A Crowd and A Poet’s Eye

I can’t believe I was in this crowd!

My head is still spinning from Wednesday’s downtown Seattle parade to celebrate the Seahawks Superbowl victory.  I have never been a big football fan, but I got swept up by this whole thing.  It’s easy to do, especially when the team you are falling in love with does yoga, meditates, and wins over and over again!  I heard that coaches from all over the world are curious about the effects of yoga and meditation on team players.

Kids stayed home from school and adults ditched work to attend the parade.   700,000 cheering fans gathered and lined up the streets. Some estimates put the crowd at 900,000 to one million people.   It was so cold out (27 degrees), but many people, including families with children, had camped out on the sidewalk along 4th Avenue the previous night. Bed, Bath, and Beyond, located on 4th Avenue- heart and center of all the fun-, sold all of their blankets,towels,  hand warmers, folding chairs, step-stools, and snack items.  I know because I ended up standing next to and huddling with the Bed, Bath, and Beyond employees who told me all about it.

Every coffee shop was jam packed with folks in search of a cup of java and a spell of warmth.  I was supposed to teach a yoga class at 10:30am downtown at Seattle Athletic Club, but by 10:45am, when no one had yet shown up, I split for 4th Avenue.  So much fun!  I felt like a true yogi because, for once, the adage fit me:

A true yogi feels the cold but does not feel cold.

No, I didn’t feel cold standing out there.  Maybe it was the huddling with the Bed, Bath, and Beyond employees, or maybe it was the sheer happiness of being a part of Seattle’s history in the making. I felt an anticipation similar to a child’s excitement when waiting for Santa.  I felt a surge of pride for the city of Seattle.  How could it be that all these people had gathered and there was not a single arrest!  Equally miraculous was how clean the streets were when I was back downtown the next morning at 7am.  You would never know that nearly a million people had stood anticipating, cheering,  and celebrating for hours and hours the previous day!  Nothing short of miraculous.

And as it was time for me to leave and head back to yet another class at another location, Phinney Ridge, I watched 4 packed Route #5 buses go by without the merest  finger space for me.  An hour and a half later, after the fifth #5 bus went by with no space to spare, I decided to call Uber.com and  within FOUR minutes, my sleek vehicle arrived and whisked me to my next destination!

I recommend you load the Uber.com application onto your iPhones or iPads (I used my iPad and the transportation service worked perfectly).   I signed up a few weeks ago, using my friend’s promo code and received $20 off. So basically, my first ride on parade day was free.  And the driver got me to work in time under the worst  public transportation conditions imaginable.  If you join, use my code 22g5g and you, too, will get $20 off your first Uber ride.  Uber is like a taxi, but better and more dependable.  Plus you can track where your driver is, which , depending on where you are, can be 4 minutes away.  Pretty cool service available in most large cities in the world!

That was all two days ago…and now for today…

I woke up to a gorgeous sunrise here in Tumble Creek and just after I took the photo below, the fattest coyote I have ever laid eyes on went prancing by!  At first I thought he was a big fluffy dog, but he stopped long enough for three of us to confirm he was, indeed, a coyote.  The coyote was in the distance and I don’t have a good zoom on my camera, so no photo to show that we really did see the beautiful fellow.

It’s COLD out, in the single digits last night and up to 12 degrees now, and there’s snow on the ground and more coming tomorrow.   I am here giving a yoga workshop today and tomorrow.  Our original plan was perhaps to snowshoe, but it seems to be too cold.  There is always the heated outdoor pool and the hot tub which we plan to soak in after tonight’s yoga session ends!

This morning’s sunrise in Eastern Washington!

I sent the photo above to my friend, Michael.  Here is his “poet’s eye” response to the photo:

I love the way the purity of light creeps out from the false dawn, filling the new day yet to be lived with the promise of possibility and the excitement to make it our own.  Lucky yogis!

Ok, off to teach this afternoon and evening.  Here’s to Seahawks, Sunrises, Mountains, Coyotes, and Yoga!