficient than sprayers, especially since the low humidity dries up any airborne water before it hits the ground. 

Our bike club president, Bob, had heart surgery a couple weeks ago. It only took the surgeon an hour to replace an entire heart valve. Bob was home that evening and back riding his bike a week later - amazing how far medicine has come. I bought him an EKG cycling t-shirt for a get-well gift. 

While the bike club has been on hiatus, I've been doing a little maintenance on my new ebike.  Carbon fiber bikes are notorious for being uncomfortable to ride, because they have no shocks. So, I went on Amazon and found a bike seat with a built-in shock in the stem. To test it out, I rode to the Fika coffee shop, did a little sketching, and then rode over to Panera for lunch - about 23 miles total. The new seat was sooooo much more comfortable than the old one, so money well-spent.

Spring Fling

Last Saturday, I volunteered for our neighborhood Spring Fling... aka. Easter Egg Hunt. Supposedly it's not correct to have "Easter" in an event title anymore, because of religious connotations. Though, there was absolutely nothing even remotely religious about hunting down treats and taking selfies with a bunny. My job was manning the stuffed animal adoption station. Kids got to pick out a pet (chicks, lambs, pigs, dogs, or rabbits) and accessorize it with bow ties, hair ribbons, or bandanas. My station was very popular, which made me feel sorry for the Easter bunny (he was being ignored).

We keep having near-record-high temps, so I've been able to get out on my bike a lot. Mostly I've been heading to the coffee shop, which really isn't very far, but today I rode all the way downtown to REI. I was exhausted by the time I got back. I didn't even get to have a mocha, because the Starbucks that used to be next to REI closed down.

The bad thing about the warmer weather is it's bringing out the snakes earlier in the season than usual. This huge bull snake (almost 6 ft long) was coiled across the trail sunning himself. Luckily, he slithered off into the grass so I could ride past. I didn't want squashed snake guts all over my new bike.

Bruce, Charlie, and I went on a short hike on Friday. This part of the trail was very flat with a lot of interesting rock features, like small hoodoos. One of these days, I'll have to go back there with my sketchbook, but it was too windy and a bit cold that day.

This park actually had 2 loops - the flat one we were on was rated "easy," but the second loop was rated "strenuous." We decided to check it out, thinking it might not be that bad, but it was incredibly steep. In several places, we were scrambling over boulders (not easy to do with a dog on a leash). We finally found a fairly shallow spot and bushwacked out way back to the flat trail. I always forget that in Colorado, we're never really very far from some mountains.

Happy First Day of Spring

I decided to take a quickie trip to KC and St Louis thinking March would be a quiet time to go before the summer tourist season. WRONG! I totally forgot about Spring Break.

When I got on the plane in Denver, all the seats were occupied - not unusual for Southwest, but this time the plane was full of families with kids, not business travelers. I don't know where parents get all their money these days. When I was raising kids, Spring Break meant a driving trip to the Ozarks with grandma... if you were lucky. When I got off the plane in KC, there was still snow on the ground with freezing temps - quite a contrast to the 70° weather and shorts the ground crew were wearing back in Denver.

Michael moved into a new apartment on Union Hill right across from Crown Center. So, Janet and I went downtown to have lunch with him. Rather than fight the Spring Breakers at Crown Center, we found a quirky little bar and grill just a couple blocks from Michael's apartment. I had a barbeque burnt ends grilled cheese sandwich - a bit unusual, but good. That evening we were supposed to go to dinner to celebrate Violet's 13th birthday, but half the Taylor family got sick. So, Janet and I met Teresa for dinner and celebrated on our own.

The next day I took the train to St Louis. Janet dropped me off at the Frost Coffee Shop right across from the train station. I've always wanted to try out their drinks and do a sketch from here, since it's in an historic part of Lee's Summit. I had this week's special - an Irish Cream Latte... YUM! When I got to St Louis, the temperature had jumped 30° into the 70's. 

My friend, Sharon, picked me up and we went to Happy Hour at another bar and grill. I totally forgot how incredibly cheap the prices are in St Louis. We had prime rib sliders for $5. I can't even get a latte for $5 in Denver.

The next day I met my referee friend, Fred, and we went to the Lego Minifig Shop. This is technically a resale shop where you can buy individual minifigs or Legos by the pound. Unfortunately, I found out that Lego pulled out of the robotics competitions and will no longer be partnering with FIRST. I'm not sure what's going to happen to the program, since all the competition robots are built from Lego controllers. It seems like a weird thing for Lego to do, given that STEM programs are so popular in schools these days.

At the end of the week, it was time to head back home to celebrate National Puppy Day with Bruce and Charlie. But this celebration involved a nap... at least for me and Bruce.