Which Will it Be, Magic Flying carpet or Mary Poppins umbrella.

 This post is RantWoman's take on the important announcement about the summer schedule for Bike only weekends on Lake Washington Boulevard: the new schedule sounds nice but the RantFamily is going to need a flying carpet or perhaps a Mary Poppins umbrella to take advantage of it.

Announcement on Parkways.Seattle.gov

Nerdy Urbanist background article RantMom is unlikely to be interested in

The short version:

1. Abstractly, RantWoman might enjoy decent walking along Lake Washington Boulevard. RantWoman's idea of decent walking includes decent pedestrian infrastructure and bus stops close enough that RantWoman would not need to go on a long hike just to be able to walk along Lake Washington. RantWoman is not super up on full walking options at the ends of bus routes further north that do go to Lake Washington.

2. RantMom and her walker have ZERO interest in very much of a walk, let alone biking along Lake Washington. It's not just mobility issues: RantMom has something going on with her eyes that makes it extremely painful for her to be out in bright sunshine. RantMom, though DOES really enjoy rides home from church along Lake Washington, so RantWoman expects RantMom will be pretty excited to know there is a schedule when that is an option.

RantMom will be pretty excited to know this--except...--RantMom occasionally gets rides home from church with friends. Occasionally, partly because her main driver friend works summer sports events and is not always available. More of the time, RantMom takes ACCESS. RantWoman has no opinion about which ACCESS vehicles it is even possible to view the lake from. ACCESS routing also is done by mysterious routing algorithms that may provide "spontaneous" trips in directions RantMom would not expect on her way home or may route drivers blocks out of the way in order to achieve door to door service. Then we will not discuss taxis and the walker unless RantMom specifically remembers to request an appropriate vehicle. We will not even go near Uber / Lyft on multiple grounds. In other words, being able to look at Lake Washington is kind of a crapshoot. It MIGHT happen, but a lot of factors get in the way. 

3. RantWoman has no idea why ANYONE would try to drive anywhere on Fridays so RantWoman can totally relate to people who would like Friday hours during the bike only weekends.

All of that said, the RantFamily's best travel options along Lake Washington would be flying carpet or Mary Poppins umbrella. The Mary Poppins umbrella is probably most functional for short gaps in sidewalk or times when there are bus stops on both sides of a street but no safe way to cross the street one way between stop and destination. RantWoman oddly enough has seen no online listings for magic carpet.

RantWoman will now file this post on her follow up from the most recent #OpenThePaths event.