I forget how pretty Seattle can be.

[elfs]

Seattle really is a beautiful city. This shot, southward from Gasworks Park takes in the city sometime toward sunset, with the light striking from the northwest, shows just how pretty it can get. It's been a miserable summer, most Seattlites will tell you, with only two or three weeks of sun, and even this weekend, when it's supposed to be beautiful, instead we get two solid days of overcast and scattered showers. (You know how Eskimos supposedly have dozens of words for snow? We have just as many for clouds: "cloudy with sun breaks," "partly sunny," "partly cloudy," "mostly cloudy," etc. And we have general consensus on what these all mean!)

We went to the park after canoeing with our friends, and Kouryou-chan and her friend disappeared into the park proper while we sat around, ate cheap fried chicken and coleslaw and soda pop, caught up on old times, and watched as the sun went down.

There was an ad-hoc sailboat race going on, apparently called the "Duck Dodge." You see, Seattle has a tourist trap known as "The Ducks," which are WW-2 era amphibious vehicles that drive around Seattle while the driver gives a patter, then drive into Lake Union from Portage Bay and give people a view of the city from, well, from the vantage point you see above. The race involves sailboats, drinking, and good-natured swearing.

Watching the race was fun, but one boat was taking it way too seriously-- a medium racing yacht with a full crew. Maybe they were practicing for something. But as the boats headed toward their moorings and the sun began setting, the city lit up again with the last coppery rays reflecting off windows onto the water, and it was a photograph too pretty to pass up.

Comments

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

No, the Duck Dodge is so called because one of the "house" rules is, if you disturb any of the ducks on the lake, you have to do a 360-degree turnabout as penalty. So the trick is, if you have a duck in the way, how close you can get to your straight course without flushing the duck.

Different ducks. :)