We will be touring central-ish France on a canal boat in September 2025. This is the approximate route from Joigny to Carbigny. The route is basically:
After weeks of rain, a day of snow, and overnight frosts, I grabbed a partly sunny day to unwind my limbs and refresh the e-bike. I just puddled around the neighborhood for 6.2 miles, up and down and around. It was a bit on the cold side, 47F, but I was able to wrap up. The main "save" was the pair of gloves that I wore. My fingers get cold after the frostbite session on that China trip.
Swinging across North America today is an annular eclipse. The path of the shadow enters the US west coast in Oregon and swoops southwest toward Texas. Seattle is somewhere in the 80-90% range, yeilding a crescent partial eclipse. If the weather were better, we might have gone southward to see it, but overcast and raining was the forcast, and that is what we got overnight with partial clearing in the morning. Clearing enough to see some of the eclipse.The photo shows the peak of the eclipse as projected onto our driveway. The mechanics of this effect are complex. The driveway is unusually reflective from the overnight rain. There is a small maple tree in the copse of woods that produces an array of pinholes. The same effect is not seen in other areas where only evergreens (trees with needles) or rhododendrons are growing. Finally, one needs to be standing in just the right place to see the crescents. When standing off to the side or too far back, one sees just a blur of light and no crescents.
Earlier this week, we had smoke in metro-Seattle that came from the forest fires in British Columbia. At this writing, winds have blown the smoke to the interior, to central Washington, and cleared the air around Seattle and the Salish Sea.
If you look closely at the photo, there is a golden haze in the air, almost like a tint from an artist's brush. This should set off alarms as those rhodies should be white, not off-white, and the evergreens should be a richer green and not be that brownish. Smoke in the air. This is early in the season for fires to be this big. And the fires in Alberta are worse than those in BC; the BC fires just happen to be close to the border. Not a good sign for 2023.
Some population of the "green" community has been demanding an increase in nuclear energy production in the United States. While this may make some sort of sense in the short term, it shows a grotesque failure to understand how actions and consequences relate. Let us get some terminology straight at the start of the conversation.
There is a common misunderstanding that people know how to build and maintain "nuclear power plants". If we look at these facilities in the short term, the name "nuclear power plant" makes sense, but if we consider the long term, a better name becomes obvious. The plants will operate and produce electrical power for 20-40 years, the short term. Once exhausted, they leave behind nuclear waste that will last tens, hundreds, and thousands of years. In this longer term, it is clear that their primary end-product is nuclear waste, therefore the facilities are more accurately called "nuclear waste production plants" and they have a brief surplus power in their early years.
By and large, we have no idea how to deal with the legacy of nuclear waste production plants. Coal-fired and gas-fired plants can be cleaned up, solar plants and wind farms can be recycled, and even dams can be safely breached. There is a problem with coal mines and gas drilling sites, but we have general technology to deal with most of that residual. But we have no technology or process that can handle nuclear waste.
Nuclear waste comes in multiple types, and some will argue that we can process 90-95% of the nuclear waste from the nuclear waste production plants. This is insufficient in the extreme. We build large processing plants to remove threats from water so that it can be used near humans, but we have no technology for nuclear waste products. The 5-10% remaining nuclear waste that cannot be processed can only be waited out while it remains toxic - waiting for thousands of years. And even the faint technologies that we do have that can partially process this nuclear waste have proven to be very expensive. So expensive that we have to ship the waste to the processing plant instead of processing the waste on-site. No one wants to allow the unprocessed waste to travel nearby, so moving the waste to the processing plant is not possible.
As a result, nuclear waste production plants leave pools full of "spent" waste material sitting nearby, waste that will take thousands of years to become safe to handle.
If it is not obvious by now, nuclear waste production plants do not generate enough surplus energy to justify their construction or operation. They are so costly and risky that they cannot get private insurance to cover their construction and operation.
We may develop nuclear fusion in the future. Until then, we must continue to develop avoidance and convervation technologies, and we can only build using renewable energy production technologies.
