How to Lie to the Homeless, part I

Dear Diary,

The first thing I did for you while at the Travelodge was make a list of park restrooms or restroom pairs in North Seattle.  Well, that proved a bit complicated.  I included all those whose doors open to the outside, but then realised that most of Jackson Park's, which I'd listed, actually open inside, and I still hadn't (and haven't) seen the restrooms inside Woodland Park Zoo.  But anyway, I ended up with a list.

Then I ran it against what I remembered, and what my paper notes documented, of last year's list of park restrooms staying open.  Curiously, nearly all the restrooms I'd found open were on that list, and nearly all the restrooms I'd found closed weren't on that list.

I wasn't as confident of my memory of this year's map of open restrooms.  And when I finally felt it was safe to turn my phone back on, I didn't feel confident of working with it right away.  But once I did, it turned out my memory had been fine.  And for some reason, this year's map was much less consistent with this year's reality than last year's list was.

Here's a list of what I knew then:

Closed but on the list:  Woodland Park "Rio"; Loyal Heights Community Center; and sometimes, arguably, Green Lake Community Center.  2 or 3.

Open but not on the list:  Woodland Park "cloverleaf"; Woodland Park "lawn bowling".  2.

Closed but on the map:  Magnuson Park "tower"; Magnuson Park "sport"; Sandel Playground; Greenwood Park; Licton Springs Park; Loyal Heights Community Center; Bitter Lake Playfield (though I haven't yet told you about it, dear Diary); and sometimes, arguably, Green Lake Community Center.  7 or 8.

Open but not on the map:  Woodland Park "lawn bowling".  1.

Since then, Sandel Playground and Loyal Heights Community Center have been taken off the map, as has Golden Gardens "off leash area", which I found closed on a Sunday but open on a Wednesday.

Here's a screenshot of the map as of January 25, after those three removals:

Now, that first, immediately visible, layer of the map is what I'd largely concentrated on.  As I've told you before, dear Diary, I was only briefly a geography major; it was also over 35 years ago, long before GIS became central to geography.  But I'm not wholly ignorant of that topic, and the particular setup of this ArcGIS map is, as I said from getgo, similar to that of the street end map.  So I'd also glanced at the pages of information linked to each symbol, as in the other map.

Here's a simple example, from Pinehurst Playground, which has no restroom but does have a "sanican".

Now, as it happens, this page is probably incorrect; at least as of January 14, Pinehurst Playground had only a regular "sanican", not an ADA-compliant one, and it was tightly squeezed into a space that wouldn't hold a larger model.  But my point for the moment is the lines that announce, correctly, that it's open 24 hours.

Now here's a park restroom building by itself, Maple Leaf Reservoir Park:

Notice how the lines now say different things.  "Open" and "7 am - 7:00/9:00pm".  The latter is the standard format for reporting most park restrooms' hours, though often with an addendum:  "(peak season only)" which means, in English, that most park restrooms are supposed to be open from 7 A.M. to 7 P.M., except that during peak season (summer), if there isn't a hiring freeze, they might stay open until sometime around 9 P.M.

Now, let's get more challenging.  I took the last two screenshots while writing this tonight, but this one here, for Magnuson Park's "beach" restrooms, dates to January 30:

Those restrooms have "sanican"s next door.  These pages are how I got the numbers of "sanican"s I've been comparing to reality all along, though the map has been far more reliable about them than about park restrooms.  So we're back to "24 hours" for status, and have a new line combining the two previous ones for hours.

Finally, the crucial step:  a closed restroom building with "sanican"s next to it.  This is the extremely closed, since 2016, Magnuson Park "tower" restrooms, also as of January 30:

Notice the line above the operational status line.  "Type:  Restroom building and portable restroom".  Now notice the hours line:  "24 hours (Sanican Only)".

