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Friday / photo / running — Comments Off
2
Jul 21

More phone photos to round out the week

A few raindrops on a maple leaf. I always joke — it’s more of a complaint than anything, you’ll see — that maples are nature’s first quitters. But the end of June is pushing it, even for leaves that just can’t go on anymore.

Probably it was the wind or the cicadas, which are all but gone now, but even still, that’s a disheartening sight to see before the neighborhood kids have narrowly avoided explosive amputation of their fingers on the Fourth.

I went for a run this evening and it was bad. Just my foot, calves, back And shoulder troubled me over two-and-a-half miles. Why do you ask?

When my back tightened up I decided to just lay down in the grass for a minute. It was a good idea, and it helped! The only problem was, where I was, in an empty little lot across from a park, there was no reason for passing motorists to see a guy laying in the grass.

So when a car came by I stuck my phone up in the air and took pictures. A signal, everything is fine and this is only slightly weird.

I had to take more than one picture like that before I could my back to cooperate, is my point. But, hey, that happens. The next outing will be better, because that happens too!

Just you wait and see.

cycling / photo / running / Thursday / video — Comments Off
1
Jul 21

Here are some phone photos

Here’s a little video clip I took the other day. We’d just come back from our trip, a long, long redeye flight, taken a nap and then went for a bike ride. And if you ever have the opportunity to fly, overnight, two-thirds of the way across the nation and then go for a bike ride, don’t.

The nap helped, don’t get me wrong. But it didn’t help that much.

Anyway, this was the plan. Torture ourselves on a plane and then chase each other on a hard ride.

This was one of those rides where I knew the route beforehand, and I knew where I wanted to shoot this little video, because of this curve and this sign.

Do you know how hard it is to chase someone down and how difficult it is to get into, and stay in, the right spot for a precise moment? I found this to be very difficult that day.

Anyway, I’m just cleaning some stuff off of my phone here. Last weekend, my Chick-fil-A cup was making faces at me.

The path nearest our house isn’t quite as nice as running just off the Pacific coast, but at least it had rained just before I went out for this little jog.

It was my first run in new sneakers. The blue Kinvaras have been promoted to walking-around shoes, while the old black walking-around Kinvaras have been demoted to shoes which are … just in the way. (The left heel on the black sneakers had just sort of … collapsed.) Meanwhile, I was approaching the end of the running lifespan of the blue ones, so it was time all the way around.

And these new shoes are fancy looking.

Saucony redesigns their shoes all of the time, which befuddles real runners and mystifies me, too. Not all change is good. Somewhere around Saucony 5 they just turned these things into really shoes, rather than something people wanted to run in. But now, the Kinvara 12s feel like the running shoes of old.

I wish I felt like the runner of old. Mostly I just feel … like I have new shoes.

You thought I was going to say old, didn’t you?

adventures / memories / photo / video / Washington / Wednesday — Comments Off
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 / history / maps / memories / photo / Tuesday / video / Washington — Comments Off
29
Jun 21

The lighthouses

Why, yes, we are on day four of milking our four-day trip that took place a full week ago. You’d rather I try to make office things interesting or something?

We romanticize lighthouses these days. They were critically important tools, and unique features of rugged and beautiful landscapes. Running them was often a solitary and always demanding life. Everything was regimented and the drudgery was vital to the mission. And, when we’re away from them it’s easy to idealize lighthouses.

When you get there, it can be a little different. They’re built where they are needed. That’s often far away from everyone else. And the entire effort toward making them operational was beholden to the keeper’s job and the purpose of the place. The creature comforts are sparse to say the least.

Here’s the North Head Lighthouse, which were were able to get right next to. They do tours in a non-Covid time. It’s a small lighthouse, the tours probably don’t take long.

In May of 1898, the North Head Lighthouse went into service as the primary navigation aid at the mouth of the Columbia River. It remains in operation today, but the system is automated, and augmented by GPS and other modern technologies.

The lighthouse offers sweeping views of the Pacific Ocean, Long Beach Peninsula, Columbia River Bar, and the northern Oregon Coast.

