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686 Duke Insulated Jacket

I received my 686 Duke Insulated Jacket on Friday, December 7, 2012. For my birthday I received money to buy a new rain shell and jacket in preparation for our first full winter in the South Sound area. My wife found some jackets and shells on the website the Clymb and the first ones I ordered were the Special Blend Caliber Jacket and the Hi-Tec Men's rain shell. The shell worked out (see earlier review) but the jacket did not. My wife was able to return the jacket to The Clymb for store credit. We looked at several possibilities for me and liked the 686 Duke Insulated Jacket even though the 686 website advertised it as a snowboarding jacket. It normally cost $250 but was selling for only around $80 on The Clymb. It was actually the warmest of the jackets I was considering. It also had the most interesting color: Kelly green with gray plaid. Based on that we ordered it in size medium.

The 686 jacket arrived on Friday, December 7. We didn't get a slip in our mailbox saying it had arrived but knew it had arrived from tracking the FedEx online. My wife also ordered Sessions Jane jacket and both came in a plastic "carbon neutral" bag. My jacket looked a bit darker than the photo, but that's OK. When I tried it on it fit well, just slightly roomy and very warm. It's a long jacket but doesn't go too far below the waist. I noticed that it could be zipped open and closed from both ends like my old L.L. Bean shell. I also tried it with a fleece underneath. It was a bit snug but wearable and extremely warm. I tried the "hand panties" at the ends of the sleeves that covered up to my palms and had thumb holes. They were a bit tight, possibly because my arms are a bit long for my height. The hood fit well and was very warm making a hat unnecessary.

There were a couple of tags on the jacket. One was actually a 686 luggage tag. Another listed all the different thermal ratings with the 686 Duke having thermal rating 7 for 0° to 32° F/-18° to 0° C or "just the right temperature." A third tag identified all the features of the jacket that numbered over 20. These included zipper vents in the armpits like my shell. 686 identified them as "AIR-FLO" underarm vents with "SMOOTH-OPERATOR" mesh gussets. Like the Caliber and my wife's Bonfire shell, the 686 Duke had a powder skirt, only this one wasn't too tight for me and snapped away nicely when not in use. The tag also mentioned the skirt's "PJ-CONNECT" pant-to-jacket connection points. It mentioned the internal audio pocket, internal mesh storage pocket, and a hidden credit card/ID stash pocket that I still haven't found. The most interesting or perhaps most gimmicky feature was the "FAST PASS" retractable season pass pocket. It's on the left side of the jacket and is a clear plastic card-shaped pocket attached to some very strong black elastic. I really had to yank it to get it out. Inside was a sample cardboard pass. The jacket had many pockets, two at the waist for keeping hands warm, and two chest pockets. The hand pockets had small drawstrings for tightening the bottom of the jacket. All the features made it seem like something James Bond would wear. We also noticed that the audio pocket had a red-trimmed buttonhole just like Sherlock's "hero coat."

My wife's coat did not work out as well. The colors differed from those shown in the picture online. She sent it back and this time they sent a U.S. Postal Service label to send it back. When I took it to the post office the clerk said he had never seen that label before, but took it as valid.

I had a chance to try out my new jacket when we saw the Zoolights at Point Defiance Zoo on Wednesday, December 11. We bought tickets to Zoolights on the Saturday before at Fred Meyer. They were discounted to $7.25 each. The temperature was in the low to mid 40s, a bit warm for the jacket, but I figured it would be good for walking around outside. Before we left I put my gloves in the hand pockets, digital camera in one of the chest pockets, and umbrella in the inner mesh pocket. To get to the zoo we took Pearl Street north, turned left on N. 51^st Avenue. The street got darker and turned right into Mildred Street at a stop sign. The roads on the left were closed off. Mildred turned right into Point Defiance Park. We reached another stop sign, kept right, stayed right at another fork and found the lane with arrows indicating the direction to the zoo. We turned left into the zoo parking lot whose sections were labeled with letters and animals such as D for duck and A for aardvark. There weren't any cars in the outermost "Duck" lot. We drove to the B for "Budgie" lot where there were more cars and parked. We found the entrance to the zoo down some ramps below the lot.

They had lights outside the zoo announcing Zoolights. We had read online that they were recycling used Christmas lights and we had some that no longer worked. There were many other people either buying tickets or entering the zoo. We scanned our tickets and entered the zoo. We looked for the bins for recycled Christmas lights but couldn't find them. We went to the gift shop and asked about them. They said the bins were outside the entrance but that we could re-enter. We exited, found the metal baskets but when we tried scanning our tickets it said "no double entry." We went to the ticket counter and explained the situation. She gave us new tickets and we were able to get in again. The middle area of the zoo was very impressive with all the bushes and trees in lights of different colors. In the plaza the sign (and the tickets) indicated that this was the 25^th Zoolights and they had also set up the lit-up "coral wreath." There were no brochures with maps of the zoo. It was almost 6:00 p.m. and time for Santa to dive with the sharks in the South Pacific Aquarium. We took a walkway on the right side. They had animal light displays on all the side walkways.

We found the South Pacific Aquarium that I think was not the one with the impressive lighted octopus on top. That was the North Park Aquarium. There were already many people there, mostly children, assembled and waiting for Santa. We saw several sharks, one of which was very large and impressive. A zoo employee announced that Santa was about to dive. Initially we couldn't see him but then he made his way to the aquarium along with an "elf" in yellow. At one point Santa's hat fell off and the elf helped him restore it. He spoke to the employee with the microphone who passed it along to some children to talk to him. He asked how many had written him letters and said he and the elves were gearing up for Christmas. After many minutes, they asked us to move so that others could see Santa. I was glad to because it felt very warm in the aquarium as I wore my jacket. Outside it was fairly cold especially when the wind blew. My jacket kept me warm.

We walked around and saw all the lights over the course of the evening. We also saw the sleeping tiger cubs that were fairly large for animal cubs. Other than the aquarium and the meerkats most of the animal displays were dark and looked empty. When we reached the bottom of the walkways we found where they were offering camel rides for $6 per person. Up to three people could ride a camel at once. Only one camel, Picasso, was giving rides. He wore some blankets for a saddle, a Santa hat on his head, and was led by a zoo employee during the ride. The other camel had more fur and also wore a blanket saddle but was not giving rides. My wife rode Picasso. To the left were more lights along the walkways. Some were still such as the giant panda on the other side, the muskoxen, and the walruses. Others showed animals in different steps of motion such as salmon swimming upstream and eagle diving for a salmon, a frog leaping, and even a tropical bird flying overhead. We found the rainbow of lights that spanned from one side of the walkway to the other.

My jacket did fairly well in the weather initial it was uncomfortable because of the umbrella in my mesh pocket. I also had some discomfort on the left side and found it to be due to the hard cardboard sample pass in the retractable fast pass pocket. It was more comfortable when I removed it. The weather actually got a bit warm as it got later. We walked up to the building with the large carousel, paid $2 ($1 each) and got into what looked like a blue sleigh in between all the animals. We later learned it was called the Sea Sled. There was a tiny zebra in front of it. Behind it was a husky named Columbia wearing some purple and gold. Chasing Columbia was a cougar. There were many horses, a dragon, a tapir, a red wolf and even a walrus named E.T. after a real walrus at the zoo. We rode around the carousel for several minutes.

