Of Ducks and Diabetes

Ducks

One of the things I have been meaning to do for a while is try out some of the Seattle sight-seeing tours. One of the ladies at church wanted to try out the 'Duck tours' so we got together one Saturday in September and headed into Seattle Center on the bus. It was mid September so we hadn't booked up, turns out this was a mistake. We caught a tour 40 mins after we had hoped and had to sit separately.The trips are famous for being very silly; loud music, crazy guides, plenty of opportunities to cheer along, and 'duck attacks'. There are 'quackers' for sale in the shop, these can be used, by the entire bus-boat, to scare unwitting pedestrians or cyclists.  

On the boat-bus with our hat wearing driver/captain

 The first part of the tour is around Seattle center and down town Seattle. You then sit on the freeway for about 15 mins. Not particularly exciting!

By far the best thing about the tour is the boat bit. All the drivers have to be certified captains because they drive you around on Lake Union. The lake has three different types of dwelling. There are floating homes, house boats, and boats. The number of floating homes is limited by the city, but houseboats (with a motor) are not so restricted. The deal with house boats is that you have to be able to show they are navigable so the houses have to take occasional trips around the lake. 

On the water

Downtown Seattle and Seattle Center from the lake

Gas works park - what do you do with a toxic waste dump?
 Make it into a public park of course!

Seattle is famous for it's water, both that which falls from the sky  and that which flows through the lakes.
Consequently there are many many bridges. 

Diabetes

One of the other things I've been meaning to do in Seattle is get involved in some of the public events that happen in the diabetes world. So one weekend in October I took part in the ADA's walk for diabetes which happened to be happening at my local park - very convenient. The walk had a few routes for a mile, three miles, or for the enthusiastic you could do the three miles twice. There was the pre-requisite free goodies on site from sponsors. I availed myself of the free coffee but  who wants to walk with arms full of bags? I walked the first three miles with ladies from work then was one of 10 or so fools who decided to do another route. This was a little anti climatic. None of the stewards were left the second time around, no-one was waiting with water, no-one was waiting at the finish line, all the stalls had closed down. Other than that I had a good time and found my six miles, quite literally, were a walk in the park.

The cheering crowds after my six miles

 World Communion Sunday

Finally, for world communion Sunday at church, we were encouraged to dress up with clothes from our 'country of origin' or a country we admired. I couldn't really figure out what to where to represent England but eventually I settled on Union Jacks (realising that this represents the whole of the UK not just England). I painted myself a a T-shirt with crayola fabric pens. I was a little disappointed to open the box and find the blue (pictured on the box as a royal blue) was actually lilac, but it turned out OK in the end. I also spent a few hours in failed attempts to paint my nails before finally getting the job done.