The pandemic postponed many life events,
but one family persevered in its effort
to mark a milestone.
I made it
We'd like new people would come down
and introduce them
to any one of the three sports
want to get rolling with fun activities.
That'll also keep you fit.
We know just the place.
Oh, man, great luck.
And there's this hillside
full of Stairway Step right up.
This phrase fits Seattle,
a city of stairways.
And one couple knows
this better than most.
Come over here.
Here's one.
These stories and more,
next on City Stream.
Hello, I'm Linda Byron.
Welcome to City Stream
from the Mountaineers here
at Magnuson Park.
For more than a century,
this organization
has been teaching people
the skills necessary
to explore the outdoors safely
and responsibly.
It does this by hosting
hundreds of monthly
courses and activities,
all led by volunteers.
And it's clear
there's plenty of interest.
The Mountaineers have
15,000 active members
across the Northwest
And while
that organization helps
connect people to the outdoors,
the pandemic prevented us
from being
together for major milestones
with our family and our friends.
And that separation taught us
just how much those celebrations mean.
This next story
reveals one family's resilience.
And while they couldn't
completely recapture what they'd lost,
they found grace in trying
Nicole Stankovic started learning piano
when she was just six
By 16,
she was winning
international competitions
and performing in Carnegie Hall.
A self-described introvert,
it was piano that set her free
When I play,
it really just expresses how I feel.
Moment.
Sometimes I don't even know
how I'm feeling until I perform
Nicole was thrilled
when legendary pianist Dr.
Robyn McCabe
accepted her
into the University
of Washington's music program.
By late 2019, Nicole was preparing
for the most consequential
performance of her life.
Her senior recital
This is
the bulletin board
that students hang up posters
just advertising their upcoming
recitals around March of 2020.
I started seeing them get canceled,
and so I kind of had a feeling
that mine would be canceled, too.
And it was
then the in-person graduation at Husky
Stadium was scrapped
It's bittersweet.
Pomp and Circumstance
is one of those pieces
where when you hear it,
you're kind of
saying goodbye to something.
But also saying hello to the future.
But that future had
just become a big question mark.
So Nicole flew
home to Park City, Utah, where
she'd grown up.
She performed that senior recital
in her parent's living room.
The family took photos,
watched U-dub virtual commencement
and tuned in for the piano department's
grand finale.
Which just didn't feel so grand
on a computer screen.
I think it was better than nothing,
but still a little disappointing.
Good.
Once back in Seattle craving
connection, Nicole began teaching
piano full time.
You get that sticker.
And through hours of reflection.
Nicole discovered
the pandemic didn't so much
stop her in her tracks.
It sent her in a new direction.
I'm going to do a master's
in piano performance
as well as a master's in public health.
A million people died
in just our country alone.
And it really showed
the weaknesses of our system.
But first,
Nicole and her friend Jessica
have something important to do.
What kind of dress do you want to get?
I don't know.
The Udub is holding
a special commencement ceremony
for the classes of 2020 and 2021.
I don't want to miss out on this,
and I want to give my parents
the appreciation that they deserve
and the moment that they deserve.
After two years,
I realized how much I wanted them here
as immigrants.
Her parents need this moment
just as much as Nicole,
who's now
the first in the family
to earn a college degree.
But COVID isn't finished wreaking havoc.
Hi. You're on the way to the airport.
Oh, you're wearing purple.
That's our school color.
Nichols mother
owns a busy
Chinese restaurant in Park City
that's short staffed.
So the family booked an evening flight
the night before the graduation.
They got to the airport last night,
and their flight got canceled.
Were there any tears there?
There were for me.
My mom was just angry.
The best they can do
is standby for a 5:03 a.m.
flight, which will still get them
to Seattle in plenty of time.
But that plane is overbooked.
I immediately got on the phone
to try and see if, you know,
we could get them another flight.
OK, so they we make it.
Hey, so exciting. We're going to see Koko.
So you guys sitting over there?
Are you all class of 2021?
2020 is this side.
Jessica's mom right now.
4 a.m. in Taiwan.