We returned to a snackbar near the closed red wolf display where my wife got a fudge puppy, a stick of Belgian waffle covered in chocolate icing and coconut. I got a small hot apple cider that was good and spicy. We got our refreshments just as the snackbar was closing. We then returned to the plaza café near the entrance where my wife got a hot chocolate with a shot of peppermint syrup. From there we walked to the North Pacific Aquarium. Just inside they had a hurricane simulator that I tried out in my new jacket for $2. It held up against 70 mph winds. We then looked at the aquarium from above and saw a couple of halibut swimming just below the surface. They looked fairly large, larger than the ones I used to catch in the waters outside Juneau. I was surprised to them swimming along top of the water since they are a bottom fish. There were also some shark-like fish on the surface. The aquarium was circular and very large. We could see the ruins of an old boat inside it.

After we saw the North Pacific Aquarium we looked around in the zoo gift shop. They had lots of cute stuffed animals, some glass shells and starfish that glowed in the dark, games, jigsaw puzzles, and science kits. It seemed like most toys were for children three years old or older. They had a book written by someone from Point Defiance Zoo about animals in Thailand. It also had the words in the Thai language and characters. When people bought the book the publisher donated a copy to poor families in Thailand. By the time we left the gift shop it was nearly 9 p.m., closing time for the zoo. It felt warmer than when we were walking around earlier. After leaving the zoo we noticed some pay telescopes on the rail to admire the view to the west. It had not rained the entire time we were there and it looked like the sky was actually clearing up. But it was still a good place to try out my new insulated jacket.

I got to try out my new jacket again a few days later. We heard online that Olympic silver medalist Ben Agosto was putting on a clinic and skating exhibition at the Franciscan Polar Plaza temporary ice rink in Tollefson Square in downtown Tacoma. It was cold and rainy that day but my jacket kept me warm and dry. It was warm in the enclosed skate-changing area. We later sat on a pink bench there with the Almond Roca label. The rink was covered but still open to the outside making it quite cold. The jacket was definitely needed. We arrived right at 10 a.m. when the exhibition started. It consisted of performances by girls and young women from the Lakewood Winter Club skating club. They skated to Christmas and holiday songs most of which we hadn't heard before. We saw Ben Agosto there in his white Vancouver Olympics jacket. He did not skate in the exhibition, though, and only got out on the ice at the end to take pictures with the club. It was still worth attending the free event and trying out my new jacket.

Hi-Tec Men’s Hard Rain Shell

In mid-October 2012 we ordered some jackets from The Clymb, an online retailer.  My mom told us we would need warm jackets and shells for winter in the Northwest.  The Clymb was the only retailer we could find that discounted jackets during the seasons when they were needed.  Most of the jackets came during the last week of October.  The Clymb used FedEx for its deliveries and my wife had some difficulty receiving the last of the jackets we ordered.  The warm jacket I ordered was a Special Blend Caliber Jacket colored Burnt Greens Floored with a sort of natural pattern.  The picture online showed it with a green hood but when I got it the hood was black.  It just fit me and would have been too tight if I wore anything more than a T-shirt underneath.  My wife received a couple of jackets and a couple of shirts.  Unfortunately, only one of the shirts worked out, a Sherpa Adventure Gear Khunde tee.  She later received the Bonfire Echo Jacket that was colored Marine and had many pockets.  It worked out well despite the difficulty in receiving it.  I also had good luck with the shell I ordered, the Hi-Tec Men’s Hard Rain Shell.

My Hi-Tec Men’s Hard Rain Shell is colored a lighter blue and grey.  Hi-Tec, incidentally was founded in Shoeburyness, Essex, England, U.K. and Billy Bragg composed an Essex-style reworking of “Route 66” that opens with “If you ever go to Shoeburyness.”  It was advertised as 100% polyester and waterproof that so far it has proven to be.  It differs from my previous rain shell, a khaki one from L.L. Bean that my mom got me in 2001.  The L.L. Bean had two opposite zippers down the front while the Hi-Tec has only one.  However, the Hi-Tec has two zippers for venting each armpit where the L.L. Bean didn’t have any zippers there.  Both have adequate hoods, though the Hi-Tec is not detachable as the L.L. Bean was.  I even kept that hood.  I think the L.L. Bean also had more pockets.  The Hi-Tec is big enough to wear over a fleece but not too big to wear by itself.  It has Velcro along the zipper in front.  One of the only problems I’ve had with the shell was that a Velcro pad came loose about a week after receiving it.  I was able to sew much of it back myself and I’ve been more careful with the Velcro pads.

We got a chance to truly try out our new rain shells when we went to Olympic National Park on Monday, November 12, a day I had off for Veteran’s Day.  All the National Parks were free over Veteran’s Day weekend, November 10-12.  We had originally planned to return to Mt. Rainier National Park and hike around the Longmire section.  However, I read on the park’s website that they required chains between November 1 and May 1.  My last experience with snow chains was in early 2001.  I was in the Young Adults group at my church and we were driving up to a rented cabin on Big Bear Mountain.  My friend who was driving had got some chains at Autozone and expected to not use them and be able to take them back.  However, we hit some very heavy snow on the way up and needed to use them.  While looking online for chains for going to Mt. Rainier in November 2012, we found that they didn’t allow you to return the chains that cost between $40 and $120.  We decided to look into other National Parks and thought of Olympic.  Their website did not say that they required chains.

Olympic National Park covers much of the Olympic peninsula on the western side of Puget Sound.  My wife heard this region referred to as the “outboard motor” of Washington state.  It is encircled by highway 101 along which are the towns of Sequim, Port Angeles, and Forks.  Decades before I had lived with my family in a house along Hood Canal near Poulsbo.  Olympic National Park has multiple entrances from the 101 and different regions such as Dosewallips, Staircase, Deer Park, Hurricane Ridge, Elwha, Sol Dae and Hoh Rain Forest.  I remember going to Deer Park as a very young child.  We looked into Dosewallips for this latest trip but saw online that it was closed.  We then chose the next-closest region, Staircase.

On Monday, November 12 we left home at 10:25 a.m.  We took the 16 freeway west and for the first time drove across the Tacoma Narrows Bridge.  The road across the bridge was 2-lane but a sign said that you couldn’t change lanes on the bridge.  We were driving on the “old bridge” of metal and we did not have to pay a toll.  If we had gone the opposite direction we would have driven on the “new bridge” of concrete and had to pay a toll of around $4.  We saw the toll booth on the other side after we crossed Puget Sound.  We drove through Gig Harbor that looked very wooded for a harbor town.  The weather had actually gotten a bit nice with the sun peeking through the clouds.  We passed the exit to highway 302 that was an alternate route to our destination, possibly a faster one though its junction with the 3 looked a bit confusing.  We drove through Purdy, an unincorporated area of Pierce County where a women’s prison is located.  To our left we could see the water of Carr Inlet.  We crossed the county line into Kitsap County, passed the exit onto the 160 and drove through Port Orchard.

In Bremerton the 16 merged with highway 3 going southwest.  After we passed Bremerton we crossed into Mason County.  In Belfair and Allyn we first kept left to avoid the 300 and soon after turned right onto the 106.  This highway went right along the south side of Hood Canal, the part that curves back up to the northeast.  Hood Canal is roughly shaped like a scythe and we were driving along the “blade” part.  In the mid to late 1970s I lived with my family along the “handle” portion of Hood Canal near the Hood Canal Bridge.  We could see the canal just beyond the houses along the shore.  There were any small docks and piers.  We passed Twanoh State Park, several more houses.  The MapQuest directions said to turn right on Reservation Road and then right onto the 101.  We turned right there but Reservation Road did not appear to be going the right direction.  The area was part of the Skokomish Tribal Nation.  We turned around at an intersection and returned to the 106 and turned right where it ended at the 101.

