Shoeless in Seattle!

Last Tuesday found me up in Seattle with some time on my hands, so I changed into my comfort clothes and went out for a run along the Alaskan Way waterfront. It has a very nice sidewalk running past piers, stores, shops, and lots of people. It leads straight into a nice waterfront park with its own paved pedestrian path. The path was a little rough in places and I
was tempted to jump over to the bicycle path, which looked smoother. But I would probably get in trouble for obstructing bicyclists.

I did a turnaround at the end of the park and was headed back when I saw a gravel path leading up and over the railroad tracks, past a bunch of interesting sculptures. Since I wanted to go in that way, I braved the gravel incline, zig-zagged around the sculptures, and went down the other side - also on a gravel path. I then worked my way up to the Space Needle and ran around its park a little bit.

One cute thing I saw. A little girl about 6 or 7 was standing there with her mother. She was staring at me with big, round eyes of wonderment. Her mother had her dressed in a coat, hat and gloves even though it was 55 degrees out. When I made eye contact with the girl, she suddenly grinned a big toothless smile and waved enthusiastically at me. I swear that kids just "know" that running barefoot is a lot more fun.

I headed back down towards the waterfront and saw that a very long train was blocking my progress. So I headed back up the same gravel path as before and down the gravel path on the other side. Kind of ouchy, but not too bad.

My impression is that Seattle-ites aren’t as barefoot friendly as Portland-ites. I got quite a few comments while running, many not favorable. The friendliest comments came from the street-people camped out along the way. Maybe they felt sorry for me that I couldn’t find any shoes.

Total distance, seven miles.

Ryan