Lake Talapus

In a fit of planned spontaneity, we headed for the Cascades this weekend and hiked into the Alpine Lakes Wilderness Area. We made it up to Lake Talapus, a beautiful little gem in a heavily wooded valley. The sky was brilliant blue, the huckleberries were ripe, and the lake was cold. It was a great day.

And for the record, the red hat Amy is wearing is a hard-won trophy given to us by my dad. The poor guy had to drink EIGHT Alaskan Ambers during the cruise he and my mother recently took up through the Inside Passage.

Urban Forestry

We had a huge volunteer holly tree on the side of our house that we've wanted to get rid of since we bought the house. Fortunately my brother is a forester and is the possessor of TWO chainsaws and a considerable amount of tree-felling skill. He took that sucker out in about 45 minutes and further cemented his image as a hero in Liam's eyes.

Liam is Two Years Old

The Little Guy is now two years old. His birthday was a couple of weeks ago, and we had a pretty low-key celebration with just the three of us on the day of and hosted an all-out bash with 8 other two year olds the following week. It was a good time, and the little guy really enjoyed himself. Favorite present: chainsaw, by far.

The top picture shows three shots of me and Liam--from left to right, Liam is a newborn, one year old, and two years old. The kid is growing fast!




The "Gang of Seven" (a couple kids went missing when the cameras came out) are, from left to right: Rowan, Emma, Amelie, Liam (with eyes closed!), Lucas, Niko, and Iska. As she was leaving, Iska asked Liam to kiss her three times. He's already a blue-eyed heart breaking devil!

Detroit as Ecotopia?!?

As frequent readers of this blog already know (ah, that's a joke) I am a big fan of Ernest Callenbach's book Ecotopia. Yesterday I read a news article about some elements of his book apparently coming to life in the most unlikely place: Detroit, Michigan.

As reported in this article, there are currently 12,000 vacant homes in the city of Detroit and 1,500 to 2,000 new homes are abandoned each year. The City does not have enough money to tear all of them down and they can barely keep up with new abandonments. A professor of urban planning at University of Detroit Mercy has proposed converting a large swath of the abandoned City back into farmland.

I think this is a brilliant idea, but it does not go far enough. I think it would be fantastic if the City that spawned the Age of the Autombile--and has subsequently been cannibalized by the very technology that it created--capitalized on this opportunity to emerge as the global center for sustainable manufacturing and transportation. It makes sense--there is plenty of open land, an enormous trained work force that is chronically unemployed, underemployed, or in imminent danger of becoming so, two world-class universities adjacent to the city to train the engineers and MBAs to design and innovate, and all of the industrial infrastructure for shipping and distribution. Think about it: Detroit as the world leader in wind turbine manufacturing, maglev train design and production, large volume heat exchange systems, and on and on. I think it could work.

North Cascades National Park

Amy and Liam taking a break on the Thunder Knob trail.











Liam and Matt at the Diablo Lake overlook on a VERY windy afternoon.









Liam showing his affection for an enormous western red cedar along the banks of the Skagit River.







Liam, obviously feeling somewhat conflicted now about his relationship with the trees.













Amy and Liam cooling off in Diablo Lake.

Ghost Cycles

There is a group here in Seattle called GhostCycle that is placing completely white bicycles at locations where cyclists were struck by automobiles. It's a pretty powerful reminder that despite Seattle's relatively bike-friendly atmosphere it can be pretty dangerous out there.

Case in point: this morning I'm riding to work, and some jerk in a Subaru starts honking his horn while I'm riding down 5th Avenue under the monorail. I ride this road every day, and it can be pretty sketchy--there are giant concrete pillars to support the monorail on the left hand side, cars parked on the right hand side, and numerous parking lots and other driveways where cars are likely to come out of or turn into. In order to protect my neck I ride right in the middle of the travel lane, so I can see and be seen. This is perfectly legal, and in any case, the lights are timed so it isn't possible for a car to go faster than a bike. So the guy in the Subaru races past me, dangerously close, flipping me off. I raced up next to his car and we had a little argument, but I was not able to persuade him that he was behaving unreasonably.

Then, to top it all off, after I turned onto Union, a woman in an SUV crossed two lanes of traffic, completely cutting me off, and jammed on her brakes. I more or less saw it coming and was able to jam on my brakes, but I still got up close and personal with her spare tire. She heard the noise and her passenger stuck her head out and asked if I was OK. I said I was, but that it would sure be nice if she would check her mirrors then next time she had to change lanes.

Here are My Teeth

The Little Guy has almost all of his teeth. Only four more to go! And then, of course, they start falling out, but then the Tooth Fairy gets involved so it's all good.