Wednesday

adventures / memories / photo / video / Washington / Wednesday — Comments Off on Beaches
30
Jun 21

Beaches

This is the last of the mini-vacation posts. We’ve been back from a four-day trip for a week. I’ve managed to coax a week and-a-half of posts, and 41 photos and a dozen videos out of it. And all of it is interesting and of vital importance to the Internet.

So we’ll relax today and unwind with a bit of time at the beach.

This is out on a morning run. I know there are other places like this, but one of my favorite features of the Pacific Northwest is how the hills and mountains just fall right into the ocean.

Where I’m from you’d have to drive more than three hours from the coast to see any hill of note. So looks like that always intrigue me.

Here’s a bit more of that path that runs along the coast. The ocean is just off to the left there, just a few yards away. And yet, there are little hills here, and it’s made of a sand and soil stable enough to put down asphalt.

And while those pines and firs are familiar, this scrubby, tall grass is something of a new treat.

You know, another thing you don’t see anywhere but on a coast is sculpture like this. Two hundred miles inland it’d make no sense to see boat bumpers hanging on a light post. That far away, you’d roll your eyes at industrial fish netting on the wall of anything other than a Long John Silver’s. And this would be right out.

Here we are, down on the beach one day. That’s not me fishing, of course.

And while any of my photography professors would say I blew the rule of thirds in that picture, I nailed the golden ratio. That guy’s face lands in the Fibonacci circle, even though I was far from considering that while I was on the beach. Also, you’ll note his fishing pole is point up at the sun, and his eyes are looking that same way, which directs your eyes up to the sun, which just appears in the corner. Only some of those things were on my mind while trying to keep the sand out of my shoes. It’s a pretty happy series of accidents that came together to create a fairly dynamic and decent composition. And sand got in my shoes anyway, as it should be on the beach.

Here’s a video of that beach, from almost that same spot.

Again, that hill just falls right into the sea. There’s something wonderful about that.

And here’s a bit more, just in case it has been too long since you’ve seen the ocean.

It’s been a week for me, maybe it’s already too long.

adventures / memories / photo / Washington / Wednesday — Comments Off on Catching up, last Saturday
23
Jun 21

Catching up, last Saturday

Here’s the deal, I’m writing this in arrears. We deliberately ratcheted down our screen time for a few days, but we saw a lot of lovely things and I wanted to share them here. The easiest way to do that, I figured, is in sequence. So, yes, this is published for Wednesday, June 23, the day we returned. But this particular post covers Saturday, June 19th.

Do you remember where you were on Saturday? I do. Here’s the proof.

As we previously discussed, we’re on a trip that’s a surprise to me. We flew yesterday, landing in Seattle and spending the night there. But it wasn’t our final destination. And we were on the plane to Seattle, our second plane of the trip, before I learned that much about where we were going.

We got a rental car this morning and visited the famous Pike Place Market.

That’s where The Yankee and I met her second cousin. She lives nearby, and took us out for lunch. It was a family introduction and a family reunion.

She is the author of eight books, meaning she’s got plenty of stories to share. She told us all about her childhood in Alaska, re-meeting my mother-in-law as adults, her travels abroad, her family, history and architecture. It was a pleasant lunch conversation with a lovely woman.

And we did some people watching on the balcony of the Copacabana, a Bolivian restaurant in the market. It’s been a family-owned joint for longer than I’ve been alive. And, on this day, the line to get in was short. In general, there were people milling about, but Seattle is apparently a city still emerging. The market, we were told, did not yet look like the crowded place it would be on a brilliant June Saturday.

At Copacabana, try their fritanga. It had fresh-tasting hominy — from a can, I’m sure, but still good. And the pork was simmered in an Andean cumin sauce. It was nice and mild, and I wish there was more of it. Quite tasty.

I haven’t had hominy in ages. Saw it on the menu and blocked out everything else. Hominy, I believe comes from Mesoamerica. I don’t know when it made it’s way down to Bolivia, but it’s nice that it did. It worked well here. Also, hominy is more nutritious than other corn products. (So grab some today!)

After we said our goodbyes we hoped in the rental car and drove a quick three hours outside of Seattle on a sunny summer day to Long Beach, Washington. You can find it down near the Oregon border.

Our rental condo was just 300 yards through some tall grass and low pines from the beach.

May I present to you, the beach:

I don’t guess I’ve seen the ocean since July of 2019. The seashore isn’t a spiritual destination for me like it is for some people, but even so, two years seems much too long.

Here are some panoramas of the beach. Click to embiggen.

I stood there on the beach making these changes to the photo, admiring a view I’d never see, when the actual beach was before me. And isn’t that a silly thing to do? Once more, click to embiggen.

In the next post, we’ll see a bit of Pacific coast history, and more Pacific Northwest beauty.

Instagram / memories / Twitter / Wednesday — Comments Off on When things float to the surface
16
Jun 21

When things float to the surface

I don’t even recall what I was looking for, but it wasn’t in the same subdirectory. Anyway, I ran across this shot from the Crest Building. It was 2002 or 2003. And I really don’t recall what this was about.

I’m sure it was a very important news story. Let’s go with it being a Roy Moore story. Could be a Don Siegelman story. Or a Richard Scrushy story.

I was doing a lot of work covering people destined for infamy, or worse, just then. It could have been an election piece.

One of those guys, the chief justice of the state supreme court, was removed from the bench. Two of them, a governor and a captain of industry, wound up in jail. The state’s narrowest gubernatorial election was held. The difference was something like 3,000 votes, as I recall. And there was a sublimely ridiculous mayoral race. It came down to a runoff. One candidate refused to do media interviews and she, ultimately got trounced.