We passed the Lucky Dog casino and soon saw Hood Canal on our right again only this time the “handle” of the scythe.  We reached the small town of Hoodsport and saw an impressive stone building on our left.  I think we later figured it was an old power station building.  We turned left at the 119 that went uphill and passed a visitor center for Olympic National Park.  The area became progressively more wooded.  There were a few roads leading to different recreation areas.  A couple were closed for the season.  Along the left we started to see Lake Cushman.  At a T intersection we turned left on N. Staircase Road/119/NF/24.  A few miles later the road became unpaved road.  We passed a heavy equipment vehicle trimming the trees on the roadside.  We were surprised to see that the vehicle was made by Volvo.  Around this time we crossed into the fourth county that day, Jefferson.  We could see Lake Cushman closer on our left.  The road became paved again and we entered Olympic National Park.  There was no one at the entrance station.  Not long after entering we parked near Staircase ranger station.

We had been driving for around two hours.  There were two or three other cars parked there and a group of people walking around.  It was quite cold out in the low 40s and there was about an inch of snow on the ground, but it wasn’t raining.  Our shells kept us warm enough, though I also wore a hat and gloves.  We crossed the bridge over the North Fork Skokomish River and found the start of the Staircase Rapids loop trail.  The posted map indicated that the bridge connecting the trails on both sides of the river was closed for construction.  We decided to hike that trail anyway.  Soon after we started we saw many gold-brown leaves on the ground beside the trail.  I wasn’t sure if these had fallen from trees or grew from low plants.  We took a side trail to Big Cedar, a very large fallen cedar tree whose base on its side was still twice as tall as me.  The main trail mostly went along the south bank of the North Fork Skokomish River.  It was fairly calm initially but soon became rough rapids with many rocks and white water.  The rapids seem to go on for a while.  The other side wasn’t very far and we could see mountains through the clouds.

The river calmed down the higher we hiked.  There was also more snow on the trail.  It veered away from the river slightly and at one point we saw signs on the right saying closed for construction along with mesh fencing.  This must have been where they were working on the bridge.  The trail kept going along the south side of the river.  We followed it to what looked like a meadow covered in snow.  A wooden sign said “Beaver Burn 1985.”  The trail became less apparent and we decided to turn around at this point.  We had only seen two other hikers on the trail.  On the way back we noticed a very large root system of several trees.

Once we returned the head of the Staircase Rapids trail we felt we had more time for hiking.  We decided to try the Shady Lane trail that began nearby.  The first 10^th of a mile was a very wide and flat trail along the river.  The online guide said this part was accessible to wheelchair.  It got less smooth after we crossed the wooden bridge over Elk Creek.  On the right we saw what looked like a cave in the mossy rocks.  We passed under a fallen tree and continued along the south side of the river.  It was raining but our hoods and shells kept us dry.  The trail continued through some flat woods.  At some points it would fork off.  When it reached an uphill section we figured it was time to turn around.  By the time we returned to the car it was raining hard and nearly 3:30 p.m.  We considered hiking the portion of the Staircase Rapids trail on the north side of the river, but decided to leave instead.  We didn’t want to drive down the 119 in the dark.

We followed the paved to the unpaved and back to the paved section and turned right to stay on the 119 at what was T intersection coming the other way.  It was getting darker and the few other cars on the road wanted to go faster than us.  I pulled over a few times to let them pass.  We returned to the 101 in Hoodsport, though this time we drove south.  We passed the Lucky Dog casino and the 3-way intersection with the 106 but stayed on the 101.  It was getting dark as we drove by the town of Shelton.  We exited onto the 108 and turned left into the parking lot for the Little Creek Casino.  We had been there once before when we saw Cheap Trick at the Skookum Creek Events Center in May (see earlier review).  Back then we had a good experience eating at the Water’s Edge café in the smoke-free casino.  We went there again and noticed it wasn’t as crowded, possibly because it was early for dinner, being not yet 5:00 p.m. and Cheap Trick wasn’t there.  I ordered the same thing as last time, a hot dog with a side of fry bread that again came in a large portion.  My wife got the special roast beef and cheddar grilled sandwich and a cup of taco soup.  This time they didn’t have Sierra Mist in the fountain drink dispensers.

As we ate we saw on the TV that it was snowing a lot at Mt. Rainier and two snowboarders had been stranded.  Someone at a table near ours ordered the Indian Taco Salad made with fry bread.  After dinner we left Little Creek and took the 101 to the I-5 home.  It was a great outing to try out our new shells that kept us warm and dry the entire time.

Broadway Center Fall Free-for-All 2012

We attended a couple of the functions at the Broadway Center Fall-Free-for-All on Sunday, September 23, 2012.  We first heard about it when we went to see the Hope in Hard Times exhibit at the Washington State History Museum on the previous Thursday.  We saw a poster for it and picked up a schedule of the Broadway Center season at the Museum store.  To get wristbands for the Free-for-All, we just had to fill out a form with our names, email address, and zip code and turn the form in to the Pantages Theatre box office.

We arrived at the Broadway Center before 1 p.m. and found the elevator up to Studios 2 and 3.  It was a large elevator with doors that could open on either side.  It was also very slow.  We arrived at Studio 2 before the 1 p.m. start time on the schedule.  The organizer then told us that the program actually didn’t start until 1:30.  We had ridden the elevator up with a couple of tall and skinny guys.  They turned out to be models in the program.  We decided to walk around a bit.  In studio 3 they were having the Northwest Playwrights Alliance Double Shot Festival that consisted of eight new 10-minute plays created from scratch in the last 24 hours.  In studio 1 they had the Deep Prep cooking show that we planned to catch after the first program in Studio 2.  In the theatre on the Square they had the Arletta Sound Jazz orchestra and would later have the Tacoma Urban Orchestra play backing music for a dance opera called “14.”  There had been many other free functions the day before with Vicci Martinez headlining.

We walked past the Pantages Theatre building to the Theatre on the Square park.  There wasn’t anything going on there but we could still admire the sculpture Canned Salmon, a shiny salmon made from recycled aluminum cans.  It was a very nice day for the second day of autumn: sunny and just getting warm.

We returned to Studio 2 where they were playing music: a kind of fusion of jazz and hip hop, some recorded and other live.  The DJ, Mr. Melanin also spun records.  He was accompanied by an organ player and trumpet player.  The show we were about to see was Gentlemen’s Tacoma: History of Menswear in Our City, a fashion show.  Studio 2 had a high ceiling, red curtains covering three of the walls, and large (3-4 foot) black and grey tiles on the floor.  There was a runway elevated about one foot off the ground that was at an angle to the back curtain coming from the left side.  The set included an antique-looking desk with a globe, old-fashion typewriter, and animal (bighorn sheep or mountain goat) skull on top.  Behind the desk was a bulletin board with retro-looking ads and announcements.  There was also an orange armchair with a retro-looking rifle, a stack of old school suitcases, a faux bear rug, some baseball bats, a rack of men’s suit jackets and maybe a couple of sporting jackets, an old barber chair, and, towards the elevator, some suit jackets on mannequin torsos.  There was enough seating for about 30 people and by the time the show started nearly all the seats were filled.  Many in the audience seemed to know the presenter and the models.  On each chair was a program for the show.  It had many men’s fashion-related words in retro-looking type such as confidence, haircombs, and braces.