We could not get that close to the Cape Disappointment Lighthouse. It went into service in October of 1856, but it didn’t solve the problem. Ships continued to run aground, often with fatal consequence. The “Graveyard of the Pacific” makes for some tricky and violent waters. The largest ocean and the region’s largest river come together, and so here we are, Cape Disappointment.

As the crow flies, they are just two miles apart; apparently the closest two lighthouses on the Pacific coast.

Where we are at in that Cape Disappointment photograph figures into the sum total of American history. The Chinook tribe are the longest standing residents of which we know. They called Cape Disappointment Kah’eese. A few other names came and went, but the Disappointment name comes from a Western explorer, of course. He named it that because he thought there was no river there. Some explorer. Another, more successful, exploration wound up here. Lewis and Clark stood on these very rocks. The Corps of Discovery came right here, to the very edge of the continent.

Here’s a bit of video, just to give you a bit of a mental vacation, if you will. This is a shot of the North Head Lighthouse.

And here’s a quick video of the Cape Disappointment Lighthouse, and we’ve arranged for a freighter to turn into the Columbia River to add a bit of realism. (We pull out all the stops for you, dear reader.)

Tomorrow: more vacation highlights. We’re going to the beach.

adventures / memories / Monday / photo / Washington — Comments Off
28
Jun 21

More of the Bell Trail

Can I milk blog content from a casual, long getaway weekend for longer than the weekend lasted? We’ve met, right?

We skipped town on June 18th for the Pacific Northwest. We were experiencing painful heat indices when we left. And we returned on the 23rd, to much more pleasant temperatures. And we left Washington just before their brutal heat wave arrived, as it turned out. The moral to the story, as ever, if you hear we’re traveling somewhere and you are similarly interested in the place, go early or reschedule. Something always pops up in those places while we are there or just after.

The government fell in Italy while we were there once. Sure, you say, that’s because it was Thursday. And you’re right! And, what’s more, no one even noticed. But there were also austerity protests and riots in the streets of Greece while we were there in that same trip. The Yankee was in Thailand during the 2010 uprising — 70 or so killed and hundreds wounded. She also went to South Korea during the last round of saber rattling. We routinely beat big storms out of somewhere we’re visiting. I’m not saying we caused Brexit or wild fires in Alaska, but they are at least coincidences.

These stories, and there are a lot of stories like this, have all been derived by tourist-type trips. I stopped following chaos in-person years ago after I left the news. (I deleted five sentences with one ancient anecdote here that can best be summed up as: I miss it, conditionality.)

So here we are. Taking careful mini-vacations like people do — or used to do, or like vaccinated people do, or whatever. And wherever we go, something like this follows soon after. The Smith effect and recency bias are very real. Witness these oppressive heatwaves in a part of the country that’s probably just not prepared for them.

But when we were there during the first part of last week, it was lovely. The area was uncrowded, the scenery inspiring, the forecast each day was derived straight from the Chamber of Commerce.

And if you just walk that direction, you’ll be on the beach.

The paths and sidewalks and parking lots were all clean. You don’t notice it until you do, and then you can’t not notice it. You might not want to live there, but they make a great effort to make you want to come back and visit. (They are successful at this. Were it not for the layover and a long flight I’d say we should go again tomorrow.) This is the path that we ran on by the Pacific Coast. I ran about eight miles on this thing.

We touched on the Bell Overlook last week. There’s a brief beginner’s trail to it. You’re not there for the trail. You’re there for the interpretation.

Gymnasts. They just can’t help themselves from interpreting things. She’s even got her toes pointed there. I checked.

The trail is paved and short, but it’s always a wonder to walk through the woods in the Pacific Northwest.

The view is what you’re there for, and it does not disappoint. And if you didn’t see this last week on the site what have you been doing with your time on the Internet? You need to catch up on the catching up because it is really important that you are caught up.

There are a few small battery positions on the trail. They command great views of the Pacific.

But the view inside was even better.

Is it still a photobomb if it is deliberate, rehearsed and several versions are taken?

We’ll have to find that out another day, but not tomorrow. Tomorrow, we’re going to check out the lighthouses. (I’ve charted this out, I’m getting at least two more days of blog posts out of this trip. Go to that part of the world if you can get a chance, is what I’m saying. It’s a pleasant experience. But wait for this heat wave to pass.)