Winterizing has been the name of the game for the last few weeks. This comes from three factors.
Due to benign neglect, I have let some shrubs get overgrown over the years. The resulting blooms have been gorgeous, but we now have a lot of shrubs that are too large for their location. Several have been blocking windows while others are encroaching over the lawn and some are just too large and tangled to be healthy.
Then we had a windstorm on Friday or Saturday night. This storm created yet more lawn and garden waste than the maintenance pruning. We have a lot of large trees, and the wind came from a direction that pruned the upper parts of the trees, dumping the branches and needles on our house and lawn.
Finally, the decidious trees are dropping their leaves. The pine needles are coming down, too, to make room for new growth on the evergreens.
Any one of these could generate a lot of organic waste that we put in the lawn-and-garden bin for pickup. However, all of them together overwhelm the 96-gallon capacity of the weekly bin, so I get out the chipper-shredder and make mulch.
The chipper-shredder is an old one and I do not know how much longer I will have it. I bought it from a catalog company when we lived in Chicago. That would have been in the 1980s. I loaned it to a friend for use in the autumn and he kept it for the winter. Unfortunately, he was not aware of the maintenance requirement to drain the gas tank (or treat the gas), and the chipper would not start after he returned it. He moved away shortly thereafter, so the chipper followed us to Massachusetts and then to Washington. I am not much of a mechanic, so I did not really know how to fix this. The chipper weighs a lot, maybe 75-90 pounds, and it is large, so I could not figure out how to get it to a repair shop. And so it sat, moved dutifully with us as we bounced around the country.
A few years ago, I got bold. I bought some cleaner sprays (e.g., carb cleaner) and started poking at it. I could get it to run by spraying carb cleaner down the throat of the carburator, so that suggested to me that the problem was rooted in the stale and evaporated fuel rather that some outright mechanical failure. I carefully disassembled the engine, not really knowing what I was doing. I sprayed everything I could find with the carburator cleaner and I sprayed all the moving parts with WD-40, then I reassembled it as carefully as I could. In particular, there was some oddly shaped bit of plastic that I carefully placed back. I am just guessing here, but I think that was the fuel pump. Anyway, I got it all back together without any "extra" parts, so I put in fresh fuel and tried to start it up.
It started.
I was amazed. I ran it for a bit so ensure this was not some start-only magic, and it has been working reliably ever since. I am careful to run out the fuel in the autumn, and it keeps chugging away. The only other maintenance is to sharpen the blades and change the oil. The chipper manufacturer is no longer in business, but the engine is Briggs & Stratton, so I can probably get parts when that becomes necessary. I hope. In the meantime, I keep running it so that I can try to keep up with the organic waste that I am generating.
Although we are celebratinig the return of the rainy season and clear air, the recent past has something to teach us.
Smoke is in our future.
Since 2000, the four smokiest summers have been in the last six years. Prior to 2017, Zero was the typical number of unhealthy summer days. Keep those N95 masks handy.
According to KIRO-7, a Seattle TV station (emphasis added), Seattle has the worst air quality in the world at this time. This source did not quote numbers, but other sources quote ratings at 300 and above. From IQAir, the Seattle Eastside is generally above 300 (hazardous), as illustrated after the quote from KIRO-7. Our neighborhood is reporting 296 or 366, depending on the sampling station one selects. The air has been distinctly amber or brown all day. To be honest, I have been to Delhi and Beijing when the air quality was worse, but this is bad today.
Heavy smoke from wildfires continues to reduce air quality in Seattle and Western Washington, and an air quality alert has been extended for a second time.
The poor air quality landed Seattle the top spot for the worst air quality in the world, according to IQAir’s air quality and pollution city ranking, as of 6:45 p.m. on Wednesday.
After starting the day in the top 5, Seattle fluctuated up and down the top 15 before taking the top spot in the afternoon.
The cities that ranked below Seattle were Kolkata, India, at #5; Chengdu, China, at #4; Delhi, India, at #3; and Lahore, Pakistan, at #2.
