UW

An interesting day today – it was a team-building event that consisted of kayaking.  I didn’t want to go kayaking, so in silent protest I made alternative arrangements (since I didn’t want to lose the opportunity to skip work!).  Firstly, I thought about taking an impromptu trip to Hurricane Ridge in the Olympic National Park.  I was going to get up early (like really early – 5 am!) in order to get the first ferry to the Olympic peninsula and then head up to Hurricane Ridge sometime not long after sunrise.  However, I declined to do this because I had got up early the day before due to an early teleconference and so didn’t really have the energy, and also the forecast was partly cloudy rather than sunny and I didn’t want to play the odds.  This proved to be the correct decision, as this was the view at Hurricane Ridge when I would have been there:

This is what the view should look like (it is spectacular, the webcam picture here doesn’t do it justice, and there is a chance I might head out there this weekend instead to get some good photos).

So, instead I headed into work then promptly took off to do one of my Seattle walks – this one round the U District and University of Washington campus.  This had the advantage of going past the place where the kayaking event was being held – so I could hopefully time the walk so that I was at the kayaking place to join my colleagues for lunch (which was also the correct decision, because even though not many people went kayaking almost everybody was there for lunch).  And it was a walk I had never done before and have been meaning to do for some time – I've never been to the campus, and only to the U District once (one of the few places where there was a shop I could get a British-sized passport photo!).  It was a 4.5 mile fairly level walk, plus an extra 3 miles it took to walk to and from work, so I ended up getting a fair amount of exercise today (and helping my weekly step count immensely!).  The U District isn’t much to write home about – lots of cheap places to eat but lots of homeless and crazy people in the neighborhood, although it was interesting to go down a road where all the frat houses could be found, the kind of places you see in American films/tv shows of partying student life (I suppose my first year at university in an all-male house was about as close to being in a fraternity as possible in the UK).  The university campus itself was quite nice.  It’s a big, busy, green campus and probably a good place to study (if you don’t mind the seemingly inordinate number of Chinese students walking around and presumably studying there) – perfectly pleasant, but not really photographic or historic like the superior British universities (there might have been good views of Mount Rainier if it wasn’t so cloudy this morning).  I took a few photos, but nothing too special.  And I’m absolutely knackered this evening – so hopefully I’ll finally get a good night’s sleep tonight!