Socks In Sandals

I headed to Oregon to help Jim move into his new house in Vancouver. We knocked that project out in a day which left Sunday open to play. We rallied up with some Portland friends (Joe, Lindsay, Freed, and Ella) for hiking off of HWY 84 - a popular spot called Eagle Creek. Turned out to be a great day to be doing anything outdoors and the trail was spectacular with a constant supply of waterfalls and steep cliffs to admire. The trail was a gentle incline which made the journey not too bad of a thigh burner, 14 miles total. Took some pics which are below and more can be found on Freed’s and Lindsay’s blogs as well.

Filed under: Recreation on June 16th, 2008 | Leave Comments »

New Belgium Brewery took their Urban Assault Bike Event to Seattle for the first time last weekend. Annajo was my teammate for team Cutters (from old 80’s movie). Other ‘rival teams’ consisted of Jack and Clem with their brothers - we actually stayed together for the most part.

The event consisted of 5 known checkpoints and 3 mystery check points. You had to figure out the puzzle at the check-in to find the first mystery check point, and then solve another clue at that check point to find the other… rinse and repeat.

Knowing the first checkpoint and the 5 others the day before the race, we hopped on the scooters and plotted our course. It was a great day to be cruising around on the scooters. But then my mp3 throttle cable snapped. So, we didn’t get to check out the whole course, but got the hill part mapped out. Spent some time waiting for a toe instead. Hurray AAA.

The race kicked off at 9:00 am and since we got an average score on the impossible pre-race test, we started in wave 2 of 3 - so 2.5 minutes behind the lead! We weren’t in it to win it though - just was there for bikes and beer.

At each checkpoint, a whimsical obstacle had to be completed before moving on as well as 2 riddles to be sorted out. Mad props to Freed for standing by with New Belgium beer knowledge, and Christian for… well trying to Google the random local coffee shop. That one was impossible, but we ‘overheard’ the answer!

To sum up the day - we all had a BLAST! Total riding distance was around 20 miles encompassing Fremont, Capital Hill, Greenlake, and Ballard. Couple hills in the course indeed, the biggest being Denny Way.

Filed under: Events, Road Bike on May 19th, 2008 | 6 Comments »

Last weekend, we rallied up with Annie and Family at the Science Center for their Strange Matters exhibit. It was cost effective to get the membership package, rather than just paying for the group to go in once; so we now have free passes to go back to future events! whoohoo!

The event was full of fun hands on exhibits. They didn’t get into the why or how of things - but gotta remember it is to spark interest in kids for science. Also, good excuse to ‘be a kid’ for a day - not that have any problems doing that.

We hit up the IMAX as well. Say a 3D river adventure through the Grand Canyon. The movie was intended to get the word out that our water supply nationally is extremely low. I didn’t realize that the Colorado River dries out before ever reaching the ocean! That wasn’t supposed to be the shocker, other facts about lake / reservoir size decreasing was outlined - but that’s something. The 3D part of the movie was fun and kept everyone entertained as well. Can’t go wrong with splashing rapids in 3D!!!

We ended the outing with a late lunch down on the waterfront. Me and Austin ran up the big stairs on the waterfront, just to be sure we were tired out.

Filed under: General on April 11th, 2008 | Leave Comments »

Beware of the Ides of March. This has been a bit odd Spring weather… frozen temperatures and snow! But, it’s spring and that means spring recreation. Wednesday I had to hit a bucket of balls, I wasn’t gonna let my new driver suffer the same fate as my old one. So… after many ‘fixes’ - I think I got the bugs worked out at the driving range. Just had to got back to the basics with a turn my foot to even out. Go ball go!

Thursday, we hit the trail via roller blades to ‘cross-train’ for Ski 2 Sea. I felt a lot more comfortable on those wheels this go around - didn’t have the constant sensation of falling.

But the snow began to fall again on Friday, meaning that the ski hills were getting a glorious amount of snow. Baker had gotten the most, and hadn’t reached above 19 degrees - meaning light fluffy snow! This opportunity couldn’t be passed up. We hit the ‘Ham Friday night; saw some of the crew, but kept it an early night. Oh man, what a nice day it was up on the hill! It is rare to enjoy that much light snow!

Sunday, even though the snow was off and on again back down in the Lynnhood; we stuck to the plan of roller blading again. It was a bit wet, therefor a bit slippery, but 2+ hours of exercise after a heavy day of ski’n felt good to do. The sun broke thru at the end of the ride as well.

Now it is Monday, back at work… and the sun is shining… just mocking me!

Filed under: General, Golf, Recreation on March 31st, 2008 | Leave Comments »

Annajo has gotten the fish tank bug and has added some fish to the wet world; 5 Green Chromis and a Pearly Jawfish. The green chromis are fairly popular in salt water tanks as they are an active schooling fish that cheapy adds a lot of color to the tank. But the jawfish, now called Hermon, is a fish I had to get after seeing them in Billy’s tank. He buries himself in the sand and fortifies his entrance with rocks and debris from the tank bottom. At first, he kept building in locations that was hard to see him - I refuse to have any more cool fish that hide. So I messed with his forts until he relocated to his current spots - well in view from the front.