While we were traveling in September and early October, we read reports of continuing smoke in metro Seattle coming from the forest fires east of here. One featured in the news was around Route 2 and the town of Skykomish. We have been back for a week, and the smoke continues. I posted a couple days ago about the intensity of the smoke, but it was clearing in the days since. Today, the smoke has returned. In the morning hours, there is a distinct haze and color cast in the air, visibility has dropped dramatically from the norm, and there is a scent of woodsmoke in the air.Photo taken soon after sunrise.
Having applied fiberglass to the bottom of the kayak, it was time to apply epoxy to fill the weave, creating a smooth surface for final finishing with varnish (to protect the epoxy from UV destruction). For the fiberglass, I used a scraper to apply a thin coat of epoxy. For the first fill coat, I used a foam roller to apply the epoxy, and it went quite smoothly. I was happy with the uniformity of the resulting coat. I was concerned about the amount of wasted epoxy left in the foam roller when I was done with the application, so I decided to use a chip brush to apply the second filler coat. Although the brushed coat seemed to use less epoxy and it left a smooth coat, it also had two problematic consequences. First, the inexpensive chip brushes tend to shed bristles; this is no surprise, but I did have to stay alert to remove the bristles so they did not set in the epoxy to become permanent features of the kayak. The second problem is that the brush left a thick layer that had a tendency to slump and drip on the more vertical surfaces of the kayak. This will require quite a bit of sanding to make fair. I plan to return to the roller for future applications of expoy filler and the coats of varnish. I will use the brushes for areas that are not amenable to rolling, such as the areas around the coaming.
I also learned why being generous can sometimes leave one in a bit of a pickle. During the construction class, the instructor suggested that people share epoxy bottles so as to reduce the number of epoxy stations that were needed. I volunteered to let my adjacent colleague draw from my bottles. The kayak kit comes with a gallon of epoxy, and that sounded nearly infinite to me. Well, I ran out today, and I am not yet done. I ordered a half-gallon kit, but it will take time to ship from the East coast, so my construction is temporarily stalled. I guess I can go back and sand down some of those drips.
RAD Power bicycles is an e-bike company in Seattle. I finally broke down and got my first e-bike, the RADmission 1. The big arguments in the e-bike world revolve around mid-drive and hub-drive. This bike is typical in that it is hub-drive, therefore the motor is in the rear wheel, but it is atypical in that it is a single-gear bike. No derailleur, no speeds. The bike has a power-assist option from 0-5, where zero is no e-assist and 5 is full power. The power-assist works to amplify your pedaling; when you stop pedaling, the motor stops assisting and you coast. There is also a twist throttle that provides variable assist independent of pedaling. I bought the upgrade to the control system that displays the wattage that the motor is putting out. The motor peaks at 500 Watts; other bikes from RAD Power are in the 750W range. The bikes comes with 2-inch wide tires and disk brakes, so it is comfortable on many trails, including gravel. The power assist stops assisting above 20 miles per hour, so it is a Class 2 bike in the U.S. because it has a throttle. The bike was pretty easy to assemble when I followed the printed instructions. Many or all of the tools are provided, but I often used my own tools because they are of better quality and easier to use.
I am still learning how to ride it well, but here is what I have learned so far.
I use the electronic assist in three ways. I keep the assist level around 2 and that works well for me in almost any mostly level situation. Power assist ranges around 100W. When I hit a hill, I use the throttle to help, and that applies anything up to 500W to get me up the hill. For steeper hills, I have to stand and pedal to get up. Finally, I also use the trhottle to accelerate from a stop. Nominally, this is not needed; the automatic power assist should kick in to help when I start pedaling, but I find that traffic (cars) are often impatient and the throttle-boost gets me going fast enough to stay out of their way or to cross the road (e.g., when riding on a trail that crosses a road). When hill climbing, I will occasionally boost the power-assist level to 3, but I back it down to 2 for normal riding. This gives me a pretty good range - I have yet to find the bottom of the battery.
