seattle continued

i got so hot on the bus ride home i tried to hypnotize myself into remembering how cold i felt in montreal.

how'd that go?

it worked a little bit. i will keep practicing in anticipation of 100.

whew this week is gonna be a doozy! how did i develop a 'glow' walking downhill!!!?

learned from a seattle girl a long time ago to say you're not sweatingyou're glowing

horses sweat
men perspire
ladies glow

but you have to be careful telling ladies they're glowing bc then they will think you mean they are pregnant and you are saying they look fat

(i wouldn't think this, but a lady might)

i wanted to say more about the light rail so here.

sound transit and the people of seattle did a good thing making the inital line through the south. connecting seattle's poorest and most underserved neighborhoods and the airport is such a good pairing. and the neighborhoods, they're various. we always tell ourselves that our neighborhoods are all so different from one another and we're special because of that. yeah it's true and this shows it in an unexpected way (i grew up here and don't think i'd ever been to rainier beach before last wednesday). i love how vietnamese it gets along the street level. there's that moment of 'well it could be another country.' and the hard industrial parts. on some blog i read a person say it was like an east coast city, taking a line into town where you see the working face, the car yards and parking lots and office parks, every day places.

the other smart thing sound transit did is build this line for the future. you don't notice at first but every station can accommodate 4 car trains. right now they're at 2 car trains until ridership goes up. four cars hauls a hell of a lot of people. this has all been built with a mind to the future, where 30 years from now the areas around the stations won't look at all like they do now. it's creating (forcing?) those neighborhoods to figure how they can adapt to what places should be: safe, walkable, open, community-oriented.

also, it's beautiful. they spent some money. all the stations are different from one another architecturally. beacon hill has big-time fast elevators. 1% for art. across the duwamish the bridge lights up http://i221.photobucket.com/albums/dd118/embarchie/20081107_duwamish.jpg
some of the art is hedious of course but that's fun cuz then you have an excuse to take the train around and jump off and be dismissive.

last they are hell of chill. it's pretty much the best to look out at a city through a clean train window. and to look at a city i feel so bored with sometimes, like i know all of it, and then here's this beautiful thing, this contraption straight out of 19th20th21st centuries, to spirit me along to places i didn't know existed? magic carpet ride ftw. it's the best, really.

two rails one dream realized

yes, yes, well stated and tru. <3!

it's so fun to talk about something that exists.

and so fun to discover that we live in a real city all of a sudden. it was awesome to take THE TRAIN to a MLS GAME! couldn't have done either one last summer.

ps. i love the magic carpet, it is delightful just like the airport station should be.

just wanted to say your post was v v thoughtful, jergs! i really enjoyed it!

following the semi-success of my self-hypnosis on the bus, i am now attempting to fend off the multitude of voracious mosquitoes by mentally suggesting to them that my blood tastes bad. should also work for any vampires that might be in the neighborhood this evening.

i semi-successfully tried to cool off with a bourbon rocks but it is quickly becoming bourbon and water.
ps it is glowing.

so pardon my ignorance but is a light rail like what the BART is here in the bay area?

BART is actually heavy-rail, which means although it shares some similarities with Seattle's Link, it can handle much greater passenger loads (about 2x as many as light rail), has its own separate thoroughfare, and is powered by a third rail. Light rail is powered by overhead lines. But they are both electric trains.

jergins, that is a great post. I wish we could have stayed in that townhouse down in New Holly - it was only 3 blocks from the Rainier Beach station. But we are thinking toward the future when we will move a year from now, and everything along the light rail corridor is fair game.

if i were planning to stay in seattle i would move south too.

ruby, another crucial thing about BART that makes it different is its station spacing. though i don't know where exactly you live, and i don't know where you work, i'm thinking BART probably isn't that convenient. (actually, i have no idea, maybe it works out perfectly). anyway, i found this pretty interesting:

http://berkeleybrt.blogspot.com/2008/06/brt-and-bart-redux.html
From Wikipedia, BART, distance between stations: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_Area_Rapid_Transit
BART: 104 miles, 43 stations (1 under construction).
Do the math: 1 station every 2.4 miles.