Now, the screenshot above of the map doesn't show Magnuson Park, but this one, also from January 25, does:

But let's make it a little clearer.  As of tonight, here's a more detailed screenshot of Greenwood and Pinehurst:

Notice how Northacres Park, which has open restrooms, looks exactly the same as Licton Springs and Greenwood Parks, which do not.  Those parks do have open "sanican"s, like Pinehurst Playground, but look unlike it.  The only person who will find out what's really going on is the one who clicks through to the info page, and can decode "(Sanican Only)".

In other words, the map on its face is an unreliable guide to hygienic places to do Number Two.  By this I don't mean my usual hostility to "sanican"s, but the fact that few of them are located near hand-washing stations, open restrooms, SPU sinks, or even running water fountains.  And at any given time, some, presumably thanks to thieves, even lack sanitiser.

Why would Seattle's Department of Parks and Recreation choose to lie about how many restrooms it has open this winter?  Well, for one thing, there was pressure to open more than usual; lying helped them neutralise that pressure without actually opening more.  I think I've found another reason, but that one needs a page to itself.

And then there's one more thing.  The homeless and parks staffers are natural enemies.  Many of us have repeatedly sought to camp in parks.  There we might damage the land, like the slobs at Licton Springs Park who strewed trash over wetlands.  We might interfere with income, like the people park staffers have genuinely done a great deal for at Woodland Park, but who will prevent shelter rentals as long as they're there.  Even the fear many of the housed feel towards us is a factor; one staffer, friendly to me personally, bemoaned to me how several elementary schools used to bring their kids to University Playground until our tents went up there.

So it's no wonder Parks and Recreation sought to lie to us, in particular.  It is a wonder that the "Homeless Strategy and Investment Division" of the Department of Human Services helped them do it, but that, too, is a story for another page.

I'll have to learn some things in order to write the page I want to put next, so I'm not really sure, dear Diary, what actually is next, or when.  Good night.

Fear of Rain

Dear Diary,

The last page left the story thus:  I had arrived at the Travelodge on Aurora in a terrible physical and mental state, with the phone on which I'm writing now so messed up that I was afraid even to shut it down, with much of what I was carrying, and pushing in my cart, soaked.

As I said in that page, I checked out of that motel two days - about 57 hours - later.

I did basically three things during that time.  I continued to live - to go get food, to drink water, etc.  I dried things out.  And I did what I could, obviously much more once this phone dried out, to work on you, dear Diary.

In you, I've written of fear of rain before.  I just re-read every page in you from November 1 on, and I referred to it November 18 in "Hygiene Is a Luxury I Can't Afford", then discussed it at some length the next day in the introduction to "Standing Room Only".

More recently, though, on January 3 in "Hike 1A:  Inconvenients" part I, I treated it as a psychological problem, rather than a condition of my homelessness.

Psychological problems, however, normally create other kinds of problems.  Let me consider what kinds of problems were created by my decision on January 11 not to be afraid of the rain.

With my phone out of commission, I bought two newspapers.  Cost, $4.

With big shivers, I had to buy a hot meal.  Cost, $16.

Of the books I was carrying, eight were water damaged.  The worst affected, the one at the bottom of the satchel I carried as a substitute backpack, I'd already read; I was only carrying it to remind me to read the sequels.  Oops.  I've since finished another, one of two in the upper part of the cart that got wet, and read the other in full.  Two more were in the bottom part of the cart, to stiffen bedding satchels; I've started one of those, and one of the three others from the backpack satchel.  I probably had Waterway, my source for "Water and Water", with me that night, but it wasn't damaged.

I was, thankfully, charged only for two nights, so the motel cost was well under $200.  Heck, so was the total cost, not counting the books.  I also bought socks while at the motel, but that wasn't a directly rain-related expense.

It's difficult to sort things out here.  I had the money to do this because of the COVID stimulus payments, and the generosity of strangers - and my own miserliness; but I was hiking in the rain, working on you, dear Diary, because of the COVID lockdowns, ultimately.

