Unique opportunity to see inside the Ballard Locks

Meghan Walker Ballard

While the immensely popular “Inside the Locks Tunnels” tours aren’t happening this year, the Locks is offering detailed presentations about how the Locks were designed and what it takes to keep them operating.

The presentations start in the visitor center, followed by a “special VIP tour” with the Locks engineers. “A rare chance to see what challenges they face and how they repair 100 year old systems,” the event info reads.

The presentations are being offered only while the large lock is closed for maintenance and gate repairs. There will be four more chances to see the presentation on the next two Fridays (Nov. 9 and 16) at 10am and 2pm.

Photo from last year’s maintenance, from the Ballard Locks Facebook page

37 thoughts to “Unique opportunity to see inside the Ballard Locks”

  1. Pretty much only the junkies hanging out in the Commons park and the stay in bed moms could make those times. Funny how the working people in Ballard are always punished why the lazy people get all the rewards.

      1. Please ignore any comments posted by me as “Fake”! Thank you all so much. I love you all and don’t want to upset anyone. I am an idiot and can’t help myself. I am going to hell I know this but I can’t stop. I am so ashamed.

    2. A different take: anybody with a decent job could get away from work for a couple hours, especially with a couple weeks notice. Only losers couldn’t attend this.

        1. Yeah, why doesn’t the Park Service pay any amount of overtime so that there are tours morning, noon and night, seven days a week? Why isn’t this a national priority!!!!! Mike O’Brien’s fault, right? Him and George Soros.

          You moan about everything. “The food there is terrible! And such small portions!” Do you realize that they didn’t even offer this tour to the general public last year? Or any year in the last 102 years? The Park Service figures out a way to offer the public a new thing that has never even existed before, and all you want to do is carp that it’s not enough.

          Miserable, self-loathing complainer. You never leave the keybaord anyway, any time of the day or any day of the week. It wasn’t like you were going to go in the first place. Are you even in Ballard at all? Even in Seattle? No.

    3. Dang, socky, it took you five and a half hours to think of complaining about the hours! You’ve been online posting right here, without interruption, from 8 am until now, the whole time trying to think of something, anything, you could btttch about with this Locks thing.

      Google says you moaned about “stay in bed moms” when a cruise ship went through the Locks a few months ago, as “Concerned Ballard Millennial”. Three months earlier, same name, you whined about Ballard Bridge maintenance. Whinged about High school & moms, too, and then when they rescheduled the bridge maintenance, again with the stay in bed mom bellyaching, calling yourself “Concerned Ballard Parent”. Two months ago you carped about stay in bed moms as “Lex Seneff”. As “Dunder Mifflin” you griped about “soyboys, blue haired cat moms, and dorks in crocs”.

      You win snivleing little beeotch of the year!

      (Here’s a tip, troll: You know the Park Service does these tours, right? I don’t know how it is in St Petersberg, but here in the US. 10 am to 4 pm Monday through Friday are the normal Park Ranger public access hours. Our tax money pays them, you know? If we wanted them working late and on weekends, we’d be footing the overtime bill.)

      Let me know if you want me to give you something to cry about.

    1. Again, socky, maybe that’s how they do it in Mother Russia. Over here, Washington doesn’t run the Locks. It’s Federal. Army Corps of Engineers and US Park Service. Those of us who live here know that. You completely suck at pretending to be one of us. You can’t get the most basic commplace facts right.

      You know it took Uff da like five minutes to prove he really lives here? Easy. But for you? Impossible.

      LOL…WA government? The Ballard Locks? What a dumbass.

  4. Hey, if you look closely you can see elenchos…way down in there…if you squint really really hard…zhe’s in there trying to argue with locals about how there “isn’t a rat problem and only sockpuppets even care about the Locks anyways”.

  7. Today’s 10:00 VIP Engineering Talk & Tour was a hit, capacity group of 25 had a great, albeit cold and wet tour by Engineer David Chapman. Thanks Dave.

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