Changes of plans

Dear Diary,

On October 8th, I hiked for you, from Sandel Playground to Haller Lake Community Street End, and then just barely avoided exploding before getting to Northacres Park and Playfield, specifically the Park side's restrooms. 

On October 9th,  the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation, in its restroom dashboard, announced the closure of those restrooms, as well as those at Little Brook Park and Cowen Park.  Cowen's, they said, needed repairs, but the two northern parks' rooms were closed for the season.  (N.B.  Northacres Playfield's restrooms normally stay open in winter.)

Yesterday, October 23rd, I visited Cowen Park (restroom pair closed, water fountain off), Ravenna Park (both restroom pairs open, water fountain on and still tasting bad), University Playground (restroom pair closed, water fountain not checked), and Little Brook Park (restroom closed, water fountain on).

Winter is coming.  On October 9th, it wasn't so obvious, but since then, Boeing Field has twice recorded low temperatures of 37.  Parks is, if anything, slower than it may need to be.  There are a lot more year-round water fountains in North Seattle than there were, say, two years ago, but their number is still dwarfed by more sensitive models'.

That said, someone at Parks has been doing experiments - for example, leaving the free-standing water fountain near the central restrooms at Magnuson Park running one winter.  They may, by now, know how sensitive all their main models are.  That would give them some wiggle room on turning them off.

Regardless, my recent hikes represented a bet, that I could beat the weather and complete a water fountain census.  I had 52 parks left by October 9th, two community centers, one pool, and eleven other places to visit.  I lost that bet.

So what now, dear Diary?

Not much right away.  All I expect to write in you very soon is an update to "Weather Information Sources in North Seattle".

In December, I'll either be job hunting or starting work.  It would've been awkward to hike extensively in the same month; now that's averted.  However, I do hope to finish "Under Construction" 2026 that month.

A North Seattle baseline is still a priority.  Sooner or later, I expect to settle into two classes and a full-time job.  What'll change in summer 2027 is that I won't have the classes.  To whatever extent I can visit the remaining places in North Seattle, hunting for water fountains, before summer, that'll help.  To whatever extent a job downtown positions me well for weekday hikes, and I can develop the downtown list of city properties I already have into a full list of places to go, that'll help too.  But I can't promise to complete both North Seattle and downtown (let alone near downtown) in summer 2027; North Seattle slipping to 2027 may require downtown slipping to 2028, and will probably require near downtown to do so.

If only near downtown slips to 2028, I may also be able to cover unopened streets in North Seattle that summer.

Libraries are unaffected by summer changes.  I still don't intend to tackle them before autumn 2028, and don't promise to resume then.

I'm spending more time now on the Seattle Transit Blog than I'll be able to afford while working, but that plus one book has firmed up my plans:  Bus coverage twice per year, and plumbing at light rail stations.  I don't see any reason the former can't start next March, when school takes a surprisingly long break.  As for the latter, it depends how often I can make time for field trips; don't expect any reports soon, dear Diary.

And don't expect much in general.  I won't be ignoring you.  It's still possible that some reader will make a brilliant case for one of the other projects, for example.  But still, until December 10th, my last four-class quarter will have most of my attention.  Happy days and nights until then, dear Diary. 

Readers

Hello, dear Diary

I obviously underestimated the difficulty of starting you back up.  I don't mean the hiking, either.

Why would someone read you, dear Diary, but not be upset that the City of Seattle is lying about how many 24-hour restrooms it has?  Why would someone read you, but not accept an open invitation to shape your future?

October is just over halfway through.  No comments yet, except from my oldest friend, who lives nowhere near Seattle.  And no, the lurkers do not support me in e-mail. 

Some possibilities:

• Most of your readers, dear Diary, might be artificial intelligences being trained.
• They might be Department of Parks and Recreation employees, keeping track.
• They might be dedicated haters of the homeless, looking for targets to attack.

It isn't hard to motivate myself to hike, dear Diary.  Keeps my weight down, shows me long-forgotten sights.  But it's insanely hard to motivate myself to write, for readers like those I imagine.

Happy nights and days, dear Diary, until we meet again.

Abandoned Pages, part XV: Rankings Now

Dear Diary,

I've told you about twelve projects that aren't finished, and I told you I'd rank them today.

They fall into three main groups.  Four, I'll do regardless.  Six depend on what happens in the next month, and it's unlikely I'll ever have time for all six.  And two, I won't do regardless.

