Perils of Caffeine in the Evening

Hot around here, headed for the mid-90s today and over the weekend.  We’re not a tropical people, and we’re all a little stunned by this spate of sunny, warm weather.  We feel guilty about it, and don’t quite trust it.  Many continue to pursue their normal arctic activities - running at lunchtime, for instance - and in doing so look a little like Zamboni machines trying to smooth the Sahara for a hockey game.

I’m flying to Detroit Saturday, then to Milwauke to work next week, and usually when I head to the midwest this time of year, I look with dread (or don’t look at all) at the area’s weather.  This time, however, it looks like I’ll be going there to cool off.

I’ve been playing around with the layout here a little bit, sort of like rearranging the furniture and repainting.  I’ve been afraid of completely blowing up the template by changing much, leaving the site a smoldering heap of disconnected bytes.  Nothing against Salon, but I’ve been wanting to get rid of that standard Salon banner with the creepy glistening lips for a long time, and finally took the plunge.  I feel like I’ve defaced a billboard, and Clear Channel’s private detectives will be breaking down my door any minute, but I also feel the sense of accomplishment that would accompany spray-painting a moustache on an Ann Coulter poster. 

I’m a little braver now with the HTML, maybe things will look less drab around here.

Saw this guy on the Paintbrush Canyon hike as I came around a switchback.

Click any picture to enlarge
This is what we call a “moosejam”. The Moose of the Hour is the black dot in the middle of the pasture. We were on the last leg of a hike and saw the moose just as he crossed the road. We stayed for 15 minutes, and watched the traffic jam develop.

I had occasion to come back through the park again in September while helping my son ferry a car from Ohio to Seattle. He and I took some time off the road to do a hike, and espied the pair below.

Some evil person made a stop at the Krispy Kremeatorium on the way to work yesterday and plopped two dozen fresh donuts in my client’s lunchroom.  I hadn’t had breakfast and had purchased a bran muffin on the way into the office, but it didn’t have a chance next to the exquisitely empty calories of one of their signature fresh glazed donuts.

People were making secret sorties into the lunchroom all morning, some only minutes after loudly exhorting officemates to tackle and physically restrain them if they made even the slightest move in that direction.

Another popular technique that emerged was the “cut just a bite off and leave the knife and the partial donut for other dainty appetites”.  I forget which law it was in the demonology of high school geometry that averred that if you repeatedly progressed halfway to your goal, then half again, etc, you’d never get there.  The last chocolate-covered donut in the box suffered that wasting death.  In Oregon, it could have requested intervention and a quick demise, but here in Washington, a forlorn, deflated chunk of chocolate goo was still writhing in the box at 5.  Perhaps the cleaning people were more humane.  Or shamelessly hungry.

These soft summer evenings of seemingly unlimited daylight are too nice to sit inside. I used a trip to the grocery store the other night as a pretext to walk down to Gasworks Park on Lake Union. There was a huge sailboat regatta going on, with just enough breeze to make it interesting, and the entire lake was bristling with sailcloth.  The boats above are passing close to the houseboat from which Tom Hanks’ son made his clandestine radio station phone calls in Sleepless In Seattle.

The crew above has no interest in the rigors of yachting.  Drifting along under the power of a trolling motor, they’re sitting around a table snacking and imbibing the ballast from the cooler on the bow.  I’ve seen this craft before, and I believe there’s a barbeque to the driver’s right.

As the sun set, the lake was backlit by the faux incandescence of its reflection off the downtown buildings.

This one’s from my neighborhood, on a non-macho Subaru.  Every time someone at MoveOn has neurological activity of any sort, I get an email all about it, but still I’ve missed seeing this bumper sticker before.  Probably drinks pinot gris, or chardonnay when making a bold statement.  His vote still counts the same, though, which is the important thing.

This one was in Ashland and represents that genetic mystery, the macho yuppie.  Prime habitat would seem to be Arnold’s California.