But of one thing I'm sure.  I am alive tonight because a woman who works at that Travelodge allowed a smelly homeless man to check in.  If there'd been no vacancy, or she'd decided not to let me have it, I might easily have died.

A friend of mine was sleeping in his car when someone threw a Molotov cocktail into it.  We heard of slashed tents at Cal Anderson Park.  My problem was self-inflicted, but those people were handed problems by others.  Part of what I'm trying to get across is that such actions can have terrible consequences.

But another part is that for homeless people, not fearing rain is the pathology.  I'm lucky to have survived it.  So I will stay in the motel tomorrow, and give way to my perhaps not currently warranted, but fundamentally healthy, fear of rain.

Good night, dear Diary.  Tomorrow I'll explain what I did for you those two days.

Escaping Green Lake Park, part II

Dear Diary,

I've put off writing this page and the next one as long as I can, because they tell a story that was no fun to live through, and is no fun to remember.  I have no photos to illustrate either page, for reasons that will become obvious.

I should clarify, though.  The first "Escaping Green Lake Park" page has the immediate political purpose of shaming the parks department into providing a real sidewalk on part of Aurora Ave N for which it's responsible.  The page "Escaping Carkeek Park" has the long-range political purpose of getting consideration for pedestrians built into the next plan for repairing NW Carkeek Park Drive.  But this page doesn't have any such purpose; I don't actually want to live in a world that would prevent stories like this one from happening.  I just also don't want to live through that story again.

The last page about my January hikes ended with me pushing my new cart through the rain to Webster Park.  Webster Park is near NW 65th St, but I knew from quite recent experience that I didn't want to approach Green Lake, or Woodland, Parks from that direction.  So I trudged back to NW 85th St and walked to Green Lake Park from there.

I entered via Winona Ave N and Stone Ave N, and on arriving at the Bath House restrooms found them locked.  I'm not really sure what time it was, but it was certainly late enough that they well should have been locked.  From there I started around the loop path clockwise, against the current rule, but I certainly didn't want to deal with the long distance counter-clockwise to the Shellhouse restrooms.

You must imagine, dear Diary, every few feet a giant pool, as I went along the trail.  The wading pool restrooms, I missed entirely in the dark and the rain.  Now, you understand, I hadn't actually entered a restroom since mid-day, and it was pretty late.  So I was relieved to find the Community Center restrooms still open.  The toilets were both disgusting for some reason, so I settled for a urinal, which didn't flush properly, and then soaped my hands ...

Only to find that the water was shut off.  Hence the problems with toilets and urinal.  The open doors were a macabre joke on anyone fool enough to be outside in the weather.

It turns out that even fairly intense rain isn't good at rinsing even fairly lame soap from one's hands.  I finally had to rub my hands across a bunch of bushes' leaves to remove the soap.

Wow, did I want to escape.  Well, there's quite a path right next to the Community Center, so I started up it, only to find myself wading.  This didn't make any sense to me - I was going uphill, after all - so I ignored it until it was far too late to turn back.  At its deepest, the water reached my knees, which was also quite deep enough to soak all my bedding.

That's why this page has no photos.  I still can't make sense of the lake I found there.  Nor is it any more plausible as a river:  there was a lot of rain in Seattle that night, but I don't think there was enough near there to maintain a flow that deep for any length of time.  Since I don't understand the phenomenon, I can't see under what circumstances it might recur, so I could photograph it.

Anyway, eventually I escaped the Green Lake Basketball Court Lake and reached, well, wet ground, anyway.  Now, dear Diary, although your presently most popular page talks about shivering, it doesn't go into my classification of shivers, which is necessary here.