The show was organized and presented by J. Elquist, a young menswear designer who had previously worked for Ralph Lauren and Brooks Brothers in New York City.  He now had his own designs and planned or already had his own shop in Tacoma.  He wore a high school cardigan and slacks.  He explained each model’s outfit.  There were five models, mostly tall and thin and all young.  The outfits spanned the early 1930s to near present day.  The earlier ones often included suspenders or braces, the older kind with Y-shape straps attaching to the pants.  Elquist described how one of the first outfits was similar to work clothes worn by people featured in the Hope in Hard Times exhibit at the Washington State History Museum.  Several outfits included billed hats and suit jackets.  Elquist sometimes asked models to take off their jackets and turn around.

Between each series of outfits J. Elquist talked about the history of men’s fashion in Tacoma.  In 1891 there were 27 men’s clothing stores in Tacoma.  There were 48 in 1911 and 37 in 1953.  By 1992 there were none in downtown Tacoma.  One Tacoma store, Kloppensteins started in Tacoma and eventually expanded to Seattle and Anchorage, Alaska.  Many of the jackets worn by the models were Kloppensteins as were some of the jackets on the set’s clothes rack.  The jackets on the mannequins were contemporary ones designed by J. Elquist.  I think many of the trousers worn by the models were more contemporary and one of them wore Naked and Famous jeans as part of a later outfit.  Another former store he mentioned was Lundquist Lilly’s.  He said something about how Nordstrom’s growth in the 1990s was the death knell of men’s clothing stores.  One series of outfits was for sports teams in Tacoma’s past.  The models wore jackets and caps for the Tacoma Yankees, the Tacoma Twins, the Tacoma Cubs, the Tacoma Tugs, and Tacoma Tigers.  The last of these was a minor league team for the Oakland Athletics that included players such as Mark McGuire and Jose Canseco.  The show seemed to convey a lot of information, but it lasted less than half an hour.  J. Elquist explained that most of the outfits were on loan from local thrift stores such as Goodwill, Bargain World, and Value Village.  They were listed as sponsors on the program.

After the fashion show ended we had time to catch the 2:00 time of the next show we wanted to see.  We waited for the elevator but it was very slow.  Someone said we could just take the stairs that we found down a hall and to the left.  The stairs led to a glass door that opened to the sidewalk near Studio 1 at ground level.  They weren’t letting anyone in Studio 1 yet.  I think someone said that they were cleaning up from the last show.  They soon let us in to Studio 1 that was around the same size as Studio 2, but with a lowered, angled ceiling and a curtain along one wall.  The stage was elevated and to the left was a large screen.  The show was Deep Prep, a cooking demo by Jesse Smith who has his own internet show on YouTube.  This was his first time doing a live show.  The cameraman, Tom I think was his name, would broadcast what was cooking on the screen.  He had a stove that Jesse said looked about as old as his stove at home.  To his right of the stove was a large cutting board.

Jesse Smith works at Pinky’s restaurant in Seattle.  On his shows he demonstrates Asian and Latino cooking.  The first thing he made were Asian spring rolls.  He began by cutting up three kinds of mushrooms: oyster, shiitake, and king oyster.  He only used the caps of the shiitakes.  He cooked them in a skillet of toasted sesame oil, a lot of oil since mushrooms tend to soak it up.  He put them in the oil a bit early because we could not hear them sizzle.  He explained how he always cooks at high heat since you can just take it off the burner to cool the skillet and he also prefers non-stick skillets.  He also sliced up some Napa cabbage and added it to the skillet along with mushroom soy sauce and Korean chili flakes.  As the vegetables cooked he picked up some fresh red Thai basil and sliced it very finely, a technique called chiffonade.  When the vegetables were done he poured them into the bowl and wiped the skillet clean with a towel.

As the vegetables cooled Jesse got out some spring roll wrappers that were square shaped.  He put some cooked veggies toward one corner of the wrapper, folded the corner, the other corners over, applied some water to it to help it stick and then rolled it tight.  He already had a large pot of oil going on the stove and we could hear it bubble when he dropped the spring rolls in it.  He said to make sure to turn them in the oil and to cook until they were golden.  His second dish was fried rice with Chinese sausage.  He drank from a bottle of beer as he cooked and at one point commented on how the stage squeaked.

Jesse began the fried rice by cutting up onions, celery, and carrots.  He asked if anyone knew what that combination was called, and my wife said, “Mirepoix.”  We may have been the only ones who knew.  Jesse described how cutting carrots first so they were shorter than the length of the knife made it easier to cut them into planks and further dice them.  He also cut up garlic simply by mashing it with the side of his knife.  He cut up some fresh ginger into tiny pieces and said there was no need to peel the ginger.  He again heated up some sesame oil in the skillet, first added the mirepoix, cooked it some, then added the garlic, ginger, and some mushroom soy sauce.  He said one secret to good fried rice was to first cook the vegetables and meat, remove them from heat and then add the cooked rice.  He also said it was better to cook the rice the day before.  He sliced some Chinese sausage and added it to the cooking vegetables.

Once the sausage started to curl, Jesse removed it and the vegetables from the skillet, wiped it clean, added some more oil, and fried the rice.  He also stressed not to use too much rice.  He fried it for a bit and then added back the other ingredients along with some fried rice seasoning.  That came in a paper pouch and included MSG.  He cut up some Welsh onions and cilantro for garnish, squeezed a lime over the rice and sprinkled on some toasted sesame seeds.  He had removed the spring rolls from the oil during a lull in the making the rice.  He asked for three volunteers to eat the rice and spring rolls.  They were also filmed.  One commented that she liked the lime in the rice.  As they ate Jesse took questions.  Someone asked about a cookbook and he said they planned for one after the fourth series.  They were working on the second series currently.  Jesse said he had been cooking since the age of 2 and learned by working at many different restaurants since his teen years.  He said an important skill was to learn how to use a knife well.  He said to check out his show on YouTube at www.youtube.com/user/deepprepchannel.  Each episode is 5-10 minutes and he gives the recipe.  This show lasted 40 minutes.

Lopez Visit August 2012

We visited our aunt and uncle on Lopez Island between August 17-19, 2012.  They invited us earlier in the year and with everything we had going on in the summer, this was the earliest weekend we all had available.  After having breakfast at Mary’s Burger Bistro we left Tacoma at around 9:00 a.m. taking the I-5 north.  We hit some traffic in downtown Seattle where the signs told the traffic to go progressively slower from 55 mph to 45, 35 and even 25.  I still haven’t gotten the hang of driving in Seattle.  The I-5 in downtown seems to reduce to just two lanes of through traffic and there are exits on both the left and right sides.  The express lanes were closed going north.  The traffic got smoother after we crossed Lake Union and the freeway less confusing.  I saw that the tall building that used to be Safeco Insurance now had the purple and gold University of Washington logo on it. 

We left Seattle and drove through Shoreline, Mountlake Terrace, Lynnwood, and Everett.  We passed Cabela’s that was near the Tulalip Resort and casino and Marysville.  Just north was the large complex of Seattle Premium Outlets.  We drove through Arlington, crossed the Stillaquamish River.  An exit indicated the way to Stanwood that we knew as the location of the Pilchuck Glass School.  We soon crossed into Skagit County.  Since it wasn’t spring we didn’t see any large fields of tulips.  It looked like there were businesses catering to tulip visitors, though.  We eventually reached Burlington after driving through Mt. Vernon.  In Burlington we took exit 320 onto highway WA-20 toward Burlington/Anacortes.  We passed some agricultural fields and crossed an elevated bridge onto Fidalgo Island.

