I've known Karen for 16 years now, having met her in Hindi class in 2005, and she's one of the few friends with whom I have done something for my Birth Week for most, but not all, of the years since—in one way or another, she's participated ten times since I first met her in 2005, the first time having been in 2009. So, since 2009, the only years she has skipped have been 2011, 2016, and 2019. Last year was sort of a gray area; I took a screenshot of her during our FaceTime lunch on Wednesday, April 22, 2020 and included it in my photo album for the first day of my Birth Week last year, even though last year's Birth Week did not actually start until Friday April 24.

And, to be fair, for a while I thought Karen would not be part of my Birth Week this year either—even though, last year when I first talked to her about my "State Parks Tour" idea, we already talked about finding one of the more accessible parks to go to together. Then, of course, the state parks tour in 2020 had to be postponed to 2021, and I quickly filled up the schedule for the week with other people. I actually originally had my work friend Claudia scheduled for yesterday, going to Fort Ebey State Park on Whidbey Island. But, she later realized she had previously committed that day for a trip with another friend, so that day trip is now postponed until Saturday next weekend.

I still wanted to go to one state park or another yesterday, of course, So then I emailed Karen to see if she'd meet me at Saint Edward State Park, the closest state park to where I live, situated 15 miles away on the northeastern shore of Lake Washington in Kenmore. She was totally up for it, even though it appeared as though her ability to explore a lot of the park, being that she's a wheelchair user, would be limited. I had picked this park, though, because there are some paved paths around the very cool Saint Edward Seminary building where we could still explore a bit with her.

I also suggested a picnic lunch. In fact, today was the fourth day this week I brought a picnic lunch with me—tomorrow will be the fifth. Technically I ate my "picnic" meal on Thursday at Lynn and Zephyr's house, but it was still a sandwich I had packed to take with me. It was also the third day I brought chai in the thermos pack—the other two days being when I went to Deception Pass with Danielle and her kids on Monday, and when I met up with Lynn and Zephyr on Thursday; tomorrow will be the fourth such day when I bring chai with me to Green River Gorge State Park with Tracy from work.

Anyway, Karen brought a lunch she had clearly purchased at a grocery store somewhere; this morning Shobhit and I made our own sandwiches to bring. This was also the second and final Birth Week outing where Shobhit joined me. He had taken PTO yesterday for my actual birthday, and then just happened to have his regular two days off of work scheduled for today and tomorrow—a rather unusual occurrence, as usually he works weekend days. He didn't seem interested in joining me for state parks both today and tomorrow, though, and if he was going to join for just one of them, I suggested today since I knew Karen would enjoy seeing him.

We had agreed to meet Karen there at 1:30, and after Shobhit and I left with the intent of getting there a few minutes early, surprisingly heavy traffic resulted in us getting there right on time. Karen arrived shortly after, and I directed her to the accessible parking I thought would work best for her getting from a parking spot to picnic tables with a nice view of the park's signature structure, the Saint Edward Seminary, which served as an actual seminary between its construction in 1930 and its decommission in 1976. It's a very cool building, designed by what the Washington State Parks calls "famed architect John Graham." When I read that to Karen—who is herself an architect who consults on construction projects for accessibility issues—she was openly impressed: "That's a Graham?" Apparently he's a well-known Pacific Northwest architect.

Also, the building is reopening as a hotel in less than a week, on May 7, after the building has sat empty for 45 years (basically, since I was born). It will include a couple of bars, which Karen and I talked about returning to sometime later this year to check out.

Anyway, once we were all done eating our lunches and drinking chai (Karen accepted some, but only a tiny bit), we explored the grounds together. There was a kind of curious experience of this park today, considering how surprisingly full the parking lots were—but, we did not encounter a huge number of other people in the park. When we all sat down at our fairly secluded picnic table, Karen noted that we are all three of us fully vaccinated, so we took off our masks. And when we all walked around the seminary building, taking several buildings along the way, for that we didn't wear our masks either, because truly no one else was around.

Karen was pretty impressed with the building, and took a few photos herself. We found an accessibility ramp down to the ground floor, which was actually kind of half-basement, in the back, and she was impressed with that as well.

After that, we tried to find a trail that could work for Karen's motorized wheelchair. The first trail we found was clearly not workable for her, but we found another, rather short one that was, kind of barely. As a result, Karen found herselves entering an area of woods in a way she really never does otherwise, given that "the woods" would never really be regarded as wheelchair accessible. That was how we got the fantastic photo of her and me together that Shobhit took, with a bunch of woods behind us—Karen seemed to quite enjoy it, given how difficult it is for a wheelchair user to find themselves in the midst of nature in this specific way. (I got another shot that kind of makes it look like she's just lost in the woods, which cracked me up.)

More than one of the trails at the park go down to the shore of Lake Washington and clearly none of them were navigable fo Karen, who told us more than once that she would just wait for us to go down a trail and come back if we like. Neither Shobhit nor I liked the idea of just making her wait, though, even i she insisted she would just spend the time knitting. Instead, we decided we would walk the trail after Karen we just done with the park and ready to go home.

Even Shobhit would have been happy to go home at that point, but I really wanted to walk the trail down to the lake. When the hell am I coming back to this park, anyway? Well, maybe in a few months with Karen to get a drink, but in that case Shobhit may not even be with me. I wanted to walk down to the lake with Shobhit, so finally he obliged me, walking a loop along the North Trail, to the Beach Trail, and then back to the Seminary building via the Grotto Trail. I've had to Google this a few times to put these specific trails together, but I think this entire loop amounted to abut two and a half miles of hiking—not quite as challenging as the hike in Olallie State Park on Friday, but relatively challenging in its own right nonetheless. The Seminary building is quite a bit higher than the water level of the lake, so we descended a fair amount first and then had to climb a lot to get back to where we started.

It was totally worth it. Also, this way I was able to get photos of the lake I could text to Karen, as she had specifically requested.

Once we returned to the parking lots, we got back in the car and left, headed first to the Kirkland Costco for some shopping and then to the Bellevue Total Wine & More for some browsing. We then drove home and I did my photo editing, and then wrote up the draft of this very post so I could quickly post it after waking up this morning.

[posted 7:49 am]