Arachnophobia

It is one of the great mysteries of life: from whence come spiders and insects? What is the origin of life itself? At the beginning of the Scientific Revolution, there were theories of spontaneous generation. When I check Wikipedia, it goes back to Aristotle who believed that aphids sprang from the dew on roses, mice from dirty hay, and (one would think) fruit flies from aging fruit. Clearly from this photo, Aristotle would think that spiders sprang from unused bathtubs.

The bathtub is in our summer cottage and the spiders just appear. It's not like there are masses of webs on the ceiling, with thousands of wannabe Charlottes angling and dangling for a chance at pictorial fame on Blogger. No! The ceiling is quite finished and well maintained. So from whence come all these spiders? Inquiring minds want to know!

The end of summer

These floats got a lot of use this summer. Many hands and feet disturbed their quiet drifting. Shouts and laughter surrounded them. Splashes and tumbles soaked them all afternoon and into the evening. But the days have turned cooler, shortening as the sun drifts lower each day. Soon the floats will be pulled out for the season and set aside to dry. When the rainy season ends and the water warms, they will be brought out again. The feet will be larger, the hands stronger, the splashes bigger. There will even be delicate new hands and feet touching the floats for the first time. But for now, quiet and solitute in the September sun.

Nightlight

When I fly, I like to get a seat with a view. It's not easy and a peek out the window can reveal little more than the top of a wing or the back of a jet engine. For some reason, everyone seems to think business travelers like aisle seats and on personal flights, the kids tend to get first choice. This usually leaves me sitting in the middle seat, sometimes on the aisle. On a June flight, I got a window with a view.

It was a long flight that arrived in Seattle around sunset. Because we were coming in from the southeast, the view was fantastic. I don't know if the pilot planned this (thank you!) or if we were just lucky, but we flew right past the north face of Mt. Rainier on our descent. We must have been around 15,000 feet because we were only looking down slightly on the 14,410-foot mountain.

Would you like to ride in my beautiful balloon?

We live in the Sammamish Valley, carved by the Sammamish Slough. Once a naturally meandering river, the Slough is now channelized and arrow-straight for miles. A couple times a year, it rises in a fruitless attempt to reclaim its natural domain. Fortunately for those living nearby, the planners were thoughtful and they placed mostly sod farms, vegetable farms, soccer fields, and a golf course nearby. There is some housing that encroaches on the Slough, and some industry, but they seem to have well-designed dikes.

Quite a meandering introduction, eh? But you have survived to the point: the valley is scenic. The Red Hook Brewery and the Chateau Ste. Michelle Winery are at the north end of the valley. Somebody decided it would be a good place to run a balloon. The winds are generally northernly (out of the north), so they start at the north end of the valley and drift south. The balloons are surprisingly silent (except for the roar of the propane burners) so that I'm often tempted to start a conversation as the balloonists float over my backyard.

Camp Parsons, BSA

Over here on Dabob Bay, near Quilcene, WA, is the famous Camp Parsons, BSA. One of the famous features of this famous camp is the pier. At 500 feet in length, it extends far out into the waters of the Hood Canal. There is a significant tide in the area, so they need quite a pier to get out into reliably deep waters. One need is for boating, so the boats are tied up at the end of the pier. The other need is for Pier Jumping! Pier jumping is, as the name would suggest, jumping off the pier into the water. The tide varies, of course, so the jump ranges from 15 to 20-some feet. As a friend of mine mentioned, it doesn't look all that high when you're standing in dry street clothes, but when you're out there in a swimming suit, the jump takes on a new perspective. Highly recommended, though - it's a blast.

Mountain Flowers

The alpine flowers of Washington can be stunning. This has been a good year, at least in the early part of the summer.

Summer sun at the beach

It seems to have Beach Week over at the London Daily Photo and at the Paris Daily Photo, so here's my contribution: fun in the summer sun. These three boys are preparing for a water-balloon fight in celebration of a 12th birthday. I can't imagine what sort of strategy they were cooking up, but they were intently debating the options and the merits. I would have thought that a water-balloon fight would lose its charm were I standing waist-deep in the ocean, but I'm no longer twelve.

They sure like their highways

I am stunned at the enormous roads they build in Texas. This intersection on the south side of Austin is an incredible spray of concrete. It's quite impressive, but one really has to wonder if this scale of road-building is necessary. I'm not going to defend the brilliant engineering of the local folks, but they clearly like things big in Texas.

Holey Roller

A rolling rock gathers... dimples?

I can't figure out where all these dimpled rocks come from. This photo is from the Pacific coast on the shores of Washington (state). Look up Cape Alava, WA in Google Maps. These rocks are pounded and rolled by the tides of the Pacific. Cape Alava is exposed to storms throughout the year, so the rocks become round. But many of them have these large dimples. The dimples are golf ball-sized and a few inches deep. What causes them?????

War of the Worlds

I was looking out my office window at a gray day in April (3-apr-2006) and I decided to use the only camera at-hand to take a photo: my camera-phone. It proudly presents itself as a 1.3 megapixel, but it's not really a camera. Snapshots, maybe, but not photographs. However, interesting things come when you're least expecting them, rather like those cheap Russian (?) cameras that people use to take creative photos. They're not accurate, but the distortion is interesting and can be artistic. So here's my entry. I had to straighten out the horizon and crop the photo down a touch, but that sort of solarization going on here - that's all in the camera.

