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.