I had previously thought that Anacortes was on Whidbey Island and that was the only island just off the coast and comprising Island County.  But there are actually a couple of coastal islands and the northern one is Fidalgo.  Soon after reaching the island, the WA-20 turned northwest along the coast.  We reached a roundabout and took the first left onto Commercial Avenue, though it was still highway WA-20.  There was a bit of traffic here, possibly also going to the San Juan Islands.  The cross streets were all numbered and it was relatively straightforward finding 12^th Street where we turned left.  12^th Street became Oakes Ave. that went along the north coast of Fidalgo.  We soon reached Ferry Terminal Road and saw all the cars queued up to board the ferry.

We didn’t plan to drive on the ferry but rather to park in one of the ferry terminal lots and walk on.  We had discussed this with my aunt and uncle beforehand.  It cost around $50 for a round-trip drive-on ticket and around $12 each for walk on tickets plus $25 to park.  However, when driving on you have to get there 60-90 minutes before the departure time.  When walking on, you just have to get there 30 minutes before.  We found all the lower lots to be full.  We drove up a hill on the left to the upper lot and found plenty of spaces.  We paid at the machine with a credit card noting our space number.  We paid in advance for three days and didn’t have to leave any receipt on the dashboard.  We arrived at the lot after 11:30 a.m.  Many other people were parked there, several of them planning to bring bicycles onto the ferry.  I think that costs just a bit more than walking on and the bikes are stored on the first level with the cars.

We found two different ways to walk from the upper parking lot to the ferry terminal.  One was a gravel/dirt trail through the woods on the left side of the drive.  The other was a pavement path on the right side behind a concrete barrier.  I think this was supposed to be for bicycles, but we still walked down it since it seemed easier on our rolling suitcase.  By the time we reached the ferry terminal we could smell the sea.  The terminal is a blue building with a take-out eatery, lots of seating, and a counter selling tickets.  It was very crowded in there though we soon found out that many were there for the 11:55 a.m. ferry to the town of Friday Harbor on San Juan Island.  The San Juan County Fair was going on near there.  We bought two tickets for the ferry departing to Lopez Island at 12:30 p.m.

The terminal cleared somewhat after the 11:55 a.m. ferry to Friday Harbor left.  There were many waiting to catch the Lopez Island ferry like us.  It arrived between 12:15-12:20 and they asked all those with bicycles to enter at the street level with the cars.  They had us walk-ons enter through a ramp that led to the second level of the ferry.  There were two places for ferries to dock at the terminal and the ferries were front-and-back symmetrical such that cars could enter one end and exit out the other.  I had actually taken very similar ferries to Seattle when I lived in the Poulsbo, WA area back in the late 1970s.  This ferry looked very similar both inside and out.  The ferry we boarded for Lopez Island was the Hyak, a name that even sounded familiar.  We sat at some comfortable benches along the south side of the ferry.  That turned out to be the side that the sun shone through.  I think most of the benches filled up though the tables in the middle of the ferry did not.  Some bench booths had tables.  The native designs looked very familiar from 30+ years earlier.  A few of the inner tables had jigsaw puzzles on them.

It had been very warm all that week and was still sunny outside but out on the water was a cool breeze that sometimes blew into our booth inside the Hyak.  Each end of the ferry had two side platforms where people could stand, take photos, and pose as “king of the world.”  It was a short ferry ride to Lopez Island, around 30 minutes.  Disembarking was different from boarding in that everyone left from the lower “street” level including walk-ons.  We left with a large crowd of walkers and bicyclists but soon spotted our aunt and uncle there to pick us up.  The Lopez Island ferry terminal is on a fairly steep hill with a parking lot to the right.  As they drove us to their house my aunt and uncle mentioned that an otter had jumped on the ferry that morning and didn’t jump off until it had returned to Anacortes.

We had chips and salsa at my aunt and uncle’s house for early afternoon snack.  After that we went to a shellfish farm in a lagoon owned by the local Jones Family Farms.  They raised clams and oysters there and showed us the large vats of the tiny baby oysters.  My aunt and uncle bought a pound of fresh manila clams and a half dozen small oysters.  We walked down a road along Humphrey Head overlooking Shoal Bay.  There was a small marina.  We picked some blackberries from bushes hanging from the steep slope along the inland side of the road.  Next my aunt drove us into Lopez Village, the most settled part of the island where there is the grocery store and many businesses.  We stopped by the grocery store to get some produce included Eve apples.  For drinks I got some Thomas Kemper root beer and my wife got some coconut water.  We went to a coffee shop where my aunt put some notices for an art exhibits on the bulletin board.  Then we went across the street to the Chimera gallery.  There they had some glass bunches of grapes made by a local artist, pottery, glass beads made with the “cane” colored lines, and these cute little paper boxes, one decorated with pages of the ferry schedule, another with drawings of pencils.

After we returned to their house my uncle had us help break up some frozen fish to use as bait for the crab pots.  It needed to be small enough to fit in the small white plastic pot-like bait containers used in the crab pots.  We then opened the crab pots themselves to install the bait and get ready to load the small aluminum boat that they shared with their neighbor.  We had waited until the late afternoon/early evening to set the pots because that was when the tide was in and highest.  We loaded 5-6 pots along with the oars to help push us off.  My aunt sat at the bow with the crab pots.  My wife and I sat in the middle and my uncle sat in the back operating the outboard motor.

We went out off the coast a ways but not too far and started setting the pots.  This involved lowering them until they touched the bottom with only a few feet of line (rope) for slack.  My aunt and uncle showed us how it was easier to untangle the line and keep the slack in the water rather than the boat.  Three of the pots had 50 feet of line each while the circular ones had about 90 feet each.  At the end of the lines were red and white floats with the names of my aunt and uncle and their neighbors.  While we were out there we saw one of their neighbors also out in his boat setting crab pots.  We planned to check the crab pots we had set the following day, hoping to catch something.

After we returned, we brought the boat back up on shore and unloaded it, my aunt and my wife shucked corn on the cob while my uncle and I made garlic bread.  He put our main course for dinner, a long sockeye salmon filet along with the corn and foil-wrapped garlic bread into their Big Green Egg barbecue.  It’s a large ceramic egg-shaped barbecue in which he put chunks of charcoal rather than briquettes.  It got very hot when closed.  My uncle showed us the Big Green Egg catalog that sold it in different sizes and many accessories.  He described it as a “cult.”  He also used it to cook the oysters while my aunt steamed the manila clams.  We had them with the garlic and olive oil sauce that we used to make the garlic bread along with a very tiny bottle of Tabasco sauce.  It was just like the little bottle we got in an MRE from one of my wife’s former instructors.  After having our appetizers, I threw all the clam and oyster shells into the bay.

Dinner was a feast with the sockeye salmon, corn, garlic bread, nectarine salsa, and carrot slaw.  For dessert we had the blackberries we had picked earlier in the day.  The others had theirs with cream but even just by themselves they tasted so sweet.  After dessert we went into their computer/TV room to watch one of the Sherlock Holmes videocassettes that we had won at Worldwide Sherlock Holmes Week two weeks earlier (see earlier blog).  It was the Granada Films production of “A Scandal in Bohemia” starring Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes.  It was first produced in the early 1980s and we later learned that it was the first episode to air.  I had seen many episodes of the Granada Films Sherlock Holmes series, but not this one.  It was pretty good and showcased Holmes’ ability to disguise himself both in appearance and mannerisms.  My aunt and uncle also enjoyed it.  They had a copy of the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes with illustrations very similar to the Granada Films production.