As the returning graduates
start to enter the stadium, Nicole
finally has good news.
They're on a plane.
It's a two hour flight.
If they arrive early and commencement
starts late, they could still make it
now.
Entering the stadium are the bachelors
Nicole is missing her family
feeling far more emotional
than she anticipated.
2020 just feels
light years away from today and uh,
I realized that,
you know,
I actually cared a lot
more than I thought.
Hello, graduates of the classes
2020 and 2021.
It's so good to finally be here
at Husky Stadium.
Graduation
ceremonies are notorious
for moving slowly.
If time is on Nicole's side,
this one will go really, really slowly.
There are a few lessons
one learns as a dean.
One is not to be long winded
as master students
begin walking up to accept diplomas.
Nicole's family is entering Oregon.
52 minutes to arrival
now, the turning of the tassel
on the count of three.
One, two, three,
Nicole is keeping tabs on her phone
as bachelor students start to walk.
Only 14 minutes left in the flight.
But in a cruel twist of fate,
as Nicole finally takes her iconic walk,
her parents are over the stadium.
Not in it.
They tried their best, for sure.
And, you know, I'm
just I'm glad
that they still decided to come
after two years of waiting,
all Nicole needed was another 40 minutes,
but time was never on her side.
Where are you guys?
Oh, no, I think I see them.
That's that's them.
It's been an unforgettable day
with twists and turns
and bitter disappointments.
Jessica But Nicole
and her family
find joy in the simplest way
by being together.
Hello?
It's me.
Hey. Hey.
No longer matters.
They missed the entire ceremony.
Life is about stories.
I made it, I made it...
This one will be told for years to come.
I told you over the phone, I said, like,
look, we try
we try, we try.
We will be there one way or another.
Even this morning,
we had no chance of getting on the airplane,
I say we've got to go.
It definitely
gives me a sense of closure.
Oh, I'm so happy right now.
Yeah, this is all I really wanted.
Nicole's Taiwan family
couldn't get to Seattle
for the makeup graduation
because of spiking COVID numbers
in that country.
But they are determined
to make the next commencement ceremony
Nicole is starting
grad school at the Udub in the fall.
Well, just ahead, come here to be active.
Have fun and enjoy
The third
most popular sport in the world.
We'll explain as City Stream continues.
If you're searching for activities
that are low impact, easy to learn
and guaranteed to make you smile.
We have three suggestions
and all happen at the same.
Seattle Park
Curious producers
Kathy Tuohey and Valerie Vozza explain.
Tucked away in the northwest
corner of Woodland
Park, just off
Aurora is an overlooked gem of a park.
It's a place
where you can learn
the ins and outs of croquet
have a go with lawn bowling,
or try your hand at bocce.
Don't be short, Mario.
It's the Woodland Park Lawn Bowling.
Bocce and Croquet Club.
And it all started back in 1940
with the opening of a lawn bowling club.
The club flourished for decades,
but then
popularity waned about 20 years ago.
Lawn bowling
just sort of falling off a little bit.
And they were having trouble
with membership numbers.
And meanwhile croquet was interested in
expanding and bocce
was looking for a home in the city.
And so now we're doing pretty good.
We've got probably around 130
total members.
A lot of those are Boccia players.
And then we have a
smaller cadre
of croquet and lawn bowlers.
We have a lease agreement with the city
and we provide public access hours,
We provide the facility
for rentals and other activities.
Throughout the
summer, there
are evening open houses
in all three sports.
Newcomers are invited to come out,
take a lesson, and learn a new game.
Tonight, it's croquet.
When most people think of croquet,
they think of the casual backyard game.
But the competitive version of croquet
is much different.
It's played on smooth greens with one
stake in the center
and six narrow
wickets making it
a game of both precision and strategy.
You could do what we call
promoting a ball.
What you're doing
is putting the ball
you hit in a better position Excellent.
That's exactly it.
People who are interested in continuing
can become members,
play more often
and improve their technique.
If you're intimidated
by the size of that wicket,
you might want to try rolling a
ball instead of striking it.
In lawn bowling, the
balls are called bowls.
And just to make it interesting,
they're not completely round.
