Petal showers

A special time of the year

Sat March 21 Vashon Island

Quartermaster Harbor in Burton. Today is a good friend's 60th so I'm riding my bike to a party. The weather has been unsettled, but the rain has swept through and now Vashon is showing her beauty. Such a different world from China. I feel blessed to be able to get to this via bus, ferry and bike. The air is sweet with cherry blossoms and I can hear some bald eagles calling from the evergreens on the right shore.

My favorite short bike street

33rd Avenue. NW in Seattle. The flowering cherries are at least 2 weeks early this year. I will look for that perfect combo: sunny day and a shower of soft petal when the blossoms hsbe past their peak. I try to cover myself and the bike in petals as I ride circles in the street.
Not today though. They're just staring to!oprn.
This is one of the secret places I've found after riding my bike I this town for the last 15 years.

A magical moment

How wonderful it is to be the teacher who gets to introduce her intensive English students to this.
I am blessed.

New bike lanes on 2nd Avenue

Seattle has retrofitted some of its streets during the 5 months I was teaching English in China. It is good to see the bike traffic lights, although it will take me a while to get used to riding my bike on the left. The road surface is a bit uneven, and the remnants of paint left from old parking spaces can be a bit confusing, but this makes riding south to north much safer and gives me an alternative route to West Seattle that avoids large sections of the ripped up roadwork under the Alaskan Way viaduct where Seattle's stalled waterfront tunnel is located. It's hard to retrofit a city that once thought cars were the only option. Hard, but worthwhile. Change is uncomfortable and disruptive, but offers the possibility of a better future.

Accessible on the Chesiahud Bike trail

Every Sunday anyone can sign up for a free sail at Seattle's Center for Wooden Boats. I did that today, at 11am, after I signed up for sailing lessons. I will ride my bike to the dock on Lake Union starting April 25, and re-up the certificate I earned 20 years ago, at Seward Park, when I learned how to handle a little keeled boat on Lake Washington. I'm not as agile as I used to be for sure. But I learned to swim practically the same time when I learned to walk, so I hsve never feared the water.
I'm long overdue on returning to my first love, water sports. It's certainly a lot cooler here than in the great
Aussie state of Queensland. Still, being able to ride AND sail, from my doorstep, well, that's one of the fabled benefits of living in the Pacific NW. I feel optimistic today, as well as blessed.