High Technology

Dear Diary,

Last night I slept in a park in Greenwood.  I slept badly, for several reasons.  One was that I thought I'd lost six sheets of paper.

I carry every piece of paper I still have that's related to you, dear Diary, but I can't be paging through them all every time I visit a park, so while hiking I have a smaller set handier, and that's what I thought I'd lost the top half of.  Well, the bench I slept on was very dark, so before I scoured the park in the morning, I looked again in the other half of the park papers and there they all were.

But it got me to thinking that you might be interested, dear Diary, to see some of what you're made of.  The only notes for you that I've kept on the phone I write you on were for "My Book of Hours"; everything else is paper.  This is, of course, how I can today resume a hike I previously took with my old phone.

1) The page above, my itinerary, is on top when I'm stationary.  (On its back is a list of spoiler.)

2-3) Next come my notes, often on top when I'm hiking, "Parks and Photos".  This was last night and still is two sheets of paper.

4) Next my original itinerary for the hike I'm resuming.  It's much stained thanks to a leaky coleslaw container months ago, which is why most of the remaining pages are new and improved.

5) Then "Parks and Photos" for two of the three days' hiking I'm resuming.  (It was very rainy the third day, and only one of the parks I visited has plumbing, so I didn't take notes.)  That page is less stained.

6) Finally, a page listing North Seattle parks with water fountains, and clunkily some relevant info.

These are the six sheets I thought were scattered all over the park last night.  The rest, that were where they were supposed to be, are backup for these.

7-13) Three lists.  One lists Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation parks in North Seattle in three sheets; the third also lists some North Seattle parks not Parks' and some parks elsewhere in Seattle.  This list includes addresses, and, where I know them, areas.  The second lists, on one sheet, the pages of which you, dear Diary, were made as of a few days ago.  And the third lists parks again, correlating them with your pages.  It's three sheets of its own, plus it swiped part of the first list's third sheet. These lists are what I made when I realised it had cooled off enough to go hiking, and why I'll be doing most of the hike in the rain.  Oops.

14) A stained sheet listing North Seattle street ends, with a much more recently written list of North Seattle waterways on the back.  I still hope to have the fortitude to get the "NE" street ends done on this hike.

And the packet ends with a few blank sheets.

What's that, dear Diary?  You think this is a bait and switch?  Personally, I think it's very much a high tech world when a poor man like me has access to both high quality paper and high quality ink pens.  But I suppose you might consider other tools without which I couldn't do these hikes more obviously high tech, such as these two gifts:

My cart:

And the battery with which I charge my phone:

And now I'd better start hiking.  I don't know, dear Diary, when I can next write in you.  Happy days until then.