There are a bias bowl,
which means that they're shaped
a little bit different on each side.
So the bowl can curl and break
as it hunts down
the target ball called the jack.
Each person has four bowls
And you deliver them alternately.
You keep alternating until
all four bowls for each
person are delivered.
and then you go down and you figure out
who's the closest one to the jack balls,
and they get the first point
60 and a half.
I really like the pace of play.
It's not like a super strenuous game,
but it's also very strategic.
It's all about your consistency
The third lawn
sport at the club, bocce,
is one of the oldest in the world.
And said to be
the third
most popular
sport worldwide after soccer and golf
We are Lower Woodland bocce club.
League night on Mondays,
we play
June, July and August
is our league night.
Bocce and lawn bowling
have a few things in common.
One being that
they both have a little ball
that all the big balls want to be around.
In bocce, it's called the Pallino
I throw the pallino out,
I throw my ball out,
and then the competition or my competitor
throws their ball out
until they get closer than mine
to the pallino.
If they do that, then it's my turn
Balls are
thrown underhand,
but in a variety of ways.
You can gently lag it,
you can bank it
or you can do whatever this is.
Oh, stop, stop, stop.
After each round the team
with the bocce
ball closest to the pallino
receives points
What's so appealing about this
ancient sport?
Anybody can play.
Our mom played till she was about 85
and so literally anybody could play.
Couldn't be more fun.
I got my 12 year
old son comes out and plays
with us as well.
We come every week
and we meet great people
who are really helpful
and teaching us and getting us, like,
excited about the game.
Yeah, it's a great time.
We love it.
We won. We're winners.
All the way
With such
a buffet of great games
available at the club
where should you begin?
Croquet is definitely the game.
Lawn bowling, I think, is
the more challenging.
Bocce is damn good.
I just love a ball rolling on
green ground in the sun
There's still time
to check out the open houses
and free lessons.
Tuesdays, our croquet.
Wednesdays our lawn bowling
and Fridays are all bocce.
So if you're interested,
head to the website for the Woodland
Park Lawn Bowling Club
and get the ball rolling.
The website is w p l b c dot org.
We're fortunate in Seattle
to have so many locations
to walk along the shoreline
Not only is a great exercise
that also offers a chance
to explore fascinating marine life.
One example.
Moon Snails.
Urban naturalist and author Kelly Brenner
shares tips on how to track down
these shell gastro pods
here at Constellation
Beach in West Seattle.
Looking for moon snails.
These snails like a nice sandy beach
because they dig down
under the sand
to look for their favorite food, which
is clams.
The moose now
itself is actually quite hard to find,
but there are lots of signs of moon snails
that you can find around on the beaches.
So here's one clamshell
that has been preyed on by a moon snail
for months.
Now drills down into the clam shell.
So it basically sucks out the clam
over a number of hours.
And here's
a good pile of the egg collars
that the moon snails make As they sit,
they start to disintegrate.
That's what they're supposed to do.
And as it disintegrates,
the eggs are released out into the water.
And hopefully
to create new little moon snails
They try to go down on the water
goes out.
So we'll have better luck
finding them down here, down lower
Here's one.
So I think what we
have here is a moon
snail actually laying eggs.
So most of it's underwater
under the sand,
but this little bit, it's attached.
That is so cool.
That was moving.
You can see it moving
So this was
a very incredibly found amount.
Now, actually laying eggs.
This is the moon snail's body.
This is a foot
and it's like a silky texture.
So apparently I have never seen him
actually lay eggs.
Apparently, when they are laying eggs,
they kind of flip up
because we obviously saw the foot.
And then when it was done,
it started to rotate
and the shell was back on the top again.
And now that it's all done,
it's starting to
right it itself
and now starting to dig back down into
the sand again.
And Seattle,
we're just ridiculously lucky
because we have so many
different habitats, from forests
to wetlands to the beach.
And we can have a sighting of an orca
one day.
We can have octopus,
we can have new to brings.
There's just so much to discover and
it's just so much fun.
From moon snails to moving up.
Seattle is a city of stairways.
