Wow… I had a simply amazing weekend. Usually I don’t like to write “here’s everything I did” type posts, but this deserves some documentation. Friday night, I hit up a bit of Camp Jitterbug (billed as “The Awesomest Lindy Hop Event Ever!”) for some swing dancing with my friend Shane – they had the first heat of the Jack & Jill Lindy Hop contest, which was so much fun to watch, plus plenty of room to dance in as it was at the UW Hub Ballroom.
Saturday morning I sort of randomly went canoeing with Kevin, a fellow BrightKite beta user who I ran into last week at Indy. I had a great time and have never seen more turtles, check this out:
Crazy, eh? I love exploring the area via canoe, in fact I think the highlight of our morning paddling adventure was attempting to find a way through the reeds. It was pretty hilarious, especially when the going got tough and we nearly tried walking across some not-so-stable marshy “land” that turned out to be not so much “land” as a floating mass of vegetation.
Canoeing offers a peaceful respite from the stress of modern life, and if you’re living in Seattle, it’s a quick wilderness experience in the middle of the city. At the UW Waterfront Activities Center you can easily rent boats for an hour or two, at $7.50 per hour per boat it is cheaper than seeing a movie.
Here’s a video of last Sunday’s canoeing adventure with my friend Micah:
I generally paddle over to the Washington Park Arboretum across the ship canal. Washington Park is a beautiful, uniquely synergistic partnership of the very urban and the very wild: the concrete limbs of 520 intertwine with marshes, reeds, and small plots of land home to interesting animals to observe and photograph (watch for Great Blue Herons and Bald Eagles). The season and weather severely change the foliage and atmosphere, so you always get a different experience. This is compounded by the fact that you can of course bring as many people as you’d like, making it as solitary or social as you’d like. Canoeing suits every mood, as long as you enjoy being outside: I find sometimes when I go I prefer to drift along and relax, just listening to the birds sing, and other times I like to push myself to put all I can into aggressive paddling and race other boats. This is another one of those sneaky workouts that’s cleverly disguised as fun. :-)
I’ve been canoeing pretty frequently lately, especially on the weekends. If you’re interested in joining, text “follow firewallender” to 40404 to follow me on Twitter* for impromptu invitations to paddle.
