Saturday morning on the ship canal bike path

On my ride to sailing class I ride past the Fremont bridge. A sailboat just passed beneath and leaves the ripples in the bottom left of this photo.
A lovely moment on a quiet gray morning. I feel blessed to have been a resident of this beautiful city for 23 years.

Thoughts on Mt Index

Your vision will become clear
Only when you look into your heart.
Who looks outside, dreams.
Who looks inside, awakens.
CG Jung

Early spring at Lake Serene

Old Hwy 10 Cle Elum to Ellensburg, and back

Salve for the cyclist's soul. Cloudy and gray in Seattle, but drive 100 miles over Snoqualmie Pass to the sunny side of Washington State, and this is what you get.
It's all about shaking off the gloom and heading out to grab the joy you know is out there.
I'm so so glad I shook my Saturday gloom and came over.

The 20 mile bike ride turn around point

From Weinegat's in Ellensburg. A lovely sentiment to find on a sunny ride I. Eastern Washington

Pram boats

In bleak and difficult times you must always keep something beautiful in your heart - Rene Pascal

Amen to that.

Sun on Lake Union

This morning I did my 2nd practice class with volunteer teacher Charles in the white hulled sailboat 2nd from the left. So much calmer today than yesterday. It's taking me a whole to figure out I'm supposed to tack into the wind. Sort of 180 degrees different than the way a cyclist thinks about head and tailwinds.
So nice that I can just hop on my bike and ride to this.

Thinking of my young friends in Tongling

Today is a day for the ages. Nearly 80 degrees and I've ridden my bike to the Center for Wooden Boats, and my first practical sailing lesson in a 20 foot boat. A big challenge for someone who mixes up right (starboard) and left (port/leeward). So I won't be skippering anything in Elliot Bay for some time. But it's fun. I bring a diary with me on days like these, as writing, by hand, on paper, helps me process all the unwanted changes that I presently face. So, how nice to turn to the opening pages of this gift from my Tongling No. 1 student Cherry. In her beautiful Chinese characters she sends me a message that just right, here on Saturday May 9.
I miss you too.

Prussik Peak in the Enchantments

It's a gorgeous warm Saturday so I drove up the Middle Fork Teanaway River road to find a new trail covered with the old familiar flowers: lupin, glacier lilies, Indian paintbrush, of an Eastern Washington spring. I'm somewhere on the Yellow Hill trail, and I stopped to eat lunch. The peaks triggered a memory: a wonderful week long August backpack trip I did in 2009.
It takes a lot of difficult hiking and over 3,000 feet or more, of climbing to stand at the foot of Prussik Peak. But, once seen, never forgotten. To the left is Little Annapurna, blocked by trees from this location.
I'm thinking too of the November trek I did in 2011 to see the real Annapurna peaks, in Nepal. I've been blessed since 2010 with an ability to schedule my jobs and my life around adventure travel, and my decision to become an ESL teacher was a deliberate one. I'm not interested in being a tourist, checking off a "bucket list". I want to visit, stay and give as well as take. The news of the earthquake in that desperately poor country filled with some of the nicest people imaginable, well it's a heartbreaker. Kathmandu has been high on my "teach ESL there one day" list. Since the SE Asian tsunami in the early 2000s, when I can afford it, each year I give a small donation to Doctors Without Borders. It's a drop in the bucket, with so much need, everywhere on earth. But it has to be better than doing nothing.