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When I interned for the summer at MSR, six years ago, I only made it over to Seattle a couple of times. Once was to visit a college friend then (and now) at UW. We went for a walk in a park near his house. It had a bridge over a ravine, I remembered.
I found it! It's Ravenna Park. I hadn't much noticed it; it doesn't look like much on a map or driving by, but that's because it's a ravine, after all. With the bridges arching over it, it reminds me very much of Pittsburgh parks, Panther Hollow and the east edge of Frick Park.
Millions of bluebells. Ferns whose fiddleheads had come unfiddled somehow, and looked like seahorses.
I walked up and down, then sat for a while and read Patrick O'Brian on a boulder. This boulder is prime real estate; people would come by and share it and then move on. Two tall straight trees side by side juggled a pair of squirrels to and fro.
I allowed 30 minutes to get to kajukenbo, down 25th NE, over the bridge, on 23rd. Plenty of time, early for stretching. But traffic south of 45th was crazy. This was at 6:30, collateral damage from 520 I guess. It took me 15 minutes to creep to a point where I could bail out, go back and over to the next bridge. Forty-five minutes travel time. Consequently I was late, and rushed myself stretching, and pulled something on the top of my leg. I barely felt it at the time, but at home afterwards I could hardly walk, and iced it, and it went away. Today it flared up again for no obvious reason, and went away again. Grr. I don't know if I'll want to take the leg to class tomorrow.
Kajukenbo: my first Thursday class, with Melinda teaching. Lots of new stuff for me, including sticks. Partner exercise, I forget what it's called, where you each have two sticks and are going high sweep, low sweep, high bounce to low, repeat flipped. Also Stick Attack 1 or whatever it's actually called, a counter sequence to a strike. Also a distinct salute associated with each, since one is from escrima and the other from kali. (Two different Filipino weapons arts.)
Also some sparring. Two successive partners needed no contact to the abdomen, entirely sensibly since one was pregnant and the other post-surgical. Guaranteeing this is nerve-racking for somebody at my skill level -- people keep moving around unexpectedly, so I ended up with a foot-wide safety margin, and you want a similar zone around the head, which on a woman as small as one partner doesn't leave much but the legs. At one point after I kicked her in the butt she remarked "that's not much of a target", and I thought "do you realize how much trouble I just went to to kick you in the back?"
Coming home, I made way for ducks, a pair of them crossing 65th.
I found it! It's Ravenna Park. I hadn't much noticed it; it doesn't look like much on a map or driving by, but that's because it's a ravine, after all. With the bridges arching over it, it reminds me very much of Pittsburgh parks, Panther Hollow and the east edge of Frick Park.
Millions of bluebells. Ferns whose fiddleheads had come unfiddled somehow, and looked like seahorses.
I walked up and down, then sat for a while and read Patrick O'Brian on a boulder. This boulder is prime real estate; people would come by and share it and then move on. Two tall straight trees side by side juggled a pair of squirrels to and fro.
I allowed 30 minutes to get to kajukenbo, down 25th NE, over the bridge, on 23rd. Plenty of time, early for stretching. But traffic south of 45th was crazy. This was at 6:30, collateral damage from 520 I guess. It took me 15 minutes to creep to a point where I could bail out, go back and over to the next bridge. Forty-five minutes travel time. Consequently I was late, and rushed myself stretching, and pulled something on the top of my leg. I barely felt it at the time, but at home afterwards I could hardly walk, and iced it, and it went away. Today it flared up again for no obvious reason, and went away again. Grr. I don't know if I'll want to take the leg to class tomorrow.
Kajukenbo: my first Thursday class, with Melinda teaching. Lots of new stuff for me, including sticks. Partner exercise, I forget what it's called, where you each have two sticks and are going high sweep, low sweep, high bounce to low, repeat flipped. Also Stick Attack 1 or whatever it's actually called, a counter sequence to a strike. Also a distinct salute associated with each, since one is from escrima and the other from kali. (Two different Filipino weapons arts.)
Also some sparring. Two successive partners needed no contact to the abdomen, entirely sensibly since one was pregnant and the other post-surgical. Guaranteeing this is nerve-racking for somebody at my skill level -- people keep moving around unexpectedly, so I ended up with a foot-wide safety margin, and you want a similar zone around the head, which on a woman as small as one partner doesn't leave much but the legs. At one point after I kicked her in the butt she remarked "that's not much of a target", and I thought "do you realize how much trouble I just went to to kick you in the back?"
Coming home, I made way for ducks, a pair of them crossing 65th.