This time-lapse video should have been posted here on 31 May 2022.
Sneezing and a bit of watery eyes are my classic symptoms for allergy responses. For the last 1-2 weeks, I have had intermittent episodes of sneezind and watery eyes. I just finished moving some of the felled trees from the backyard to the wood rack behind the garage, and I am sneezing. About two weeks ago, we had a massive pollen release, probably from the western red cedar trees with contributions from others. I say massive because there was a coating of yellow on everything. The black asphalt of the driveway became brownish. The black enamel of the BBQ became brownish and took on a crust after a cook. Cars were covered in yellow dust. It was bad, but I did not react. Well, maybe a little, but nothing serious. After moving the firewood, I am stuffed up and sneezing. It is not as bad as some of the November episodes in Chicago and Boston, but it is worse than normal in Seattle.On a more positive note, I saw two hummingbirds at the feeder today and they were each comfortable in the presence of the other. Normally, two hummingbirds would be ballet-fighting over the feeder and only one would remain, however these two were clearly traveling together. The second part of the surprise is that the hummingbird population took a drop in February or March down to one-a-week or so. The population is now rising again. It is still low - about one a day - but that is well above the one-a-week rate that I was adapting to. Nice to have them back.
Yesterday was the two-year anniversary of the death of Dr. Doug Lambrecht. I knew Doug through BSA Scouting as well as his sons and family. COVID reached the shores of the United States in 2020 through a nursing home in Kirkland.
Doug should not be remembered as an early American casuality of COVID-19 for he was more than that. Beyond his role as a father and his position as an emergency medicine doctor, both important and significant roles, he was a great scouter and a fine friend. Doug was an Assistant Scoutmaster for BSA Troop 573 in Woodinville WA. I do not know for how long, probably a solid 10 years and likely longer. He was not a scouter in name, but a supporter and active scout. Two of his sons were active scouts and Doug was never far behind. I recall many outings and events with Doug, but the one I recall best is a backpacking trip on the Pacific coast near Lake Ozette WA. That trip was not monumental, but Doug was there, he was present, and he was in it for the scouts. He knew when to help and when to observe. He knew when a few word were right and when silence was best. He was a rock of good humor against which problems could splash and then fade away. Doug walked and talked the Scout Law.
Espresso machines have proven to be more complicate that I thought. And the last couple days have had sunny spots that broke out of the pattern of rain. I used the sunny bits to get some yard work done.
I recently came into the possession of an older espresso machine made by La Pavoni, a manual machine called the Professional. It is an advancement over the prior machine called the Europiccola by adding a pressure gauge, a drip tray, and a wand for steaming milk. The particular machine was purchased in about 1980-1990 from a store in San Francisco CA that has since closed. To test the machine, I need to get a drip tray and a portafilter-basket combination. The drip tray should be simple (about $30) but the portafilter is proving to be harder to find. It seems a design change was made in the closing days of 1999 and that affects the size of the portafilter. The "pre-millennial" units have a 49mm portafilter while the Millennial units have a 51mm portafilter. I may have my acquisition date wrong because I think I have a 51mm unit, but I am not sure what to measure. At $80, I am not in a hurry to make a speculative purchase.
There are some stickers on the bottom with potentially useful information. The readable sticker gives the name of the retail shop, the one that has since closed. The hard-to-read sticker admits the Professional name and a few other details, but not a serial number, model number, or date of manufacture. I am in the process of opening the base to see if there is anything inside that admits to a date or identifying number.
I do not actually need another espresso machine, but I would like to get this one working on general principles. It was a fine device when manufactured and has many years of life remaining. I can say that now because I have not examined the state of the internals.
