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.
- Transit (XI).
- Unopened streets (XIV).
- Library hours (VI).
- RV parking (VIII).
- Other cities (V).
- 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.