We'll show you how
and where to get your steps in as city
Stream continues
If you've ever walked
this city, you've
probably noticed
Seattle has a lot of stairways,
some scale
steep hills, others link city
streets and all
provide instant access
to exercise and exploration.
We decided to tour the city's stairways
with some folks
so passionate about them,
they wrote a guidebook
producers Lowel Deo and Vincent Pierce.
Take a look
Seattle is
a city of hills
It is a complex
topography built by both man and nature.
At one point,
there was said to have been 3000
feet of ice above Seattle.
So it really sculpted
a lot of the landscape
and created a lot of hills
and to battle those hills.
Seattle has built stairs a lot of them.
OK. How many stairways?
I'm going to guess.
286.
There are roughly 650 publicly
available stairways in Seattle.
Oh, wow. I guess I was off a bit.
I guess there are some neighborhoods
I haven't tried.
Those 650 stairways
became a bit of an obsession
for Jake and Kathy.
How Romeo
or friends
don't come and visit us anymore
because we take them on too many stairway
walks.
It's an obsession
that began over 20 years ago.
Great view over here.
We just kind of
took off around the neighborhood
and here's the stairway
and it goes up the side of a hill
and disappears into foliage
and we're gone.
Where does this stairway lead to?
That first stairway led to another
and another and another.
And I'm looking out the window
and I go, Jake, look.
And there's just hillsides
full of stairway.
And I think that's what sparked us.
That spark ignited an idea.
Oh, and look for somebody with our book
oh, yeah. They got our book.
Come over here.
You're
meeting the authors of that book.
Did you know
did you know if you're
going for a walk on level?
It turns out Jake and Kathy weren't
the only ones obsessed
with Seattle stairways,
but nobody had written a guidebook.
All right.
So thanks.
The stairway slow you down
and take you to sites that you wouldn't
otherwise see.
But for some it's not about slowing down,
but speeding up.
I'm just trying to,
you know, get my fitness back.
I got a new knee back,
you know, early May
just an old, old fogy out here, you know,
try not to give up.
But when you're staring up at the 388
steps of Seattle's longest stairway
not giving up is easier said than done.
It's very steep.
This is the first portion of the stairs.
The lower half is actually
I think, twice
the length of this one
that you're looking at.
This is a brutal set of stairs here.
And, you know, people get a little too
you know, expect too much of themselves.
And this is a very humbling set of stairs
here.
It's a good day
to be outside and out of the gym
on any dry day in Seattle,
the stairs of the city transform
from mere route to bona fide destination.
Seattle
stairways aren't just
about kicking up your cardio, however.
Sarah, for some of us, you're
more like the senior citizen crowd.
I just take my time.
And taking your time has its own rewards,
I think.
I think the funnest thing
is the exploration.
Wandering around for a day
looking at different stairways
and different
nooks and crannies of the neighborhood.
Every stairway is different.
Every neighborhood is different.
What exactly gets you out into parts
of neighborhoods
you wouldn't have seen otherwise?
The stairways are like scenic
byways, byways that lead
you into tunnels
made of trees
through green spaces and urban oases
and around corners
that contain discoveries that every band.
This is a way to actually explore
with your own body
the topography of Seattle
and get the views
and also
see the neighborhoods
and all the quirky
things that you'll see by
doing it on foot.
So don't let gravity get you down.
There's a set of stairs out there
for everyone.
These stairs don't limit you.
You can only limit yourself.
You can start from the very top
and go halfway or a quarter way.
And when you reach the top
or the bottom, don't forget
that while Seattle built the stairways,
the stairways in turn built Seattle,
you see history
you see different kinds of architecture.
They're really important to what we are.
I like to see more people be aware
of our legacy of stairways in Seattle.
Because only if you use them and value
will you preserve them.
Let's go take a walk on the stairs
come on.
If you're ready to step up,
you can find resources on
how and where to explore Seattle's
outdoor staircases.
At Seattle.
Stairway Walks Dotcom.
We'll be right back.
And that wraps up
this episode of City Stream
from Magnuson Park.
I'm Linda Byron. Thank you for watching.