Saturday AM: Greenlake

So, firstly I made the mistake of driving there.

I circled the parking lot several times and by the time I found a place to park on a residential street several blocks away I was, 1.) late to meet my friends and 2.) had to go to the bathroom so badly I thought I was going to defecate in my pants.

Luckily only the former happened.

We went into the Greenlake Starbucks. I know... disgusting, but it was only because my friend HAD to have an eggnog latte. For the record I did not spend a single cent there. I tried to block my ears so I didn't have to hear the travesty of unseasonably early of Christmas music but I was less successful in this.

The place was overflowing with customers clad in every sort of athletic wear, and one guy in the corner in shiny leather pants and cowboy boots. Mainly he sat in the corner on his laptop and occasionally flipped his hair.

One of my favorite things to do at Greenlake is to piece together the parts of conversation that I hear as I pass. Power business people still frenetically taking about their all important deals, gossip from the power walkers and mothers shoving their strollers, the weathered north Seattle hippie types expounding... Unfortunately, I have no jumbled conversation to report today since I was with friends and probably generated my fair share of inane conversation and gossip.

Instead, I started wondering about how many of this mass of morning joggers and walkers were even aware of the rumors that surround this tranquil gray lake and the reflection of the yellow leaves on trees.

Sure we heard about the lake when it had so much algae that it was unsafe to swim, and when random spikes started emerging from the bottom of the lake, not a dangerous prank after all but the result of poor planning (seattletimes.nwsource.com/.../2008074408_spikes26m.html)

But no one ever seems to talk about the 'Greenlake Monster' our own Seattle version of Nessie. The legends started in the 1940's or 1950's I think. The first Seafair was held at Greenlake and one of the performers of the Sea Follies swore that she saw a giant turtle like creature during the practice session for one of the routines. She went into hysterics and was almost admitted in to a mental hospital. I think the only other reported sighting was by a couple out late by the lake in the 1960's.

Maybe the Greenlake monster was there today, waiting beneath the surface to overturn an unsuspecting Kyaker or snatch a passing dog.
Maybe, maybe not.



P.S. When I got back to my car I realized I had left the headlights on and parked in front of a fire hydrant- no ticket though.