Shivers are primarily involuntary, but can sometimes be partly controlled, or even voluntarily so.  When I can control my shivers, I usually focus them in my hands, and either wave them back and forth in an arm imitation of walking, or rub them between my knees if I'm sitting down.  Early in my homelessness - say, 2013 - I was doing the latter, covered by a blanket, on a since-removed bench in front of the Capitol Hill branch library, when a rather younger, but still professional, man walked by, and jeered at me for masturbating, despite my denial.  He walked on, as pleased at having scored off a stranger as a teenager, and I didn't realise until recently, thinking about this page, that by suggesting I could do that with my hands at my knees he was actually complimenting me.

Well, that may be a bad joke, but it's all the comic relief this page offers, because as I walked away from Green Lake Park, I wasn't doing (this is the classification) "little", controllable, shivers like that, but "big", uncontrollable, shivers.  Very big, rather like convulsions.

I needed food, and although I had some, I needed to get it without opening my cart's coverings.  The first restaurant I passed that was open is called O'Ginger's, and is apparently some sort of Chinese fusion place.  I remembered liking Thai cashew chicken, so ordered their version of that.  It turned out to be an enormous dish, which I ate in a sheltered alcove in the same building, just out of sight of the restaurant.  I also tried to write an e-mail, but water had gotten into the phone, and I had to stop.

After the hot meal, the shivers subsided somewhat.  I actually managed to reach several more restroom pairs that night, and then set about finding shelter for the night.  This is when I was deranged enough to figure out the route that allows pedestrians to walk Aurora, but when I finally returned to Aurora, didn't recognise it, and had to walk Linden Ave N for several blocks before I'd believe that the next street was Aurora.

Shivers were starting to come back by the time I passed the fenced-off Everspring Inn.  Fortunately, soon after I saw a name I recognised.  Nobody had ever told me there was a nationally franchised business among the universally reviled Aurora Ave motels, but there it was, a Travelodge.  What's more, it had a vacancy, and allowed me to check in.

I stayed there the rest of that night (it was 2 A.M. by that time) and two more.  You already know, dear Diary, that on January 13 I returned to Golden Gardens Park and Sandel Playground.  But what else I did there is for the next two pages.

SeaTac's Angle Lake Park in Snow

Dear Diary,

Yes, I know, you're my Seattle parks diary, so what's this interloper doing here?  Well, I could argue that comparing Seattle parks to parks elsewhere is a legitimate activity, but actually, some of the photos I lost when my previous phone was stolen were of the UW campus in snow, I couldn't realistically get there today, but I currently live close enough to Angle Lake Park, so...

Actually I first went there Thursday, on my way back to the motel from the grocery store.  (Here, the closest supermarket is over a mile away.)  It was snowing at the time, but none was sticking.  My visit today was somewhat different.

I don't know to what extent the rules have changed for SeaTac's homeless (who are not few) during the epidemic, but at this park, where rules are posted in many places, there's no hint of such relaxations as in Seattle.

There are many shelters there, in a variety of styles, but none have any walls, and neither Thursday nor today did I find any camped in.

On Thursday I found the restrooms open - stated opening time, 8 A.M. - but due to close at dusk, which wasn't all that far off at that time.  Now, dear Diary, if you examine the first photo above closely, you'll notice that the signs promise a gate opening by 8 A.M., but there's a visible bar.  Indeed, today when I went (around 11 A.M.) the gate was still locked, and so were the restrooms:

I'm not going to travel today, so I won't find out what happened in Seattle.  I'd like to believe the parks workers there thought ahead, and left more doors unlocked than usual, but can't know.  At least Seattle has some 24-hour restrooms, somewhere between four and seven pairs in North Seattle.  SeaTac's Department of Parks and Recreation has, it says, four parks with restrooms; one has hours even shorter than Angle Lake Park's, the other two are open 8 A.M. to 11 P.M., which is really good.  Except, probably, when it snows.

Angle Lake Park has an obvious attraction and a less obvious one.  It appears, from my new map of south King County, to be the only park on the lakefront.  All its paths are paved, which predisposed me to like it; but weirdly, its waterfront is too.  There's sand, all right, a coarse black and white kind like that found at the NW 57th St Street End and at Carkeek Park in Seattle, but shoreward of the sand are steps, pavement, down to the water.