We did have snow recently, but it is since gone. It was a significant amount for this area - six to eight inches - and it shut down a lot of activities in the area, but it melted within about three days and was followed by a week of nice weather (see earlier posts about snowshoe trips). The routine winter rains have resettled over the area but we still get "sun breaks", some as long as a day. I use these breaks to get out, address garden tasks, and fill up the compost bin. For reference, I think the compost bin has an official volume of 96 gallons and gets picked up each week (mostly). In addition to yard waste, we are able to throw in food waste, so it is busy all-year round. The contents go to a professionally operated compost facility. Back to our story.
One day, I pruned the roses by our back deck and filled the compost bin with trimmings (a climbing rose). Other days, I have pruned the hydrangea shrubs we have scattered about. I have lost count, but there are at least six, with sizes that were 6-8-feet-plus in diameter. I also pruned some of the large rhododendron shrubs. In the summer, I chip them into mulch, but because the winter ground is so soft, it is hard to get the chipper to the work areas, so they go off to the commercial compost pile. More recently, I have trimmed back many of the ferns, especially along the walkway behind the garage and house. Today, I pruned the apple tree and the holly. I have cut back the holly more times than I can count; it is a vigorous tree. I am pretty sure it is a volunteer. Usually lurking among the plants are blackberry canes, so I must be sure to wear leather gloves. I got ahead of myself this weekend. After filling the compost bin with hydrangea trimmings, I got a second load from the apple tree, so the bin will be full again as soon as they haul away the hydrangea contents. I may have to get out the chipper.
While I am on the topic of landscaping, I am glad that I do not yet have to mow. The grass is growing, but growing slowly, so I can postpone mowing. I have a spiffy new mower - battery powered and self-propelled - but I would rather not start the mowing season. Further, I have spread some grass seed to fill in the muddy patches and I want to do a run with the dethatcher to get out more moss. This is proving to be another good year for moss (that is - if you are the moss). The demoss treatment for the roof has worked well, and we shall reapply later this year to stay on top of the problem. I should find out more about the materials used so that I can apply them at Keats.
We drove up toward the Mt. Baker ski area and then to the parking above Artist Point around Heather Meadows. As a Friday, there was plenty of room to park. As we passed the Mt. Baker White Salmon ski area, it looked pretty busy (three of four cars turned off there and we continued past). The Heather Meadows facilities were closed as was the ski area, and that gave us some relief.
There were a few skiers but most were snowshoers. The remaining few were in boots, often with Yak-traks or similar traction devices. If one wanted to stick to the well-trodden trails, boots were sufficient. We went off-trail in several places and the snowshoes were necessary to avoid postholes. The day was sunny and warm, the wind relatively still. It was not as warm as it had been on Rainier earlier in the week, so I kept a jacket on. This was probably a mistake as the jacket arms were sodden at the end of the hike. I unzipped the main zipper and the pit-zips, so my torso stayed dry.
I have a lot of still photos from this area, in summer and in winter, so I used this as a chance to practice more with my GoPro (Hero 8 Black). On Rainier, I generally went for long shots, many minutes at a time but on Baker, I tried a different filming technique. I took more short shots, mostly panning shots of the scenery when I stopped, and a couple of walking shots on the way out. I used my GravGrip stabilization device for the first half-hour, but it proved annoying to get in and out of my pocket. More importantly, it did not seem to be doing anything to help. I wanted it to help keep a level horizon, but it seemed to want to settle off-kilter. I have a recollection that the counterweight could pivot to balance better, but it wouldn't move. As a result, it did stabilize the shots a little but it was not aligned with the horizon. I will play with it to find better technique, but I when to conventional handheld for the rest of the hike. The in-camera stabilization seemed to work pretty well; I have forgotten if the camera does any horizon leveling, but the results are acceptable.
At the top of the hike, overlooking Mt. Baker and a large valley (must have been the Chain Lakes Loop Trailhead overlooking Ptarmigan Ridge), I got a phone call. Given the quirks of geology and topology, it was a service area for cell phones.