By contrast, the Paris Metro, with, according to Wikipedia, the most closely spaced metro stations in the world:382 stops, 298 stations (some stations serve more than one line), 133 miles.So almost 3 stops per mile in Paris compared to one stop every 2.4 miles for BART

because of the way seattle is layed out, long and narrow with lots of water, we've ended up with pretty widely spaced stations too. look
http://seattletransitblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/world.jpg

I'm pleased to report that riding the train in my fit of heat-stressed pique last night was totally free - transfers from the ST bus covered it (via orca). It's excellent to have that option.

trying to figure out an excuse to ride this soon!

use the exploration excuse.

use the unemployed excuse and ride it back and forth all day

oi guys i took a run and then a shower and after the shower i couldn't cool down. isn't that the worst when shower dampness turns to sweat and you wonder what good the shower even was?

i took a spin around the island in the dinghy. that helped for a minute. the east side of the island, out in the channel, there's a cooler breeze there. but now back in the house, yaaaaaaaaaaaaa. i can't figure out the AC (hate AC so whatever) but still it's 85.1f outside and 85.6f inside. don't get me wrong i love it but shit i still can't cool down.

alcohol rubdown - it drives the water off and evaporates fast to cool you down

don't use the drinkable kind!

(unless it is cheap vodka maybe)

(also avoid all tender bits of your person)

LOL

this happened to me last night after the gym. i was like hmmm i could have sworn that cold shower was meant to wash off all the sweat so why is it still here?!

94º right now. ugh! i am glad i have ceilng fans but there is really no cross breeze in this joint at all :(

i need to find a good swimming hole!

We have to make our own cross breeze in our place too - I have 9 fans going, pretty much 24/7. probably won't put a dent in 94º though.

There's a community pool up the hill from you, t! (Or head to Golden Gardens and jump in the sound)

go jump in elliott bay. that'll cool you down
ha xpost

our whole summer is like that, day after day for months, i have to use a/c or i would never sleep at all between nov-april. i spent my childhood winters sleeping in unheated rooms in nz and my body won't adjust to heat and humidity, as soon as i fall asleep my temperature shoots up a few degrees and without a/c i feel as if i'm dying.

there is a tiny pool at my gym but i think something outdoorsy would be good. i feel guilty if i go swimming when i should be job hunting.

don't be guilty, the earth is circling the sun at about 67,000 miles per hour, it doesn't matter if you go for a swim.

Pool Temperature: 85 degrees

^^^queen anne pool

my days as a competitive swimmer make me freak out when i see things like this bc that is just too warm to properly swim in!
that's another thing - used to have crazy pool workouts and then you'd stop and realize you were sweating IN the water!!!

that used to happen to me when i had swimming as my gym class. reallyweird feeling.

today i imagined myself inside of a protective bubble, which turned into me being in a souvenir snow globe of montreal. but it kind of broke down when i inadvertanly became confused about how i could possibly walk my s now globe down tje street. will try again tomorrow.

were your limbs inside or outside of the snow globe, i am trying to get a sense of your gait.

the little snow globe who couldn't.

lol, srsly.

fully inside. it doesn't really make sense, because at first it was a bubble just a bit bigger than me. once it evolved into a snow globe i couldn't quite recapture the scene.

"that girl doesn't have a bubble butt...she's got a snow globe butt!"

would shake?

hey!

thank u jergins!! we live kind of close to the bart - our house is about 1.2mi away, and then one of my works is right next to a bart station, and my other work is is about 10mins walk away, so i'm pretty lucky. and i usually ride to the station.

thanks also to jaq for the info. didn't know BART's a 3rd rail line

couple more thoughts on our line: they GOT TO rezone around sodo station. such an awesome spot give over to parking lots and the USPS. that neighborhood's got possibilities.

if i had lots of money i would buy property around rainier beach. such a no-brainer that it's gonna GROW

http://i401.photobucket.com/albums/pp95/tza/100.jpg

gah!