Two more lake views:

The un-obvious attraction Angle Lake Park offers is that most of its trees are evergreen.  The only group of deciduous trees I found is the poplars in the foreground of this shot:

Other deciduous trees are scattered here and there, so there must be a smidgen of fall colour, but there certainly is plenty of winter green, and I'll end this excursion off-topic with more of it.  Back to North Seattle parks tomorrow, dear Diary.

Hike 5A: Far and Mid-Northwest

Dear Diary,

On January 11, as I thought I'd managed to tell you last night but apparently not, I woke in Carkeek Park's shelter 2.  I've already described much of how I spent that day, but I did also get to three parks with sanitary facilities, before heading to Green Lake and Woodland Parks in another attempt to figure out what hours their restrooms really kept.

Carkeek Park

Carkeek Park has only one pair of restrooms with doors facing outside.  Its maps clarify:  under normal circumstances, there are restrooms in the Environmental Learning Center at the other end of the park.  Compared to other large parks - even Magnuson, let alone Green Lake or Woodland - this seems few.  But at least the restrooms open in this plague year are enormous.

The open doors:

The map provided by the City of Seattle's Department of Human Services, Homeless Strategy and Investment Division, also says there are two regular "sanican"s in the park, and there are, but not next to the restrooms as is usual in the parks of North Seattle; instead they're placed in separate locations where they can be useful, one at the far end of the greenswards from the restrooms, the other in the Environmental Learning Center.  See if you can guess which is which, dear Diary:

Well, I didn't say how they were being useful!  Yes, the second photo is the one at the ELC, which may be closed but is obviously still supporting some sort of environmental learning.

After the insane journey described in the previous page, I went to one of the parks I'd given up on visiting the previous day.

Soundview Playfield

I introduced this park to you, dear Diary, July 1 in "What Can a Hill Do with a Crown?"  I've mentioned it since in "The Water Fountains of Ballard, mid-October 2020", December 16.

These hikes were meant to check the map already linked to; I'm also comparing the results to the list of park restrooms that were advertised as staying open last winter, 2019-2020.  Neither map nor list mentions the restrooms at Soundview, and as usual in such cases, they're closed.

The building:

The closed doors:

The rain was still coming down, and I sheltered awhile under the eaves of the adjacent Whitman Middle School.  But a lot of staffers were there that day, so I couldn't really unmask and eat, which eventually dislodged me.

I was at 15th Ave NW and NW 85th St, heading back to Green Lake Park but knowing I was too early, when I remembered one more park north of NW 65th St.

Webster Park

This small park first appeared in you, dear Diary, June 28 in "A Lazy Day on Loyal Heights", and then in "Water Fountains" like Soundview Playfield.

It has a "sanican" well hidden in the southwestern corner of the paved basketball court, all of which is south of the more obviously parklike parts of the park.

And that was it for January 11.  I did get to Green Lake and Woodland Parks that evening, but their hours have nothing to do with Northwest Seattle, so for now, we're done, dear Diary.

Except that I'm about to drag you off-topic again.

Escaping Carkeek Park

Dear Diary,

As I told you in the last page, I was pushing a brand-new cart to Carkeek Park in the late afternoon of January 10, hoping to wait out several days of forecast rain at that park's shelter 2.

There are several ways to approach Carkeek Park.  For example, the trail I mentioned, in "The Ballard Seacoast", part II, July 1, from which I'd hoped to see where the beach ends, well, that trail itself ends in what seems to be someone's back yard.  But there are three more reasonable ways to get there, which can be summarised as NW 117th St, NW 110th St, and the Eddie McAbee Entrance, which starts from NW 100th Place.  That day, I took 110th.  Now, I should explain that 110th St, which turns into Carkeek Park Drive along the way, has a shoulder on its sometimes southern side.  This shoulder normally is separated from the street by a bump, and is normally enough inches wide that a small person like me could walk safely on it if a) it weren't sloped and covered in wet leaves, and b) that small person weren't pushing a wheeled cart.  So I walked in the street.