After getting up the next day, Saturday, August 18, we did some bicycling around the nearby roads.  They had enough bicycles and more than enough helmets for all four of us.  The weather was cloudier and cooler.  One of their neighbors liked to post poems in a signplate and the one we had seen was written by a child in elementary school.  We returned to their house where they graciously made us breakfast of sausage, eggs, hashbrowns and bagels.  After that meal they drove us to a park in Lopez Village where the Lopez Saturday Farmers Market was taking place.  It was actually quite crowded and had stands selling produce, canned fish and crab, clothes, artwork, soap, hot sauce, jam, crafts, and more.  There was a display of bowls by the same artist who created a bowl with salmon on it that we have.  Our aunt and uncle gave us that bowl as a wedding present.  One stand of produce sold onions still with their stems.  They looked like large Welsh onions.  They also sold pattypans and cute little zucchinis.  Another stand sold crafted wooden salad tongs that we thought about getting.  We ended up getting a 3-ounce bottle of Chicaoji hot sauce, a jar of locally-made strawberry banana jam, a bar of “cycle” flavored soap and some chapstick both also made locally.

After visiting the market we walked across the street to Colin Goode’s gallery and studio.  He is a former Episcopalian priest who now paints and teaches art classes.  His gallery contained many of his paintings and some from other artists.  He used many different styles including bands of bright colors to portray the fields of tulips in the Skagit Valley, flowers, natural scenes and icons.  One painting of fire included gold paint.  He was there and working on a painting.  He hung it up and decided it needed more work.  We noticed that he spoke with an English accent.  He also sold prints, cards, lamps and bowls in addition to painting.  My aunt bought a card with a humorous prayer.  His wife also gave my aunt a plant for her garden.

After leaving Colin Goode’s gallery we walked to the Lopez Island Thrift Store.  It sells used items to benefit a number of community organizations.  It’s a small store that got very crowded with what seemed to be overflow from the Farmers market.  My uncle got me a Willamette University cap form there.  We then drove to the Lopez Island public library and post office that’s in a red school house-like building.  Most fiction books there seemed to be combined all together.  Mysteries could be found next to science fiction/fantasy and regular fiction.  However there was a separate section for young adult and teen books.  In the regular fiction I saw a hardbound copy of The Redbreast by Jo Nesbø.  My aunt checked out a book about the fictional influence of cats on Charles Dickens’ writing.  We left the library and passed the Islander resort and marina.  We then parked on the side of the road and went to a large barn-like building full of many used items.  Most were organized into sections such as for clothes, shoes, and books.  This was “Take It or Leave It” where people could take anything or leave anything for free.  People were driving their cars up and dropping them off.  Someone left a bicycle that was snatched up right away.  I got some tapes of the Bob and Ray show that came out in the 1980s.

We left Take It or Leave It and drove further south on the island passing farms with sheep and cows and one estate that had a labyrinth garden open to the public.  We also passed the high school on the island that has a very small graduating class.  We stopped by a hardware store where they gave away free bags of popcorn.  We then drove to the south end of the island to the Islandale store, a market that sells food and also has a small eatery.  We had lunch there.  My uncle had a sandwich and my aunt had a bowl of Italian sausage soup that was an original recipe developed by the cook at the store.  My wife and I split a pork tenderloin sandwich special made with coleslaw inside and fries on the side.  It was good and we were able to have the fries with some Chicaoji hot sauce on our table.  We looked through the store a little bit and saw that they also sold Chicaoji for a little bit more than at the Farmers market and meat (beef and pork) from Jones Family Farms.

After lunch we drove to Shark Reef along the eastern coast of Lopez Island.  A short trail led right to the high rocky coast.  From there we could see the coast of San Juan Island on which was a lighthouse.  A couple of boats were fighting a strong current to go south.  Near the Lopez coast were large kelp beds and on a nearby rock island (islet?) many seals lay resting.  Some would jump in the water to feed and we saw one very close to the shore we stood on trying to keep a fish from the seagulls.  Another seal swam over and tried to take the fish from the first seal and succeeded.  We also saw some black birds with pink beaks.  My aunt identified them as “oyster catchers.”  There were several other people sitting or walking along the coast.  Someone said they saw a larger sea lion swimming nearby.  As we returned on the trail we saw someone swimming in the water.  He looked cold.

We drove north past the Lopez airport where a small plane, possibly a Piper Cub was taking off.  From there we drove up a hill to the Center Church, a Lutheran church that also hosts a Catholic mass every Saturday at 10:30 a.m.  It’s a small white church surrounded by a cemetery that extends to across the road.  The church was open along with the white fences to the sections of the cemetery.  Since it’s up on the hill there are very good views of the countryside including fields with sheep feeding.  Several people near the church had easels set up in order to paint the landscape.  It may have been an art class.  My uncle talked to one of the painters who turned out to be the wife of a late coworker of his.

We returned to my aunt and uncle’s house and got ready to take the small aluminum boat out to check the crab pots.  We brought some more fish and some chicken to replace to bait set out the day before.  We also brought a couple of large white buckets.  My aunt and uncle made sure they had their crab licenses.  It was colder than the day before and they let us borrow some of their fleeces.  Mine was orange that match my borrowed life jacket.  I pulled up the first crab pot that was at around 50 feet.  It was empty.  My aunt pulled up the second and it contained one crab, a male, and big enough to keep.  They had a plastic blue crab gauge to determine if the crab shells were wide enough and put the crab in one of the white buckets.  My wife pulled up the next pot and it contained 11 crabs, many crawling over each other.  Our aunt showed us how to determine whether a crab was female and most of them were.  We threw them back since only males are allowed to harvest.  Of the eleven we were able to keep four, all males and all big enough according to the crab gauge.  My uncle pulled up the next two heavier crab pots.  One had a male crab big enough to keep and the other had a crab that was too small.  After we brought in the pots we refilled their bait containers and re-set them.  In all we caught six crab.

Before returning to shore we filled the other large white plastic buckets with sea water that we would use for cooking the crab.  We then unloaded the boat and brought it back on shore.  The buckets of sea water were very heavy.  My aunt set out a large pot on an outdoor propane stove and started heating it up to boil.  We filled the pot with sea water from the buckets.  When the water reached boiling we put all six crabs in there.  Some of them fought a bit before they went in the pot.  But they all settled in there and their shells soon started turning red.  We brought the pot back to boil and let it boil for 10 minutes.  We then removed the now cooked red crabs from the pot.  Our aunt showed us how to rip off their body shells, lungs and other non-edible parts.  We threw these in another bucket and later threw them in the bay.  We used some sea water in another bucket to clean them off.  Then we brought the crabs inside.

Before we ate my aunt and uncle covered their table with newspaper.  Dinner was another feast with the crab, pasta and vegetables, and salad fix-ins.  While we ate it got dark outside.  My uncle spotted a mother deer and her two young fawns feeding on the grass in the backyard.  The fawns looked just like Bambi with their white spots.  My aunt and uncle lent us these metal nutcrackers tools that were very useful for shelling crab.  After dinner we watched the other Sherlock Holmes video that we had won at Worldwide Sherlock Holmes Week: the 1940s production of Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon starring Razzle Bathbone (Basil Rathbone) and Nigel Bruce.  It was a little over an hour and took place at the time it was made in the 1940s having to do with World War II and the Nazis.  It was partially based on the story The Adventure of the Dancing Men.  Professor Moriarty played a role in the story and Holmes also had a chance to showcase his ability to disguise himself.  Nigel Bruce played a bit of a bumbling Watson.