Roman numerals in parentheses indicate which parts of this page concern the topic.  There are also afterthoughts about many of these topics, including all six of the uncertain ones, after the three main lists. 

Winners

I have to complete an everything hike (XIII) of North Seattle to locate the water fountains and restrooms I'll check up on in December.  The recent page "Building a Baseline" is more than that, and I hope, but don't promise, to complete it.

Visiting all the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation parks of North Seattle means I can complete the 2026 edition of "Under Construction" (XII).

It remains unlikely that I'll take any classes in summer 2027, and it's also unlikely I'll marry or move out of Seattle by then.  So that year, I'll tackle downtown Seattle (VII) and what's near it.

And someday, I hope and intend to get back to topography (III).

Losers

I won't be doing everything hikes in the specific ways I did the regional hikes (IV).

To whatever extent I travel within western Washington, it won't be for you, dear Diary.  It may inform isolated asides, but there will be no series on counties (X).

On the Bubble

These are the only ones there's any point in ranking individually.

1. Transit (XI).
2. Unopened streets (XIV).
3. Library hours (VI).
4. RV parking (VIII).
5. Other cities (V).
6. Public access (IX).

These require some convincing, and discussions below go into more detail about that.  Meanwhile...

Commenting on Blogspot requires the commenter to sign in with Google.  Firefox gets in the way of that, and other browsers may too.  I'm not going to relocate you away from Blogspot this year, dear Diary.

However, I do have an inactive e-mail address lying around.  I was initially surprised that the e-mail address I write under isn't public, but I don't actually have much time for correspondence right now, so I guess that works out for now.  But if anyone doesn't want to comment the normal way, but wants to comment by e-mail instead, please use:

<admin@bus229spring2026techproject.info>

Please comment during October; November may be too late.

And now the afterthoughts, in this page's chronological order.

Topography

Turns out the page "Land and Water in North Seattle" that I remember isn't quite the same as the one your readers can read, dear Diary.  I have a saved text document for the next part of that page, the South Fork of Thornton Creek, and it's 40K in size.  In plain text, mind.

Other cities

In the relevant part, I said I'm "picky" about bikes.  This is slightly unfair of me to myself.  I found, decades ago, that when city streets pushed my wheels out of alignment, caliper brakes became unreliable.  So I'm pretty absolute on wanting both caliper and coaster brakes.  I also don't understand why bicycle seats have to be painful to sit on.  If some reader of yours, dear Diary, has a bike they don't want, with both kinds of brakes and a decent seat, they should let me know at the address above.

Also, in that part, I argued that we don't know what we'd find.  This is, of course, a specious argument, and the main reason for this project's low ranking is my doubt that I'll ever find a bicycle I like again.

Libraries

I fairly strongly believe that October is the best time to tackle this, which means it can't happen until 2028 at earliest.

RV parking

The relevant part mentioned that I had a "brilliant" idea.  Well, now that I've remembered it, it doesn't look so brilliant, but anyway:

Parking spots in industrially zoned blocks are a niche, which homeless people in RVs have occupied for years.  What the eco-blocks have been about is denying that niche to the RVs, engineering a succession.

This project has always needed the help of a lawyer, to answer questions such as "Was the ban on parking 80-inch-wide vehicles outside industrial zones inspired by RVs or by some earlier phenomenon?"  But more importantly, to draw up the industrially zoned map to hike. In any event, this project is likely to be overtaken by events.  But any lawyer who wants to take that on, please get in touch.

Public access

I should be all noble and say I'll die on this hill, but I just don't want to live through any more of the hikes needed to photograph all those hours signs and test all those doors.

If anyone has a way to, say, spirit me away mid-hike to a restroom, that would change things.  So would an offer of pay.

The argument that picking on UW is anti-intellectual, which underlies arguments I actually did make in the relevant part, is of course specious.  However, flipside, I shouldn't concentrate only on UW.  The buildings of Magnuson Park and of North Seattle College are also reasonable targets.

Transit

What has mostly sold me on this is really just five things, the five water fountains of Lynnwood City Center station.

Those are three of them.  The ones in the first picture, and the two not shown, all have the delayed water characteristic of year-round fountains, too.

I quite expect the reason to turn out to be that the city of Lynnwood paid extra for those, as well as for the locked public restrooms.  Still, my immediate reaction is "Why not elsewhere?"

Anyway.  What I can easily do is last-minute map comparisons twice per year.  I probably won't again hike around photographing bus stops, but it would be nice to have that much time.

