This past weekend was Opening Day of the Seattle boating season. This tends to create traffic chaos in the Montlake neighborhood, which leads to confusing newspaper headlines like Opening Day closure. I remember many years ago asking a boat-owning colleague, “So, when does boating season close?” “Oh, it doesn’t close.” “Then why do they have an Opening Day for something that hasn’t closed?”

“It gives the slacker fair-weather boaters a target date to get their boats back in condition. It really should be called something like Bring Out Your Boats Day.”