117th St, by the way, as I found Wednesday (February 10) when I went to take this page's photos, offers much wider shoulders, usually over a foot wide, which however are usually grassy, making them nearly as useless for anyone with a baby carriage, wheelchair or cart.  Walkers without wheels should certainly prefer it.

(There are buses that go to "Carkeek Park".  This turns out to mean that the 28 goes to the Eddie McAbee Entrance, more or less, while the 5 goes to Greenwood Ave N at N 110th or 117th Streets.  No buses actually reach the park's main entrance, let alone enter.)

They say the position of women in early Islam was much, much better than in Arab societies prior to Muhammad.  Similarly, the position of pedestrians in Carkeek Park is much better than our position in the surrounding neighbourhood, and similarly, that's damning with faint praise.

I've referred to Carkeek Park, besides "The Ballard Seacoast", November 2 in "Blue Ridge, Land of Mystery", and November 24 in "Standing Room Only", part V, which in particular introduced shelter 2.  But I don't think I've explained about its roads before.  Carkeek Park Drive continues into the park a ways, and then splits.  The westbound northern lane goes up a hill and down again to reach the part of the park with the restrooms, shelters, water fountain, playground, and stairway to the beach.  Then there's a turnaround, and it loops back, passing north of the vast greenswards I've mentioned and finally turning into the eastbound southern lane.

Anyway, up to the split, Carkeek Park cares enough about pedestrians to offer a real sidewalk:

Even after the split, there's a gravel path, south of the westbound lane just as the sidewalk is south of the combined road:

This gravel path ends within sight of shelter 2, crossing north of the westbound lane and acquiring pavement in the process.  Now, you understand, dear Diary, that on the evening of January 10 I didn't actually push my cart along the gravel path, but in the road.  I don't remember whether I took the direct, paved, route or stuck to the road until things were clearer.

Anyway, I spent the night there in shelter 2, safe from the rain, using the lantern I'd recently been given (as mentioned two pages ago in "Escaping Green Lake Park", part I) to read until bedtime.  Comfortingly, the restrooms were open all night, just as they had been in October when I'd last visited.  

You may remember, dear Diary, that the official explanation for such unannounced 24-hour restrooms is that when a road is closed, it's both difficult and unnecessary to lock and unlock the restrooms it leads to.  I think Carkeek Park Drive was still closed January 10, but it definitely wasn't on Wednesday, so maybe those restrooms are no longer 24 hours.

Well, in the morning I ran low on food and water.  Conveniently, a break came in the rain; inconveniently, that brought company.  A couple, rather older than me, came in and sat at another of the shelter's picnic tables.  The man used this rest to unmask and smoke, except that he spent most of the time coughing rather than smoking.  This made staying even less appetizing, so after they left, I packed up and did the same.

The paved path past the shelter runs past shelter 1, part of the playground, and the restrooms, and becomes a sidewalk.  It's paved right up to the path to the beach stairs, on the other side of which it turns into gravel again:

So there's a paved sidewalk south of the combined road, a gravel path south of the westbound lane, a paved sidewalk west of the turnaround, and now a gravel path south of the eastbound lane.  Makes perfect sense, right?  For some reason, though, I actually decided to take that gravel path instead of sticking to the street as I normally would.

Then I reached the first greensward:

Yes, that's right, the path separates from the street.  That enables a long series of small parking lots to be strung along between the eastbound lane and the greenswards.  Necessarily, then, given the blockish way this park is designed, the path has to go all the way south of the greenswards, on the opposite side from the parking lots and the road:

Somewhere along here, the rain resumed.  And that's when I made the critical decision, the decision that shaped the next few days of my life but also that showed me thinking like a housed, rather than a homeless, person:  I kept going.  I needed water (that I could've gotten from the restroom sink) and food (was I really that low?).