We slept in a bit the next day, Sunday, our last day of the Lopez visit.  Our aunt and uncle again graciously made us breakfast, this time consisting of sausage, oatmeal and Eve apples we had found at the market two days before.  After breakfast we went bikeriding.  My uncle and I rode northwest to Odlin Beach/Park.  They have an old school plastic bubble phone with a Polaroid phone.  The beach has a large boat ramp where even cargo barges can be brought in.  There’s a large gun battery in the park, though not functional.  We rode from there to campground that had just been set up.  They still had to put the picnic tables out.  We passed some field with sheep and I could hear them baa-ing.  We went down a hill where the bike I rode got up to 21 mph.  We passed Lopez Island Vineyards where we could see the grapevines.  We stopped by the market to pick up a copy of the Seattle Times and from there rode through the village to the coast near the most expensive restaurant on Lopez Island.  On the way back we raced.  My uncle won but I had gained much ground.

We returned to their house and all four of us went for a walk up Humphrey Head.  This time we took a trail up the ridge and got to where we could see both Swifts Bay and Shoal Bay with the lagoon in between.  We returned to the house and had lunch: leftover pasta salad with some other sausage, leftover salmon and garlic bread.  After lunch we packed up and our aunt and uncle drove us to the ferry terminal.  They asked us if we planned to take any interesting detours on the drive back.  Rather than take highway WA-20 straight to I-5 south, they recommended turning right on Best Road and driving through some scenic farmland.  The road would eventually meet up with I-5.  They dropped us off at the ferry terminal just before 2:30 as the ferry, the Elwha this time, was just pulling in.  We waited at the smaller Lopez Island ferry terminal and noticed the word “Welcome” in the chainlink fence on the other side of the drive.  Out on the water we saw one ferry heading east and another going west.  With them and the Elwha I was able to take a photo of three ferries.

We boarded with the bicyclists on the first level of the ferry, the car deck, and had to climb a couple of flights of stairs to get to the passenger deck.  We again sat on the south side of the ferry and this time the sun didn’t shine through the window.  At one point I went to the upper deck and saw the cafeteria.  It was like the ones I remember on the Alaska state ferries.  The upper deck also has an outdoor deck all around the ferry.  The ferry left at 3:00 p.m. and arrived at 3:45 p.m.  They had us walk-ons disembark on a ramp attached to the passenger deck and not with the bicyclists from the lower car deck.  We passed through the terminal and the lower parking lot and then up the pavement path to the upper parking lot.  Once we got to the car we just followed the reverse of what we took two days earlier.  We crossed Best Road but decided not to take it this time.  I’m glad we didn’t because after crossing it we saw a sign for Azusa Farms and Gardens.

We got on the I-5 south and did hit some traffic between south Skagit county.  We passed a couple of cars towing small sailboats.  They were single-masted sloops with their masts taken down and they had outboard motors.  We got home at 6:45 p.m.  For dinner we had leftover crab we had caught the day before.  Our aunt and uncle had given us three of them.  We shelled all the meat and had half of it for dinner and the other half for lunch the next day along with rice and Chicaoji hot sauce.  It was one last delicious meal courtesy of Lopez.  We’re thankful to our aunt and uncle and we’ll look forward to our next visit.

Worldwide Sherlock Holmes Week with The Sound of the Baskervilles

My wife and I attended the gathering Worldwide Sherlock Holmes Week at T.S. McHugh’s Public House in Seattle on Sunday, August 5, 2012.  It was sponsored and coordinated by The Sound of the Baskervilles, a scion society of the Baker Street Irregulars serving the greater Puget Sound region.  My wife read about the Sherlockian society The Sound of the Baskervilles in the book Sherlock Holmes for Dummies by Steven Doyle that we got as we developed an interest in Sherlock Holmes earlier in the year.  What first got us interested was reading A Study in Scarlet that was assigned by the Wednesday Whodunit mystery book discussion group (see earlier review).  A few months later we watched the first season of the BBC series Sherlock starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman (see earlier review).  We enjoyed the show very much.  The Sound of the Baskervilles meets every month at T.S. McHugh’s.  This gathering for Worldwide Sherlock Holmes week was a special occasion to which they invited anyone who was interested.  Another title of the program was “The Anatomy of the World of Sherlock Holmes.”

To get to T.S. McHugh’s in Seattle from Tacoma we took Sound Transit bus number 594.  The bus took the I-5 north and exited near Safeco Field and CenturyLink Field at that major freeway interchange.  It drove up 4^th Street, turned right at Olive Way and we got off the bus at 6^th Street and Olive Way at 1:12 p.m.  We had considered taking the monorail from nearby Westlake Center to Seattle Center and saving us much of the walk but the monorail cost over $2.00 per person.  We walked north on Sixth Street and passed the King Cat theatre that was kitty corner to the Blanchard Building where I used to work many years before.  The United Artists theatre across the street had been torn down and replaced with a shiny new apartment building.  There was much construction going on in this “Belltown” section of downtown Seattle.  Several sections of sidewalks were closed.  We walked north on 5^th Street under the monorail track.  I didn’t see that store Rock Memories that I used to frequent when I worked in the area.  We reached Denny Way and walked west.  There seemed to be many people heading toward Seattle Center.  We passed the Pacific Science Center where they had a King Tut exhibit on display.  SeaFair was going on that weekend and at one point we saw the naval aerobatic planes the Blue Angels fly over.

We turned north at 1^st Street and had to climb a slight hill.  The large Seattle Center block was across the street to our right.  We passed the Seattle Storm women’s basketball team shop and Key Arena where they played.  We finally reached Mercer Street and turned left.  We didn’t have to walk far to reach T.S. McHugh’s Public House and arrived there at 1:55 p.m., five minutes before the program’s start time.  Upon entering we found a group of people sitting at booths and tables in a slightly elevated section to the right.  The President of the Sound of the Baskervilles personally welcomed us.  We also met his wife, the Secretary.  They first met as members of the society or “SOBs” as they call it.  Other officers there included the librarian and the treasurer who wore a Seattle Sounders jersey and planned to leave early to attend a Sounders game.  There were 5-6 other newcomers there.  The group was about equal in men and women.  There could have been more men.  There was also a wide age range from much younger than us to our age to “better.”  On one of the booth tables they had placed many Sherlock Holmes videocassettes and some posters on the seat.  They would later give some of these away in a drawing (“droring” as the secretary pronounced it).

The program started on time and the first thing that the president mentioned was that December would mark the 125^th anniversary of the first appearance of Sherlock Holmes.  A Study in Scarlet first appeared in Beeton’s Christmas Annual magazine in December 1887.  The president then mentioned an article by Sherlock Holmes author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle called “How I Write” in which he stated that as long as he grabbed the audience, he didn’t care how accurate he was.  An example of lack of accuracy is Dr. Watson’s war wound that is in his shoulder in one story and in his leg in another one.  The president described a meeting between Doyle and Oscar Wilde arranged by a Lord Lippincott that resulted in Doyle writing The Sign of the Four and Wilde writing The Picture of Dorian Gray.  At the time everyone wrote novels in parts and each part was published in a monthly magazine.  Doyle wrote his Sherlock Holmes stories such that a different story was published in the magazine each month.

The president then picked up a deerstalker hat, Calabash pipe and magnifying glass.  He asked which ones truly appeared in the Sherlock Holmes stories.  The deerstalker hat wasn’t mentioned specifically but it was typical country garb of the time period and Holmes did go to the country for some of his cases.  The Calabash pipe is not in the stories.  Holmes smoked a clay pipe.  It is suspected that the Calabash first appeared in dramatizations since the audience could better see the actor’s lips speaking with it than a clay pipe.  The magnifying glass is very true to the stories and appears many times.  Sherlock Holmes also used a tape measure.