So I now read the Seattle Transit Blog, and in the fullness of time, I'll find things to read that help me make sense of the Seattle Transit Blog.  Any suggestions your readers may have, dear Diary, should go to the comments, or to

<admin@bus229spring2026techproject.info>

and I'll be grateful.

Construction

In the relevant part, I highlighted a bogus problem and ignored a real one, with regard to carrying this forward.

The bogus one is a clearer criterion for including a project in a given year.  Actually, this year's criterion is quite clear enough.  I'm only including projects that have construction happening in 2026 in real life, in the online sources I've cited, *or* in the big blue and white signs announcing the projects.

In other words, this page's political purpose is to raise the cost to Parks project managers of blowing hot air.  If someone puts things on metal signs or on public websites making claims they can't back up, this ought to be called out, because it damages whatever credibility Parks has.

So the real problem is that it pretty much takes an everything hike to find all the signs, and I don't want to do everything hikes every year.  Most projects, most of the time, are at the major parks with restrooms and water fountains, which I'd visit twice per year anyway, but the few projects at smaller parks are especially likely to be delayed.

Anyone who has ideas about this, please let me know.

Unopened streets

This project should happen in summer, and the earliest summer available is 2028's.  The nice thing about this one is that it probably won't really need re-doing for years and years.

Good night, dear Diary, and good nights and days until we meet again. 

Under Construction, part X: Meridian Playground Tilth After

Dear Diary,

Silly me.  I thought I knew Meridian Playground pretty well by now, but I thought wrong.  You see, I'd never seriously investigated the park's southern tier.

Turns out there are two institutions in there:  the Good Shepherd P-Patch, and what the older real property reports called (in all caps) "Meridian Playground:  Tilth".

Tilth Alliance calls the parts it occupies "Good Shepherd Center" and "Children's Learning Garden".  The former, as they portray it, includes "a 12-acre park and a farmer's market", which is, methinks, putting the cart miles before the horse.  But it also, more honestly, claims a "solar greenhouse", our topic now.

Let's get a closer look at the bottom sign: 

So this is construction in a Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation park during 2026.  Which is the criterion for this page.  I never said the department had to pay for it.

Firefox makes it a hassle for me to show you lots of photos, dear Diary, so I'm just going to end with four photos of something you're unlikely to get another chance to see, a newly renovated solar greenhouse.  The planted roof visible in the last photo is considerably older than the renovation, dating back to 1974 according to a nearby sign.

Thursday, I hope to write part XV of "Abandoned Pages".  And sometime around then, the state of the baseline halfway.  Happy days and nights until then, dear Diary.

Huh.  Firefox apparently swallows four photos easier than one.  I have one more, a photo in which the motifs near the door in the third photo above reappear inlaid in the ground as a five-pointed star, or maybe a starfish, for children's play.  This is a little east of the greenhouse.  The photo isn't at all good, but the effect is neat up close, so anyone who visits for the greenhouse should also check this out.

Again, happy days and nights.

 

Abandoned Pages, part XIV: Unopened streets

Dear Diary,

This is the last project-specific part of this page.

Why?

You and I, dear Diary, have never treated private property as That Which Must Not Be Seen, have never fully respected the definition of private property Ken Ilgunas attacked in a book I recently discussed here.  So just finding out that undeveloped, or more often "unopened", streets were private property, as reported in that linked page, didn't convince me they need to be ignored.  (I've repeatedly considered a page about "Vacant Lots of North Seattle", for example.  That would be mostly private.)

More precisely, what I consider an unopened street is private property on which the city holds an easement, a public right of way.  And the thing is, time and again, the fact on the ground, whether initiated by the actual owners or merely tolerated by them (I usually don't know which), is that the unopened street is marked off.  It isn't in fact treated just like the rest of their properties, and is fairly often, explicitly or implicitly, a public way.  When it isn't, again often enough, it's because it's, explicitly or implicitly, a public park.  Which is obviously part of our remit, dear Diary.

So I have no interest in reporting on ways the owners of unopened streets use them privately, but I'm curious about ways they're used more or less publicly.

Anyway, I already did report on most of the six unopened streets of downtown Seattle, so why not report on the 197 in North Seattle?  More than half of them are north of 85th St, so it's certainly hiking.

What?

Nothing yet.

Why not?

Time.  200 more places to visit while building my baseline for North Seattle is a hard no.

What now?