This was a cruel thing to do to brand-new cart wheels, although I should clarify that the path I was on was really more a dirt path stiffened by fine gravel than the kind of thing one thinks of as a gravel path:

Those wheels would get revenge soon enough.

My decision became firmer when I looked up and to the right at a spectacularly bad time:

I'd had no idea I'd been so deep in a valley, and resolved not to return to it.

At the time I was in no position to appreciate the excellent views of Piper's Creek on offer:

Toward the end of the trip, I saw something astonishing, that my month-later photo probably hasn't well captured, an illustration of why I wrote of Blue Ridge that it's "not actually vertical":

And you've probably now figured it out, dear Diary, as had I.  Yes, I'd taken the Eddie McAbee Exit.

Once I realised that this story was worth telling, I also concluded that this whole mess is designed to get pedestrians to leave via 100th, regardless of our wishes in the matter.  This is not quite fair.  Once one is on the pseudo-sidewalk / Eddie McAbee whatever, one gets at least three opportunities to return to Carkeek Park Drive.  One just has to know the park well enough to recognise them.  (And, yes, get over the foolish tendency to trust sidewalks.)

There's one real consolation:  Sooner than later, there'll be a do-over.  Much of Carkeek Park Drive, within the park, is in terrible shape:

If people who think parks should not require visitors to arrive in cars are awake when Carkeek Park Drive needs resurfacing, perhaps something will improve.

Good night, dear Diary.

Hike 4B: Mid-Northwest

Dear Diary,

Pushing my damaged cart, I proceeded on my hike.  I finally confirmed through Google Maps that I'd screwed up, misremembering NW 65th St rather than NW 85th St as the address of Golden Gardens Park.  This, of course, meant that the damage to the cart described in the previous page need never have happened.  The mistake, however, did enable me to cut a big chunk out of the Ballard hike.  So off I went.

Salmon Bay Park

This is a smallish, pleasant park, nowhere near Salmon Bay, which I first told you, dear Diary, about June 28 in "A Lazy Day on Loyal Heights", and have only discussed since then on December 16 in "The Water Fountains of Ballard, mid-October 2020".

This park's restrooms were not on last year's list of restrooms to keep open, and also weren't and still aren't on this year's map of open restrooms, the map I was hiking around North Seattle to check.  So in other words, the expected outcome was that these restrooms would be closed, and in contrast to all the surprises I'd found in and north of Woodland Park, that's exactly what I found.

The restroom building:

The closed doors:

I parked the cart by a bench to take those photos, and then ate breakfast there.  This gave me time to think.  I'd consciously skipped Ballard Pool, but if I really went on without it, I'd have to go much further north on the Ballard hike.  And Salmon Bay Park seemed pretty quiet and safe.  So I left my cart there and hurried back southeast.

Ballard Pool

This, being a building whose restrooms all open to the inside, wasn't on last year's list, and since it's a building that has yet to re-open, it isn't on this year's map either.  Well, it wasn't open, but there was something weird about that...

I'd introduced this to you, dear Diary, in "A Lazy Day", as the one pool which, when all the pools got renovated in winter 2019-2020, got delayed.  I found it in June still surrounded by construction fences.  So the visit last month was my first chance to look at its doors.

The postcard shot:

The closed door:

At Ballard Pool, in other words, COVID-19 hasn't happened yet.  It's stuck in a time warp.  Or more prosaically, nobody's thought to go update the signage.

Anyway, its doors were locked.

