The Locks and Shilshole

Yesterday's "nice little walkie" turned in to a 4 mile power walk up a 2 mile steep mountain bike trail. By the time we got home, my left hip was screaming at me. So today was a day of recuperation. We took the two new bicycle saddles back to Performance Bikes. I just do not have the will to test sit saddles at the moment. My current one hurts way less than it did after lowering the nose, so I'm afraid to touch it. So, we'll just see how this goes. Anyhoo, while at Performance, I saw a bunch of these in a jar. It's 1.75 inches in diameter, and about a centimeter thick.

After peeling the wrapper off, it looks like this. If you add water, it turns in to a 14 by 20 piece of thin fabric. It's pretty cool.

After lunch we drove out to the Hiram M. Chittenden locks. This is a railroad bridge. In this photo, it's up. More precisely, it's a single leaf bascule bridge.

In this photo, it's down. The thing sticking up on the right side is the counter weight that helps it move up and down. This photo is taken looking out towards Salmon Bay. The boats lined up are waiting to enter the locks.

Here are a couple of boats in the small lock. The locks fill with water from Lake Washington. Each time a lock is cycled, an average of 7.5 million gallons of fresh water are flushed. It's a miracle that Lake Washington has not been drained dry. Oh wait, this is Washington, it rains a lot here.

Here are little boats in the big lock. The small lock has floating bollards, they move up and down with the boats. In this lock the boaters must maintain proper tension on their lines as the boats move up and down. Note the railroad bridge is up again. I didn't see the bridge moving once, only after I uploaded photos did I realize it had been up, down and up.

Then it was off to look at Shilshole Bay. Jim was shocked at how much it has changed. Many of the funky little beach houses and restaurants have been torn down to make way for condos and upscale shopping. It's kind of sad, how many condos does the world need?

It was a delightful and restorative day.