Trapped for days in a ground-hugging fog, we sought escape on Monday, 24 January 2022. The weather report had gotten monotonous: day after day of heavy fog warnings in "lowland areas" covered the entire Puget Sound area. Fog filled the valleys of metropolitan Seattle all day and the Weather Service extended the warnings each day for yet another day. We had some days of pretty steady rain before that, so we were getting stir-crazy. Another case of COVID cabin fever struck. The fog went up to about 3000 feet and there was rumored to be sun above, so we knew where we had to go - to the mountains. But not just any "mountains". Stevens Pass is only about 3000 feet, barely above the fog, so we decided to go for Mount Rainier.
We usually head for the Henry Jackson Visitor Center at the Paradise area in Mount Rainier National Park (MRNP). We have been there many times over the years, usualy a couple times each year. It is easy access, has plenty of parking (if you arrive early enough), and the Paradise area is open year-round. We visit the Sunrise area during the summer and shoulder seasons, but it is a bit farther and, well, it closes in the winter so it is not open until June or so? The route to Paradise takes us through Puyallup, Elbe, Longmire, and up the part road to Paradise. Our travel was uneventful. We left the house about 9am (against an 8:30am target departure) and arrived with plenty of room to be found. Of course, the 24th of January was a Monday, so we were riding the benefits of a retired life. On the weekend, the crowds are sure to be much larger.
We grabbed our snowshoes, poles, and packs, and headed for the trail to Camp Muir. Normally, there are some broad stairs and asphalt trails to welcome visitors, but all that was buried under snow. We rather followed the asphalt trails but they are hard to find under the snow - and irrelevant. However, muscle memory in the legs from all those summer visits lead one to familiar routes. A few people were out with hiking boots but we were glad to have snowshoes. Very simply, we did not have to look where we were walking. Postholing was not a concern and we did not have to choose compacted routes; the area of the snowshoes spreads our weight. With the claws and heals on the snowshoes, we could walk a straight line that took us straight up a slope or allowed us to wander without fear of sliding sideways. The younger set may not need poles, but the older crew finds them helpful to pull or restrain on slopes and very handy for balance. We walked to a point a bit above the Dancefloor, closer to the Nisqually canyon, appreciated the views, and then headed down by the Dancefloor.
The views were grand. We could see the whole area above the fog in the valleys. Mt. Adams and Mt. St. Helens stood proud on the horizon to the south, the Tatoosh Range clearly visible, and, of course, Tahoma herself to the north. There was the odd cloud or contrail across the sky, but bright blue burned all around and above. The temperatures were astounding - hot. We did not measure the temperature, but a fellow hiker told us it was in the upper-60F range. He said 67F, and while I am reluctant to believe that exact number, I did have to stop twice to remove layers of insulation. I ended up wearing a wicking t-shirt and a "fishing" shirt. It did get chilly in the shade, but we spent most of the time above the tree-line, so the sun warmed us virtually the entire time. It was quite comfortable when walking, but I did put on my puffy sweater when we stopped. Most of the people around us were also hiking in various ways (mostly snowshoes but several boots), and one guy even had a sled that he was pulling. I guess he was going to spend the night at Camp Muir. And there were a handful of skiers. The overall hike was 2.5 miles (round-trip) in 2:00 hours, and the vertical rise was 870 feet. Paradise is right around 5000 feet altitude.
I grabbed some photos, but I used this outing as a training ground for GoPro video. In the past, I have done timelapse and even Time Warp to some degree of success, but with this trip I wanted to do some post-processing to produce a more structured video. I did skip the bit about preparing a story - my "story" was to be a snowshoe hike on Mount Rainier - so I planned for a series of clips. To this end, I chose Video > Cinematic at 4K, 24fps, SuperView, and auto-steady (I think GoPro calls it hypersteady or similar). I used handheld with no special adaptations (no external stabilizer, just the in-camera features). On the route up, I started with shorter clips, a minute or so each and mostly panoramas, and on the return down, I took longer clips while in motion. I ended up with about 20 minutes of video that I cut down to 14 minutes in DaVinci Resolve 17. My first edit ran over the YouTube limit of 15 minutes, so my second version cut that down to almost exactly 14 minutes and I added some titles. I did nothing with the audio and I only used fades on the title sections - no fancy crossfades.