So I went back to Salmon Bay Park, retrieved my cart, and proceeded to 

Loyal Heights Community Center

This community center is in a playfield of the same name, and has restrooms whose doors open to the outdoors.  I told you about these places in the same pages, dear Diary, as Salmon Bay Park.  Now, Loyal Heights Community Center's restrooms were on last year's list, and at the time I visited were also on this year's map.  Yes, I know, dear Diary, if you look at the map today, it isn't there.  But it was.

So I was extremely surprised by what I found.

The postcard shot:

The closed doors:

The running water fountain:

I was in Topsy-Turvy Land.  I believe, however, that the water fountain has been shut off.  Now, this is an attached fountain, and on November 12 in "To a Land of Water and Honey" I suggested leaving it on, in the expectation that the building it's attached to would remain heated.  This is actually still the case, here, even though the restrooms are closed.  But notwithstanding the boasts of a Jackson Park employee in the page in question, one of the secrets to keeping outdoor water fountains running in winter is to know when to fold them, and although I was pleased to find that fountain running January 10, it has no business being on in the weather now expected for the next week.

As for the restrooms.  Only two restroom pairs in North Seattle are closed this winter that were on last year's list.  The Woodland Park pair called Rio has signs indicating vandalism as the reason, and a substitute nearby, the Cloverleaf rooms.  But the Loyal Heights signs just say "Seasonal Closure" as if this happened every year, and the obvious nearby substitute, Salmon Bay, is closed.

My best guess is that Topsy-Turvy Land was created for the benefit of people working on the playfield.  There's a major operation going on to replace artificial turf at a bunch of fields, mostly in North Seattle; we saw part of it at Magnuson Park, dear Diary, more is at Woodland Park, and one piece is at Loyal Heights.  Anyway, if the workers had keys to the restrooms, it would all make sense.  With the rooms locked, they'd get fewer annoying intruders; with the water fountain on, they'd get convenience.  This is, however, only my guess.

At any rate, these were the only park restrooms on the Northwest street grid open last winter, and this year they're closed.  Whatever the reason, it should be a good one.

Golden Gardens Park

Dear Diary, I've had four carts in the past three years, and they've all been gifts from the same person, who'd been keeping late hours in early January.  When this person had bought the damaged cart (#3), it turned out that two carts were almost the same price as one.  So there was a method to my madness, traipsing about northwest Seattle instead of hieing to my storage to lighten my load.  I was waiting until it was late enough to call and ask for cart #4.

While I waited for it, of course I took the photos of Golden Gardens Park.  Here there was another surprise.  Both pairs of restrooms in that park were on last year's list, and both were then on this year's map.  But the upper pair, the one near the off-leash area for dogs, was locked:

There was no sign, as there had been at Salmon Bay Park and Loyal Heights Community Center, and it dawned on me that it was a Sunday.  So on January 13 I went back, and found them open.

Now, dear Diary, I notify people who work on the map of what I find, by e-mail, before telling you about it.  This is so I can tell you as much as I want, but provide them the same information in a less wordy form.  I think those e-mails are why Sandel Playground and Loyal Heights Community Center have been removed from the map.  I greatly fear, however, that by telling the above story in an e-mail, I may have greatly inconvenienced a lot of dogs' people, because for some reason the upper restrooms at Golden Gardens Park have also been removed from the map.

Anyway, here's the restroom building:

I'm relieved to report that there were no surprises at the lower, beach, restrooms there.  The building (I had to back up almost to the water to get it all in):

The open doors:

The "sanican"s, just as indicated on the map:

Now, dear Diary, you may remember that January 10 was the day an atmospheric river began drenching us.  My plan was to wait it out in Carkeek Park's palatial shelter 2.  It took a while for my friend to bring cart #4, and then of course it had to be assembled, and, well, the days were a good deal shorter a month ago than they are now.  So I dropped one park after another from my itinerary, discarded cart #3 (a move I would later regret), and headed for shelter.

I need to take some more photos to write the next page, dear Diary, and also need to do things about my shelter today, so it'll probably be a few days before you hear from me again.  May they be happy ones.