sprite writes
broodings from the burrow

March 29, 2016


ten on tuesday: outdoor things
posted by soe 2:41 am

Looking toward Rosslyn

This week’s Ten on Tuesday topic from Carole asks us to write about Ten Things I Like to Do Outdoors:

  1. Be at the beach. I like to swim in the summer. I like to wade in the spring and fall. I like to walk briskly in the winter. I like to look for shells. I like to watch dolphins swim past. I like to read. I like to picnic. I like to nap. Pretty much everything else I like doing in life is better when done outdoors at the beach.
  2. Ride my bike. Rudi and I do not agree on a ton of things about cycling, but we both concur that there is very little point in doing it indoors. It’s also a surprisingly nice way to see a city at the ground level while covering more ground, if you have that option. I’m lucky that I quickly overcame my concerns about biking in traffic, which even some of Rudi’s suburban cycley friends don’t like to do. We also have some very nice bike trails around and just outside the city if you are leery about spending a lot of time in the same space as cars. Oh, and, it makes you very virtuous if you bike to an ice cream shop and then bike home after consuming a cone.
  3. Listen to music. Concerts are great at any time of the year in any setting, but they’re especially nice outside. We are partial to the free Friday night concerts at Yards Park, which finds us across town to mark the start of nearly every weekend between Memorial Day and Labor Day.
  4. Swim. This partially goes along with #1, but it also applies to lakes, ponds, and pools. I somehow never bring myself to get to the indoor pools here in D.C., but I’m at the outdoor pool by my garden every weekend it’s open, if only for half an hour.
  5. Garden. I have indoor plants that live on my windowsill at work, but they are of the ornamental variety. Don’t get me wrong, plant gods, I love when those plants thrive and flower. But there’s something about the plants I grow in my community garden plot that seem especially … real, I guess, and connected to the cycle of living things.
  6. Watch baseball games. I grew up listening to baseball on the radio, so I’m really perfectly content with a play-by-play announcer and color commentator and nothing else. However, since moving to a city that now has a team and joining a season ticket group, I’ve grown to see the appeal of early spring and late September games in a stadium. There is a magical moment when the sun gets low in the sky and you start to notice the park lights (unless it’s an overlong day game, they turn them on ahead of time, although that’s always a great scene in baseball movies).
  7. Shop. I am lucky in that in our city there are farmers markets practically every day during the spring, summer, and fall, and that I live in the neighborhood with one of the two year-round markets, so I do a lot of my grocery buying there. We also have flea-type markets where you can buy greeting cards, maker markets where you can shop for funky gifts, and Christmas markets where you can stock up for the holidays.
  8. Walk. It drives my more suburban friends a little nuts when they come to town and I assure them the fastest way to get down to and around the Mall, museums, and monuments is not, in fact, to take the Metro, but is to walk the two miles down there, walk around, and then walk back. Plus, during tourist season, it’s probably the best way to avoid wanting to stab people who stand on the wrong side of the escalator and then stop one step off of the top of it to pull out their phones and acclimate themselves.
  9. Watch movies. Outdoor films have become a big thing during the summer season. Once upon a time, we had to rely on the Screen on the Green to allow us to watch movies al fresco. Now, inflatable screen rentals have become so cheap that you can literally go to the movies outside every night in July and August if you are so inclined. Some film series have themes (office movies, superheroes, presidential flicks), and they range in age from the 1930s to winter releases. There’s something literally for everyone.
  10. Drink hot beverages, have a snack, read, and knit. Now, yes, I see how you could make those four separate things, but they aren’t, really. I like to do all those things together, whether it’s outside a cafe or in a park, and whether it’s comestibles I’ve picked up out and about or something I’ve packed from home.

How about you? What do you like to do outside?

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