Mt Ellinor

One of the things I've missed most about the North West is the view. I love mountains. I grew up with the Olympics 25 miles west, the Cascades 50 miles east, and Mt Rainier 60 miles south. Satoko needed a day to herself and I needed a day in the mountains, so Linus and I went up to the top of Mt Ellinor. Mt Ellinor is a 5866ft peak on the south west end of the Olympics. The trail head starts at 3500ft and after a steep 1.6 miles your at the top.

We had to admire the cool bike on the ferry. This girl looked like she had already been on the rode for quite some time.

We had just ridden the monorail a couple days before. During a water break, Linus found a perfect log. This is him being the monorail speeding from westlake (a rock) to the space needle (a water bottle.)

This is about half way up. About this time he started climbing himself and gave my shoulders a break. If anyone knows French, let us know what his shirt says.

After about two hours, we finally made it to the top and got the prize. The best view of the Olympics. This is Mt Olympus 20 miles north west and about 2000ft higher.

We took about an hour break. Ate a couple sandwiches and bananas. Linus mostly sat and ate trail mix.

He must have been hungry because he wouldn't share with the chipmunks.

"The Mountain" characteristically floating above the haze.

Here is my poorly stitched panoramic. I was cheap and used my wide angle 20mm lens along with its distortion and ghosts. When you travel across a country and sweat a gallon of water to get to the top of a mountain, don't try to save $2 worth of film. Put on the good old 50mm.

This is a hand held night shot on ISO 50 Velvia, but still makes me homesick.

First things first

It's been almost a year now and we finally made it back home to visit Seattle.

We had ten days to do it all so why not start by wandering aimlessly on the waterfront.


We soon found ourselves eating mini donuts under a giant squid at the market.

We went to the children's museum and had lunch in the space needle. At least the $25 minimum does not apply to two year olds -- ouch.

There was an Indian family who that I was taking a picture of them.

At last we made it to the locks.

Walks/Rides

It's time to catch up on my old pictures and remember the summer.


We went down to West York High to ride around the track. It was quite a bit cooler under the bleachers.


Just chill'n in front of the school


Coming back home.


We went for another ride on the Heritage Rail Trail and found a rather hearty flower.


Some old abandoned building along the way. I just got a fixed 20mm lens which is pretty awesome.

Catcher in the Rye

This last week, I read "The Catcher in the Rye". It is a good book. The format reminded me of "Mrs Dalloway" which, in a way, is a complimentary story to "Catcher". In the game of Set, these books would be a match in that there are many parallels and anti-parallels. "Dalloway" was alright, but I find it easier to relate to a troubled teenage boy than to a middle aged woman.


Back to "Catcher". The story is narrated by the anti-hero, Holden Caulfield, as he wanders around New York City for a couple days after being kicked out of a prep school. It has made me think a lot about the difficulty in transitioning into college and adult life. I managed to do it but it took a bit longer than normal. Yesterday at work, we were discussing the SAT's and looked it up wikipedia's article on the test. It had a graph showing average SAT scores vs family income by race.

The graph clearly shows a disparity. Income makes a difference: 250 points for an Asian and about 130 for a white. In 1995, the mean household income in the United States was about $42k. At this income the difference between a white and a black is about 150 points. There are a couple reasons for this disparity, but the fact that a black kid from a $70k+ family is likely to do better than a white kid from a zero income family is rather shocking.

Holden Caulfield had all the privileges of an upper middle class white American and he had trouble; how much harder is it for a kid whose parents are not fighting for him or her. Recently I read a BBC article about a report on social mobility showing that high paying professional jobs (doctor, lawyer, ...) are increasingly being held by those born into wealth. Despite the availability of education, the gap is widening.

In the evening, I was thinking about this while I mowed my suburban lawn. A young lady interrupted me trying to get me to subscribe to the local newspaper. She was an intelligent looking african american who recently graduated from high school with honors. She was trying earn a scholarship to pay for college (by getting paper subscriptions?) I didn't want to waste her time by probing for more details so declined her offer and wished her luck in her studies. I felt the normal guilt and my first thought was to give her the excuse that I already have education debt at about half my annual salary.

She smiled and thanked me for my time. As she walked away, I saw her partner working the other side of the street. He wore a pink and orange mohawk; my heart sunk. It is a pretty conservative (old) neighborhood and he could have made more use of his Friday night by watching summer reruns. Is this how the rich keep the poor poor -- by getting the entertainment industry to convince kids that its better to find themselves and then express what they've found rather than earning money for college. (There's a conspiracy theory for everything)

I wanted to call the girl back, sit her down and give her all of my sagely advise on how to be successful in college and life. I'd feel like a jerk so I didn't. Then I had half the lawn to mow to formulate the lecture I'd give. Later that night a high school friend uploaded to facebook a picture with me in it. I had equally stupid hair. I could see myself back then trying to get people to take me seriously while I wore a mop on my head. I was then able to sleep easily knowing that I know nothing. I guess I grew out of being a teenager eventually; I can't be a Catcher in the Rye; I guess we just have to let the kids fall of the cliff and help them up when they do.

Appalachian Trail

On Independence Day, Linus and I went looking for some mountains. The Appalachian Trail is about an hour west of us. I'd like to hike the whole thing someday, but Linus now seems to only have the patience to hike about one mile on my shoulders.

I tried to show him how to use walking sticks to encourage him to hike on his own feet. Unfortunately, he had more fun using really long hiking sticks from upon my shoulders.


After a while he discovered that the trail was marked with white blazes and then made a great navigator. After that he claimed to not get lost but said that mom was lost because she couldn't see the painted trees from home.


We finally made it to the end of the park (1.5 miles with 500 feet of climb).


He was then ready to go home so that he could say, "Hi mama, I'm home." At first he wanted me to get the car, but after a couple crackers he consented to walk down with me -- again, mostly on my shoulders. After a long nap in the car, he told his mother all about the Mountain he climbed.

Suggested Summer Reading List

This is a great book and should be read in the summer. The hot muggy Petersburg weather seems to be a major antagonist in the story and the book is best understood when you can empathize with Raskolnikov. So turn off the A/C, clime up to the attic and get a taste of the agony that can be avoided by not axing old ladies.


If I had the time, I'd read this every summer. I cannot write a comment that would do this book justice, so I'll just say read it. This is one book where the movie actually comes close to capturing the story, but it leaves to much out.


I read this on a summer day shortly after I got out of school. Are you a pig, a horse, or a sheep? Four legs good; two legs bad! Four legs good; two legs bad!


This summer I plan to read (finish) Huck Finn. I got through about half of it during six sigma training at work, but the instructor caught some of the others reading emails during the class and made us turn the computers off. At least I got something out of the first half of the week.

Fireflies

This weekend I saw fireflies for the first time in my life. They started glowing around dusk. I tried to photograph them in the back yard but the lighting was terrible, so I drove off to the Heritage Rail Trail. Entire trees were flashing like it was Christmas. It was amazing, but too dark to get much except for a bunch of dots. It took a while to get used to the bats as well.





These above images are composites made from the "peaks" of nine separate 10 second exposures.



I snapped a pic of the moon (with earth-shine) on the walk back.

It had been a while since I used the digital camera and forgot to bring the 50mm lens with a hard stop at infinity which is invaluable when trying to focus at night.