If I understand correctly, the current rule is that I don't have to take a class in summer 2027 after all.  Now, that's the season I expect to build a baseline downtown and near there, and I'll be working, or homeless, by then.  So it isn't a given that I can do these that summer, but the summer after, 2028, there'll be no baselines to build, no classes, and no reason not to go.

Well, dear Diary, we may meet sometime in the next three hard days, but certainly in the later part of this week.  Until then, happy days and nights.

Abandoned Pages, part XIII: Everything hikes B

Dear Diary,

Only three parts left to go!  This is the second and last part about current projects; next, 1) a part about a future project, then 2) one ranking the projects as I see them then.

Then, one month later, 3) re-ranking them in the hope that by then, people other than me will have shared opinions, and anyway I'll have had more time to think.

Why?

Because the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation, when I asked for a list of water fountains, gave me a bad one.  It says Sunset Place has one water fountain (15698), and Ravenna Park two (15687 and 15689); in each case it's high by one.  It says Soundview Playfield has one water fountain (15854); it's low by one.  It says Magnuson Park has five water fountains (15731, 15758, 15861, 15863 and 15873); it's high by two thanks to a construction project I haven't yet told you about, dear Diary.  Licton Springs Park's water fountain (15794) is missing like the building it was attached to.  It perpetuates what I expect to find is still a myth, of the water fountain of Baker Park on Crown Hill (15856), but the problems I now know about are much more extensive.

So just as in 2020, I'm trying to leave no stone unturned, looking for water fountains.

What?

Originally, I was going places, visiting all the sites included in my list, photographing most, and then writing about them.

I was also looking really hard for water fountains, trying to follow every trail.

Why not?

Because it was taking too long.

Writing takes time.

Visiting 500 places takes time.

Following every trail takes time. 

And one day it dawned on me that, very soon, Parks would start turning off the water fountains and closing restrooms before I could possibly complete my baseline, my list of places to re-visit in winter and again next summer.

So I stopped writing much, and I stopped visiting all 500 places, settling for just 180, the Parks properties that might have plumbing most of that list.  And only taking two kinds of photos:  water fountain and restroom bread and butter photos, and photos that seem like really good ideas.  And only following every trail to whatever extent that seems necessary.

Except that about the trails, I'd started all this even before I knew I'd be taking four classes this quarter.

What now?

The classes present a huge problem.  I'd hoped to hike both today and tomorrow, but I can no longer pretend that's possible.

However, having just updated the master list, it seems I'm now satisfied that I've adequately visited half the parks, 75 out of 150, and just over half of the other places, 16 out of 30.

So it's probably still possible that I can meet the deadline without breaking out the tools of project management.

Good night, dear Diary.  Tomorrow I have a lot of writing to do, and hope that'll include a most unexpected part of "Under Construction".  Happy hours until then.

 

Abandoned Pages, part XII: Construction

Dear Diary,

We're now up to the current pages.

Why?

As I've mentioned already to you, dear Diary, I spent a lot of time in the first half of this year studying a discipline called project management.  So when an article appeared in The Seattle Times about projects in the parks, while my previously breakneck accounting class was in a lull, it felt like a sign from above.

What?

I talk about the projects, trying to learn about them and then offer what I've learnt.  I look for, and sometimes find, documents, especially plans, which are basically maps.  That's pretty much it.  Much less bureaucratic than library hours or everything hike work.

Why not?

It dawned on me that I was being much too slapdash about the current everything hike.  So I've started planning hikes to cover all the parks in some area.  The maps I'm using divide North Seattle into four pages, at 85th St and at 6th Ave NE.  Yes, NE is really bigger than N and NW put together.  Anyway, I'm currently working on the southwestern map, everything from Ballard to Green Lake, and that's more or less a dead zone on both the original article's map and my edited version of it, except for parks already covered - A. B. Ernst, Woodland and Meridian Playground.

What now?

The northwest is next, including several parks that certainly belong in the page, so in early October, "Under Construction" should revive just fine.

Whether I'll revive it again in the future, I'm not sure.  It's a good fit for me personally, but it sure involves a lot of playgrounds, which aren't such a good fit for you, dear Diary.  Also, I'd have to come up with new page titles every year, sort of like the library hours ones.  And probably make it a bit more bureaucratic, with a clearer basis for inclusion in a given year.

So.  Comments matter here.

Good day, dear Diary.  I'll probably be back tonight to write part XIII.  Until then.