I guess I made this phony a little nervous.

Normally I do not mind the cardboard sign guys who stand on every single intersection in Seattle and try to collect beer money...to each their own...but with over 30,000 American casualties in Iraq, many of whom have lost limbs and mobility, this guy just rubbed me the wrong way and picked the wrong day to set up shop in front of me. I saw him walk his wheelchair over and settle in.

Health and Diabetes Fairs at Qwest Field

In conjunction with my Nutrition class this quarter, I went down the The Seattle Health Fair held this weekend at Qwest Field. Right next door was the Diabetes Fair. The lines for the various free screenings were long. My impression of these events was, in contrast to the vital and healhy seeming VegFest, that the majority of the people in attendance were sick and looking for solutions.
Since diabetes is a topic that has come up in class, I made sure to visit numerous booths at the Diabetes Fair, where everyone was happy to give me information.

Dateline Seattle! April 18th, 2008

There are probably no people more obsessed with the weather than people in Seattle. The so-called and well meaning, but often wrong meteorologists try to predict the weather, but with the Cascade mountain range to the east, the Olympic mountain range to the west, the Puget Sound running interference and the effects of global (human caused) climate change affecting the ocean currents more and more, they do not stand a chance against Granny's weather beetle. We obsess about the weather. To make matters worse, we are often subject to Mother Natures mischievous habit of pulling the bait and switch. Handing out an 80 degress Saturday and then boomeranging into the kind of weather we had less than a week later, on April 18th, 2008...

On the way to the Green Festival.

On Saturday and Sunday, April 12 & 13, Seattle hosted it's first Green Festival. The Dahlai Lama was also in town that week, but even with 50,000 people turning out for His Holiness, the Green Festival was packed to the rafters.

I went specifically to see Jim Hightower and the best progressive radio host, Thom Hartman. I met Thom and he signed my copy of his new book, Cracking The Code.

Coincidentally, that Saturday was the one day of sun Seattle is alloted per season. I rode my bike down (see website for route information), and ran into the Dahlai Lama's motorcade.
BikeWorks was on the scene to protect our bikes in a monitored bike lot. BikeWorks does a lot of good work in the Seattle area.

The ride there and back was half the fun, so I have included some of those slides as well.

[EDIT: Due to numerous comments about the original clip being too long, I have split it into three parts. Part One is the bike route through Fremont to dowtown, and includes the Dahlai Lama shots and pictures of his police escort. Clip Two is arriving at the Convention Center, Jim Hightower and misc. picturs of the Green Fair. Clip Three is Thom Hartman and the ride home.]