I haven't posted in quite a while. I challenge myself to fix that.

Lions and tigers and bears...

Lions, acutally. These are the Vancouver (BC) lions in profile. Stanley Park is the beautiful park in the heart of Vancouver. From the north end of Stanley Park, the Lions Gate Bridge launches across the mouth of Vancouver Harbor to North Vancouver. The bridge is named for the crouching lions seen in the northern distance. See if you can find the lions here.

By the flickering flame of Mount Olympus, Cocky, it's great to be back at the game!

On a clear day, Mount Olympus reigns over the northern suburbs of Seattle. The fog is rising but the mountains loom above, illuminated by the rising sun. The Olympic mountain range covers the northwest corner of Washington state, deflecting and blocking the worst of the Pacific weather. The surviving moisture drizzles the Puget Sound basin in the winter, giving Seattle its reputation, but the bulk of the moisture creates the great temperate rainforest that shares the Olympic name and covers the western flanks. The advancing summer season struggles with the winter snows but have not yet won the high ground, and the rivers are swollen with the casualties of warmth. It is early in the morning as the sun has not yet illuminated the nearby houses and hills.

Update: removed spurious and lurid apostrophe. (Blush)

Heigh-ho, Nobody Home

There is a lot of construction proceeding in Kirkland, WA. This hole is to be a new hotel. I find it to be an enormously impressive hole (foundation) for a 2-3 story hotel. If you look carefully, you may be able to recognize the forms of the floor of an underground parking garage. The light blue coils are evidently cables that will be under tension, embedded in the concrete. Against the far wall, you can see the reinforcing structures that help hold the walls of the hole in place during construction. I assume that these will be removed as the building / parking structure / foundation completes.

Raindrops keep falling on my head

That rainbow really struck me. Certainly, I've seen rainbows, but this one was unusually intense in color and nearly complete. It wasn't a full circle, but I usually think of rainbows as fading off on one side. After I resumed driving, I kept peeking at the rainbow and it started to fade. I was lucky to see it full and intense for the brief time it was there.

In reality, the rainbow was more nearly circular. This image was taken as three exposures on my cell-phone camera, then merged with Photoshop Elements 4 using a perspective merge and advanced blending. This explains the kink near the peak of the rainbow and the spreading of the curve (divergence from circular). Initial attempts to merge the images had major discontinuities in the sky and rainbow, so I kept playing with the Photoshop options.

Slip-sliding away

Our Spring weather has been unsettled and unusually violent for this area, bringing hailstorms, rainbows, and drenching rain. I was stunned by a fabulous rainbow as I was driving south of Seattle the other day, so I whipped out my cell-phone and took a picture of it. Don't be alarmed - I had pulled to the side of the road to stop and safely take the picture. It is rather interesting that a passing car gets skewed; there must be some sort of sequential scanning process in the camera exposure.

Odd, isn't it, that I take out a cell-phone to take a picture. A few years ago, that would have gotten gee-whiz responses, but now it gets yawns. Now if only someone could invent a roof that looks good and doesn't leak.

Walking on broken glass

Hiking along the Pacific beach near Cape Alava, WA, we came across this striking display: a bleached clump of trees above a candy-striped log.

April, 2006

Faces

We went on a backpacking trip in the Olympic National Park. Most people think of mountains and snow in the Olympics (surrounding Mt. Olympus) but an unexpected part of the park is the rainforest and coast. These petroglyphs are south of Cape Alava, the westernmost part of the continential United States (traditional). There is a clump of rocks that cut the beach to the sea and have the name Wedding Rocks. I don't really recall, but I think the photo is in the "correct" orientation, though the rocks have probably moved since the original creation of the petroglyphs. There are a many other petroglyphs among the rocks, but I think people are starting to add modern ones. These seem to be authentic and old (1000 years, perhaps?).

Tiptoe Through The Tulips

Spring in Seattle comes early and lingers. We have our soggy days, but the sunny ones make up for the rest. Our tulips come out and last. I grew up in the Midwest of the U.S. and the tulips lasted for a day or two. In Seattle, we get weeks and weeks of pleasure.

I was inspired first by the London Daily Photo blog and the Paris Daily Photo blog, but I have come to understand just how challenging that can actually be. This bouquet is in honor of the reliable souls who bring us the daily photos. And a fond memory of Tiny Tim.

I get around

We were out on a drive to see the eagles on the Skagit River. During the winter months, the eagles follow various salmon runs, and the Skagit seems to be one of the favorites; it also happens to have a road that allows easy access - Route 20, the North Cascades Highway. Our tour started near Concrete, WA, and continued east, including stops at Rockport State Park and Mile 100 (a wide spot in the road). Along the way we happened across a tour group of restored cars. As the drivers lunched nearby, the cars formed an impromptu show.

Update: Forgot to provide a title.

Tattered

The Seattle Science Center has a tropical butterfly house. Inside it's hot, humid, and bright. The visitors walk paths among tropical plants, gawking at the flowers and the butterflies. The butterflies congregate around flowers, water, and plates of food. This particular butterfly must be approaching the end of his life. His neighbors have smoothly undulating edges to their wings, but this one is tattered. He seems to be enjoying a banana.