Black Ice, the Rematch

Last year I crashed pretty hard on some black ice (which I mentioned briefly here) and this morning it was re-match time. Last night it rained pretty hard, then the skies cleared and the temperature dropped to 30 degrees--perfect conditions for the creation of copious amounts of black ice. Nearly the entirety of my route was covered with ice--from my house, along the Burke Gilman, across the Fremont Bridge, up and over Dexter--and it wasn't until I was in downtown proper that the heat island kicked the temperature up to around 35 degrees. I had one terrifying slide on the BG, but I did not crash and made it into work unscathed. I probably should have taken the bus, but I wanted to have at least one successful ride on the black ice!

Impending Bloom

It has been exceptionally cold and clear here in Seattle for the past week, but nevertheless Spring is getting ready to bust out all over the place. Just before the cold Arctic air moved in, I snapped these shots of our blooming camellia and an iris in the front yard. All of the trees are just about ready to break bud, and it looks like the apricot tree is going to have loads of fruit this year. I really love the winters here in Seattle, but I also look forward to the return of Spring!

By the way, I shamelessly appropriated the title of this post from an Oregon song of the same name.

Fidalgo Island--Sugarloaf Mountain

This past weekend Andy and Lynna came up for a visit and we went for a short hike on Sugarloaf Mountain, which is on Fidalgo Island. The trail is short (about 3/4 mile) but Liam hiked the entire thing by himself--this was his first "solo" hike. The entire time he kept saying "I'm in the woods!" At the top of the mountain (which is more accurately described as a hill) there were numerous rock outcrops that Liam proceeded to climb, exclaiming "I'm climbing a cliff."

Seattle Public Utilities GreenUp Program

Inspired by a recent story (and many, many previous blog posts) by Northwest Environment Watch uber-geek Clark Williams-Derry about home energy efficiency, we've taken two steps at our house to improve our energy efficiency and decrease our climate impact. The first step was to sign up for Seattle Public Utilities' GreenUp program, whereby ratepayers can voluntarily pay a premium to ensure that all or a portion of their power is coming from renewable sources, such as the Stateline wind farm. As an added bonus, early subscribers receive a $10 gift certificate to local organic food heroes Puget Consumers' Co-op and a nifty canvas "green power" tote bag.

The second thing we did was to hire a firm called Atmosphere (no web site!) to perform a series of whole-house energy efficiency improvements: sealing all the cracks in our house where heated air was escaping, improving overall air circulation, installing new fans, etc. The repairs haven't been in place long enough to measure quantitatively, but already we've noticed that the furnace doesn't kick on as frequently and the whole house feels more comfortable. I'll report more when I've got some numbers, but I can recommend Atmosphere if you're thinking of doing something similar--they did great work and were extremely conscientious.

Video Grabs of Liam Skiing

OK, as promised, here are some screen grabs from the video we took of Liam during his first skiing lesson. His instructor, Stephanie, was awesome--extremely patient and encouraging and apparently possessing a back made of titanium. Liam had a great time and I really hope he decides to stick with snow sports as he gets older! If you're interested in seeing the actual video, email me and I'll send it to you.

CommEn Space on KUOW

My boss Chris Davis was on KUOW Wednesday morning representing our organization, CommEn Space, during a show about mapping. Chris did a great job explaining what we do, but to paraphrase Laurie Anderson, talking about mapping is like writing about music: it's kind of hard to convey much meaning about an inherently visual medium without the use of any graphics. There were some interesting calls, and who knows if any new work will come of it, but it was nevertheless fun to hear my boss on the radio talking about the stuff we do everyday. An archived version should be available for podcasting here.

And thanks very much to Jon Stahl for publicizing the event on his blog before it happened!