I was at her watch party that night and reminded her that, if only she’d talked to us …

She ran again a few years later and did do interviews and finished a distant, distant third.

I’m looking at that 2003 mayoral field. Almost everyone in it was a mayor or a city council member (the glacial impasse between mayor and council was a big issue that election cycle) or has been convicted of something, or a combination of the three.

Good journalism. Good times.

Speaking of which …

cycling / photo / Twitter / Wednesday — Comments Off on So much is unknown from any given point of view
9
Jun 21

So much is unknown from any given point of view

The perspective of walking and distance is an interesting thing. I park in a parking deck when I am at work. The deck is one block from my building. As I crossed onto the middle block today I noticed a fire truck down near where I was walking. And as I got closer I was having this on-again/off-again conversation about how the fire truck was positioned.

It was parked. The lights were on.

It is blocking the entrance and exit to the parking deck.

No it isn’t.

Yes it is. No it isn’t. Yes it is. And so on until, finally, I was there and could tell that the truck was blocking the entrance and exit.

There’s only one. It’s a small parking deck. There are three lanes, two are now devoted to entering and one to leaving. And the truck was blocking the one exit and middle entrance, like so.

I was parked on the second level. Near my car was a campus police cruiser. Unoccupied, but running. Not in a spot, but at one of those hasty angles police sometimes use. It was near another car and one of the corner stairwells. Downstairs were two fire fighters walking out. And another guy, who looked young, had a backpack and a low key fire department shirt on, just loitering at the entrance. You can see him silhouetted above.

And we’ll never know what took place in the parking deck today. It’s a mild curiosity, but, on the other hand, this experience could have been a really lousy day for someone. So that walking perspective is important here, too.

Someone could collect a list of stories like this, little tales with no known outcome, and write an anthology series. I wish I’d started this years ago.

But I suppose I was always too preoccupied with my other You’ll Never Know mind game: What’s the closest I’ve ever come to unwittingly walking over buried treasure?

Boats would count, too. When was I closest to accidentally discovering a lost Spanish galleon?

It’ll make you wonder, that game. But a short-story anthology might actually be more rewarding.

We went for a bike ride this evening. The Yankee has all but gotten her TT bike dialed in, as I feared. And, as I have prophesied, I can’t keep up with her in such a highly refined aero position. She’s too powerful. Also, let’s also blame the gearing. But not my lack of fitness. This too, requires perspective.

That, I also noted on Twitter, is an old gif, and a different bike There was no way in the world I could get my phone out today. I was working too hard to make new art.

So this is how it works now. I have to wait for hills, or rollers, where I know I am sometimes just the tiniest bit better, and really work hard there and close down her advantage incrementally. (It takes many hills.) The rest is guile. Descend those little hills, corner aggressively, win a sprint when she’s just out for her ride and doesn’t know I’m trying to race back ahead of her. Which is how I found myself attacking in a left-hand turn three-miles from the house at 30+ miles per hour.

In her Strava notes, she wrote that it was categorized as an easy ride. It was not easy for me. This is what it takes just to keep up. Perspective.

memories / photo / Wednesday — Comments Off on Re-working an older project
2
Jun 21

Re-working an older project

You might recall I made this, last October.

The idea was I wanted something to hold the little card that opens unlocks doors in our building on campus. Pulling out my wallet every time was getting old. First off, this is wood, so it was easier to clean — when we were still concerned about such things — rather than my quality leather. Second, pulling the wallet out all the time was just getting taxing. Once someone snuck a peak at my driver’s license, just a casual can’t-help-but-see-it sorta thing and I decided there are limits to small talk.

So I needed something else. Well, I have a small stack of business card holders, but I wanted something I could just slip in the front pocket of jeans, so it needed to be a bit smaller. I wound up working up that thing you see above, and I wedged in four or five business cards, just to keep everything snug in there. And it served me well.

The only real problem was that I used the softest wood this side of pine, so I decided not to long after I took that photo, that I should probably seal it. What I applied yellowed almost right away. It wasn’t my favorite look. The problem with that is there are two possible treatments I used on it, and I don’t remember which one caused the yellowing. So now what?

Well, it sits in my pocket 98 percent of the time and no one has been around anyway since almost everyone else is working from home, so it wasn’t a big deal. But this week I decided to sand off that poly and put something else on it. So I sanded it raw with an 80-grit and then worked back up to 600. And then I put on some wood conditioner and, later, a dark stain and poly blend.

Only it didn’t take very well. So I went back for a second coat and applied it different, and it worked much better, aside from the inevitable human error. Because making mistakes is the only way I’ll really re-learn things like stain application that I’m sure I was taught in the seventh grade.

So I sanded it down again. Only this time I didn’t do it completely. I’m trying the shabby look. Why, I should put this on Pinterest.

I would, except I can’t seem to get my camera and lights to cooperate nicely today. But it doesn’t it look like something you’d inexplicably see on a shelf at Hobby Lobby?

Oh, look, this one is a bit better.

And in a week or two I’ll get tired of this shabby look and then do the stain and poly blend properly. Or at least better, and then retroactively justify the errors in the application process. (Take that extra little drip on the artisanal curve, I like that sloppy error!) At which point I will then probably jam the card holder in a pocket before it’s completely dry and ruin a pair of jeans.

Anyway, that’s what I did this evening, aside from pet needy cats.

How was your Wednesday?

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