(Note - although I can adjust the placement of the photos, Blogger insists on centering the video.)
We have bird feeders out around the house, partially for our entertainment but also for the cats. The suet feeders get the attention of "larger" birds and the cats while the hummingbird feeders attract hummingbirds and the people. In the past, we have had problems with squirrels who seem to think the feeders are for them. After a few years of battle, the squirrels have largely given up. A "witch's hat" protects the suet feeder, an anti-squirrel cage protected another feeder, and we have switched to shuttered anti-squirrel feeders for the seed feeders. The squirrel-cage approach was effective on keeping out the common gray squirrels but it also blocked the medium and larger birds; the cage did not block the native red squirrels (smaller than their gray cousins) and it seemed to confuse a lot of birds who clung to the outside, unable to solve the riddle of entry. In the end, we abandoned the cage in favor of shuttered feeders.
the shuttered feeders have an internal spring. For light creatures like the birds, the weight is not enough to counter the spring, but when a squirrel gets on the feeder, their weight squashes the spring and that closes the shutters so that food is no longer accessible. It takes a couple days of failed attempts, but the squirrels eventually give up. The area under the feeder is kept clean because we buy the shelled seed. there is some spillage onto the ground, but birds (and the odd squirrel) patrol the ground under the feeder and keep the area clean. Occasionally a neighbor will warn that feeding birds attracts rats, but there is no evidence of this.
the suet feeder one time attracted a rather large critter. A bear entered our suburban backyard and trashed the suet feeder in a successful attempt to eat the suet within. We never did find the suet feeder. I went out the next day and discovered a hole in the cedar fence. I patched the hole with some scrap wood and we have since replaced the fence, so I expect our ursine friends will take the easy route and search for easy pickings among the neighborhood rather than out backyard. Any neighbor concerned enough can put up their own fence.
To counter the squirrels and the bear, we have switched to hot-pepper suet. It turns out that birds cannot taste capsaicin, the active ingredient in hot peppers, but the mammals can. A mouthful of hot-pepper suet is nothing to a bird, but it will be long remembered by a mammal.
In an unusual turn, the nectar in the hummingbird feeders froze yesterday. A winter storm had brought 20-something-degree temperatures to the area and remained overnight, so be brought in the feeders overnight to thaw them. I redeployed them this morning and the hummers have been battling over the feeders all day. An "alpha" hummer seems to own the feeder and they chase off interlopers all day, feeding occasionally. It is supposed to get down to 24F tonight, so we will bring them in again to redeploy tomorrow.
This is the top of Mt. Adams, the second tallest mountain in Washington (after Mt. Rainier). This little bit of rock is part of the Cascade range, a string of volcanoes that run up the coast of North America from California (Mt. Shasta), extending into British Columbia, through Alaska and out to Kamchatka; the northern part of the Ring of Fire that circles the Pacific Ocean. My son was in a group that climbed Mt. Adams this weekend (2 July 2007) and I was the Base Camp team. I kept the home fires burning (literally - my job was to have hot water ready for soup and cocoa when they came back). Lovely day, great views, heavy work-out.
A heavy rainstorm hit Mt. Rainier National Park in late 2006 (November). Eighteen inches of rain (half a meter) fell in 24 hours. The flooding was selective but intense. The Nisqually entrance is at the southwest corner of the park and is the main entrance to access Cougar Rock and Paradise. A small campground and picnic area is a few miles into the park from the Nisqually entrance. Or rather, used to be there. The Nisqually River decided to expand, ripping away half of the campground. In the photo you see here, there is river where there used to be camp sites.
Millions of dollars have been spent to rebuild roads and facilities so that the Park could be reopened to visitors just this month. The Park Service is doing an outstanding job. If you're in the area, they could sure use your help to repair and rebuild. If you are unable to help in person, you can still contribute.