Aggh.  Hack  Ptui.  I went down to Lake Union tonight to practice kayak self-rescues with a few other guys.  I’ve never been capsized involuntarily, but my last class in this was over two years ago, and I’ve been a little concerned about being able to do it in dire circumstances.

It involves rolling the kayak 180 degrees, exiting the boat while you still are able to hold your breath, all the while holding onto the boat because it’s your only friend in the water.  When kayakers drown, it’s the boat they find, not the body.

That’s only the first part.  Because a kayak rolls so easily, you can’t simply grab the side and haul yourself back into the cockpit.  You detach the inflatable paddle float that you hopefully are carrying in an easy-to-reach place on your deck, pull it over the paddle blade, and inflate it.  This presumes that your paddle didn’t get away from you during the submersion and float away in the current, like Wilson did from Tom Hanks in Castaway.

Using the paddle with attached float as a sort of outrigger to stabilize the kayak, you haul your wet and freezing ass onto the rear deck, then carefully slip one leg, then the other, then the aforementioned sorry ass into the cockpit, all the while being careful not to shift your weight to the side of the boat not supported by the paddle outrigger, or you’ll roll right back into the water.

Once in the boat and reasonably balanced, you ascertain that the boat is nearly completely submerged because IT’S DAMN NEAR FULL OF WATER.  You reach back to the deck and pry loose the bilge pump that you usually forget on your way out the door on so many kayak expeditions, and proceed to pump water furiously over the side in hopes of getting your bow horizontal.  Although each stroke with the pump seems to eject a Guinness-sized pint of water (often the same color, with the same sudsy head, the same shade of viscous fluid that you’ve been horking out your nose and mouth since you went over), you notice that your sea kayak, whose capaciousness you were formerly wont to celebrate, holds a fuck of a lot of water. 

On the bright side, the energy expended on pumping gradually quells your hypothermic shivering, and by the time the boat is empty, you’re warm again but probably too exhausted to paddle to shore, which is not possible anyway because while you were concentrating on pumping, your paddle floated away on its journey to a rocky beach in the Aleutians and the perplexed stares of Stellar’s sea lions.  In this most inopportune moment, you recall deriding the Safety Sams who strapped spare paddles to their decks.  Yeah, the same guys who always bring extra food and water, have safety flares in easy reach, and soccer whistles around their necks to summon help, the guys now slurping hot chowder and Hale’s Pale Ale in the tavern in the harbor, wondering if enough time has elapsed that they should call the Coast Guard about you.  “Let’s give it another pitcher,” they agree, as your shivering recommences.

I’m glad I got my butt out and did this tonight, despite having one ear solidly plugged with water, and the creeping paranoia about coliform levels in our jewel of an inland sea.  I need to repeat it far more often, and in colder water and less beneficent wind and wave conditions.

 

My son visits some interesting and esoteric foods on us as he associates with girls and friends of various eating persuasions, some good and some you wish were double-wrapped in lead foil and kept submerged in a bucket on the back porch.  The last two days, however, I have been powerless to stop myself from filching basically his entire bag of Philippine Brand Dried Mangoes. 

Sweet baby Jesus on a runaway skateboard, they were tasty!  Now I have to find the rarified retail establishment that sold it to him, if it’s still in business this week, and replace it for him (plus purchase another bag or two to hide under my desk).

I’m serious.  You’ll love these things.

We enjoy our last meal on the balcony of Alex’s Plaza Cafe.  It’s a great place to have a drink or snack and watch people scurry around on the streets.  Even if there’s a noisesome and apparently deaf busker right underneath channelling a nightmare version of Bob Dylan.

A last look at our abode for the week, the the Auburn Street Cottage.  I’m not a great fan of bed & breakfast places (where you pay Aunt Harriet and Uncle Irving exorbitant rates for Safeway muffins and weak coffee, and to suffer their disapproving glare if you sit on an expensive piece of furniture), so this place, a separate house in the owners’ back yard has been perfect for us the last few years.

(watch this space)