I also finally replaced my 10k light, so now I’m having a bit of a rapid bloom of algae. I found a new salt water only store in Lake Stevens where they have in stock rare items like sand sifting starfish. I got some more crabs on the way, so things should get back under control shortly. I should have cleaned the glass at least before taking the vid clip, but well, I’m lazy sometimes. An impulse buy while at the store, I got Bozo (the evil clown fish) an anemone to call home. The anemone has moved himself to an odd spot, but he’s got a firm grip - so I think he’s happy, he’s in front so I’m happy; hopefully he hangs in there…

Filed under: Fish are Friends, saltwater on March 27th, 2008 | Leave Comments »

Over the Winter, we had been doubling up on indoor due to field closures. Our outdoor team was split in two to field two indoor teams; as indoor requires less players. Last Thursday we played the last game of that session… against the other half of our outdoor team. Some might say that they had the better squad - but those people would be wrong since we won! Yeah, okay… we were surpised too. It was one of the more fun games though - just like a pick-up ball of hoops at the park.

Still going to play Tuesday indoor; first game of the new session started yesterday. LB had posed an inspirational challenge over the winter just for Tuesday sessions. He kept a goals scored tally on the refrigerator. It was really more of a competition between him and Scott - as I am normally… hum… okay fine, I don’t score much. But actually over the Winter I scored a few more than normal, but Scott was on FIRE!!! So he takes the trophy (still to be developed). But after our win last night, first game of the new session… I’M NUMBER ONE. Another player on our team had a hat-trick, but he doesn’t count towards the fridge list. So I’m soaking up the bragging rights for now. Check the goal tracker on the right! Go me!

Filed under: Soccer on March 12th, 2008 | 2 Comments »

The first ride is always the hardest, but yesterday we got on the road bikes for the first time in’08. The Inter Urban Trail is just a few blocks from the pad, so figured that a nice pedal while get’n some errands out of the way would be a good use of a half-ways decent (weather-wise) Sunday.  Hit both the malls in the area - which both are on the trail; hmm… that is interesting. There are also several housing developments popping up along the trail as well.

My bike computer was on the glitch. I used my GPS to track speed; but had to Gmap the path to see how far we went. Looks like 18 miles or so, not too shabby for the first ride I’d say. Explains why my butt is so soar today!

Filed under: Road Bike on March 10th, 2008 | Leave Comments »

I had the opportunity to play in a golf scramble in Palm Springs today. I know, what a bummer. It was the first time I’ve played since summer, and my practice shots were, well terrible. Others on the range were looking over their shoulders for my next wild ball! The first 9 holes, my drives were everywhere, quite useless to the team - my irons were fine though, so I was able to contribute in that way still. My lack of driving abilities set me up to win the ’shortest drive award’ though!

The other two I was playing with were driving really well, so they hit first. Both hit long balls for us to choose from. So… that left the ’shortest drive’ award to aim for. There was still 130 yds of rough to clear to reach the fairway, so a total duff wouldn’t win. I swung my 7 iron easy and clean. Plop and short roll. Under 10 yds on the fairways - PERFECT. That hit wasn’t beat all day… not that others were aiming for it I suppose.

The back nine I swung the club rentals of the guy I shared a cart with. Well, the good news is that I could blast to 250+ consistently with the 3W… I mean, what a difference. I was on fire off the tee box! The bad news… Callaway Big Bertha woods are not cheap. But really, the price of a happy golf game… priceless… right?

Filed under: Golf on February 24th, 2008 | 1 Comment »

I stepped outside to catch the total lunar eclipse at the right time. But… by the time I figured out how to capture a half ways decent picture of the moon, it had slipped just past total eclipse. Go figure, an eclipse in a dark night sky… hard to photograph. I forgot to grab the tripod on the way out to hold my camera still to allow me to use a slow shutter speed; and I didn’t want to burn more time to go get it - but the good ol’ Ranger’s curved hood had enough options for me to balance the base of the camera on to center the moon with my 300mm lens. Anyways, not a breath taking view, but a rare one - so worth taking a moment to take a glance at. I know, I know… this phenomena is unique to the Earth and Moon - only one in our galaxy… okay, it is kind of cool.

Filed under: General on February 20th, 2008 | 1 Comment »

The plan for Saturday was to hit up Stevens Pass for some snow skiing. The catch was, with all this snow that has been dumping, they couldn’t keep the roads open. By the end of Friday, all ski resorts in Washington declared that they weren’t going to be open on Saturday. But who needs snow when you got water right? Me, Jack, and Matt changed the ski plans to dive plans. The party goes on.

Went to Mukilteo - the Muk. I would not recommend this dive, not much out there. But it was fun just to go underwater; I had not been diving in while. This was the first time I used my camera case for diving! I opted not to go down with my light, as I knew I would be fiddling with the camera. Well… I need to figure out a way to mount my light with my camera - my pics were very dark and murky. The water visibility was okay, but the shots came out dark and green - those that actually were in focus.

The first trip down, rather uneventful. The second dive, we surface swam out to a buoy and dropped down to a sunken boat about 115 feet below. The decent was dark and I had no light, as mentioned above. Jack and Matt’s lights didn’t help either as no dive light can shoot that far through the water. So, we just followed the line down into the darkness. It was kind of creepy, but exciting at the same time. Once down, the boat was just 20′ ski boat - must have been down there awhile, had a fair amount of growth. Jack tried to start it, it was broke, and the steering was shot… geez. My photo attempts didn’t pan out, way too dark.

After investigating the boat and the fish that were hang’n out down there, we headed towards the shore. This was a much better dive than the first. We found the Geo Dome that was fabled to be ‘worth the trip’ but I dunno about that claim. There was a memorial statue in the middle that was kind of neat in that surroundings. All in all, fun to get wet and under water again, but won’t be going back to the Muk.

oops, got a couple problems with the vid clip, will re-post it later

Filed under: Diving, Recreation on February 11th, 2008 | 3 Comments »