Sunday, after attending church with my family in Bellevue, Trebonte, a couple Lees and I embarked on an adventure in North Seattle.
Our first stop was the Howard Chittenden locks. The purpose of the locks is to lift boats from Puget Sound to the higher water level of Lake Washington and to lower boats traveling in the opposite direction. You can find an explanation of how locks work here. According to the tour guide, the method of raising a vessel utilized in this type of locks was originally invented by Leonardo Da Vinci.
Next we went to Fremont, the self proclaimed “center of the universe.” We parked the car and spent some time strolling around, seeing the sights in this odd corner (I’m pretty sure it isn’t central) of the world. We visited the 16 foot bronze statue of Lenin (Can you guess the political ideology popular in this part of town?), trippity-trapped to the Troll under the Fremont Bridge, gazed on the giant missile and poked around in the plentiful artsy shops. Unfortunately the “deluxe junk” emporium was closed.
Finally, we ended the excursion by gathering for worship at our church, Mars Hill in Ballard.
My apologies for any slow loading due to my large pictures. If you have trouble, blame it on Trebonte, he took all the pictures. Feel free to view the rest of his photographic masterpieces .
*My sister, Emily, has been doing a ministry internship in a small town and she tells me that her small town acquaintances are not only unfamiliar with the term “kicking it” but can’t even grasp the concept when she tries to explain it. She hypothesizes that this is because it is impossible to kick it in a small town. If those of my readers who currently, or have at some time, lived in a small town would like to weigh in on the discussion I’d appreciate their input.
I’ve lived in the U District this whole year, and never gotten down to tour that area yet, and those pictures are really great– makes me want to head down there in the near future.
Speaking of Mars Hill, have you joined The City? Any thoughts about it?
I’ve lived in a small town most of my life. To illustrate this fact, several years ago, we had two theatres. One with one screen, the other with two. So, one fine weekend, the two screener burned down. I guess the popcorn machine had a malfunction and things burned down. Seriously. Anyway, we now have a “big” movie theatre with FOUR screens…. He he…
Um, I guess me and my peeps know how to kick it in a small town. We play extreme spoons-running across streets, ghost in the graveyard (literally in graveyards), and lay in the middle of streets to look up at stars in the middle of the night. Yeah, a small town knows how to kick it. Just a bit differently. ;)
@Tage: Yup, I’m on the City. If you’re planning on making Mars Hill your home church you should definitely sign up.
@Danika: Thanks for your assistance. I’ll inform Emily that not all small towners are ignorant of kicking it.
Maybe Emily just needs to put it like this:
“Kicking it” comes from when you kick a can around with friends. Now we use it to mean any fun action we do with friends not just kicking cans.
I have no idea if that is truely the origin of “Kicking it” but it sounds good. And what small town person hasn’t kicked a can around for fun?
I have to go to a small town soon to visit family. There is one grocery store, nowhere to eat out, the next closest citys are 80 miles in either dirrection, and the only semi-fun thing to do is swim at the highschool’s pool. So I understand how small towns can be.