The next part of the program was a panel discussion by 3 playwrights who had written or were in the process of writing plays featuring Sherlock Holmes.  The discussion was moderated by John Longenbaugh who had recently written and had produced a Sherlock Holmes Christmas Carol with Holmes in the role of Scrooge.  He said that while writing the play, someone had suggested the title “Holmes Alone” but I don’t think he used it.  The first playwright to speak was R. Hamilton Wright who was also a longtime actor in the Seattle theater scene.  He was working on a stage version of The Hound of the Baskervilles that would keep fairly true to the story.  He had previously written a play about Sherlock Holmes and the Americans featuring Annie Oakley and Buffalo Bill as characters.  I’m not sure if that one had ever been produced.  The other playwright on the panel was Tom Keogh.  He had written a play about a boy soldier who fought in Afghanistan with Watson and later returned to London and gotten involved with the Baker Street Irregulars and Sherlock Holmes in a mystery.  The play was for Seattle Children’s Theatre but was never produced because the cast was too big.  He had worked primarily in film before and this was his first play.  He was now working on a play about a younger Sherlock Holmes before he met Watson.

One of the playwrights mentioned that he was to give a talk on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes that was sponsored by Humanities Washington.  They talked about the difficulties of staging mysteries due to theatres not being able to afford large enough cast sizes.  One theatre had staged a 3-actor Hound of the Baskervilles, but it was meant to be a comedy.  They discussed how very different performers are able to “hit the role” of Sherlock Holmes.  Rupert Everett played Holmes in Silk Stocking without Watson.  Robert Stevens played him in Billy Wilder’s The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes.  They felt the best portrayal of Holmes was by Jeremy Brett and one playwright also liked Benedict Cumberbatch’s portrayal.  They discussed the lasting appeal of Sherlock Holmes and felt it was due to liking characters with flaws and we’re drawn to the price of genius.  Most of Holmes’ stories are told through Dr. Watson who is like a filter who possibly makes him seem better or worse than he really is.  There’s usually a point in every mystery where Holmes has figured it out and starts setting things in motion for the right resolution.  They also discussed how watching a play of a mystery is different from reading one because the audience must try to solve it in real time.  One playwright warned not to assume that everyone knows the story.

After the playwrights finished their discussion, the secretary of The Sound of the Baskervilles introduced the man sitting at the table with them.  He was the reference librarian for the Arthur Conan Doyle Collection at the Toronto Public Library in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.  He also belonged to the Toronto Sherlockian society and passed out some brochures for the Doyle collection.  The secretary then announced the breakout sessions.  As she did so, a man dressed in a Victorian suit came in and sat at our table.  The sessions were 1)The Best and Worst actors to portray Sherlock Holmes, 2)The Best and Worst original Doyle-authored Sherlock Holmes stories, 3)How You First Discovered Sherlock Holmes, 4)a discussion of the BBC’s latest production, Sherlock, and 5)Victorian Dress: A Man’s Point of View.  We decided to attend the last one mentioned because the presenter in Victorian garb, James Romnes, had sat at our table and we didn’t want to hear spoilers of other Sherlock Holmes stories and the second season of Sherlock.

Before the sessions began and during other intervals they did the “droring” for the Sherlock Holmes videocassettes as prizes.  Everyone got a piece of paper with a number and they drew from a corresponding pool of numbers.  They called one of our numbers and we won two cassettes: A Scandal in Bohemia with Jeremy Brett as Holmes and the black and white film Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon with Basil Rathbone (or as the secretary said, “Razzle Bathbone”) as Holmes.  Though they came out many years ago, they seemed to be in pretty good condition.

Our breakout session consisted of Romnes, us, and five others of varying ages.  I believe most of them were SOBs.  One of them was John Longenbaugh, the playwright.  During introductions we learned that James Romnes worked in pathology and he later mentioned that his last name is Scandinavian.  He got interested in Victorian dress from belonging to a single action shooting club.  His teenage daughter also liked to dress Victorian and even participated in contests.  Romnes defined Farbeing as when someone comes up to him or anyone else in period dress and says, “Far be it from me to criticize but…”  He described how the magazine Town and Country showed the lives of the “1%” and the men mostly wore the same outfits.  He suggested Victorian dress as an alternative.  He identified his black suit jacket with a wide tail as a “morning coat,” a coat of black wool for morning activities.  It had a pocket on the inside of the tail known as a “miser pocket” that he said could even hold a collapsible top hat that he could then sit on.  The coat had no pockets on the outside.  He said he dresses in the Victorian style every Sunday.  He finds the knicker pants very comfortable, though in the UK they are called plus twos and plus fours.

Romnes talked about gathering together an ensemble of Victorian outfits.  He said it was best to pick one character or persona.  All SOBs have adopted an alias named after someone in the Sherlock Holmes stories.  Romnes adopted the alias Constable John Rance after the police constable in A Study in Scarlet.  He passed around some sources of obtaining Victorian clothing and learning about what they wore.  Many items can be obtained from Internet sources such as eBay.  The catalogue Wild West Mercantile sells Western clothing in the style of the late nineteenth century.  As learning sources he passed around a reprinted catalogue from the Victorian time period and a late 19^th century volume of Punch magazine.  He lamented that over twenty years ago Punch ended due to the same reason as many people with heart problems: poor circulation.  All our group chatted a while.  John L. mentioned Sherlock Holmes’ self-defense art, Baritsu, and that Watson’s revolver was a Wembley Bulldog.  He seemed to know a lot about the Steampunk style and even attended lectures on it.  Romnes described a possible source of the word tuxedo.  The formal outfit came to the U.S. when it was imported by the Tuxedo club of Manhattan.

We left T.S. McHugh’s between 4:45 p.m. and 5:00 p.m.  Many people were still there, though a few had left before us.  It was warm outside as we walked east on Mercer Ave. and south on 1^st Street.  I noticed that a couple of bars had their large facing windows open to the air.  I had never seen such large openable sliding windows like these before.  Or maybe I just didn’t notice them.  They’re probably needed by places that don’t have air conditioning.  We reached Denny Way and walked east and then turned south onto 4^th Street.  We passed a few old brick apartment buildings that probably consisted of bedsitters if my memory of the area in the late 1990s is correct.  On one street was a large sculpture of a 2-stick red Popsicle stuck in the ground at an angle.

We reached the bus stop at 4^th Street and Lenora Ave.  It was right next to the Cinerama movie theatre.  I think this cinema was restored by Paul Allen within the past 10-15 years.  Inside we could see a display of costumes from the TV show Buck Rogers.  Many people came out of the Cinerama and some were also waiting for the 594 bus.  Another bus came first followed by the 594 at 5:51 p.m., a bit late but still one minute before it was scheduled at the next stop.  The bus was crowded on the way home.  We passed CenturyLink Field where the soccer game was going full swing.  After we got home we thought we may return to an SOB function and may even join them.  But first my wife wanted to finish reading all the Sherlock Holmes stories and we wanted to see the second season of Sherlock.

20-Year High School Reunion

We went to Juneau, Alaska during the first week of July 2012 to see the Fourth of July festivities and attend my 20-year high school reunion.  I had originally not planned to attend this reunion.  I attended the 10-year reunion in 2002 and figured this one would be very similar if not the same experience.  I had thought I would get back and stay in touch with some classmates at that reunion.  That did not happen.  However, at the end of last year, two of my classmates who now live in Tacoma were very helpful in our transition from West Covinazusa to Tacoma.  They created a Google map of Tacoma and would comment on possible locations we picked.  This greatly helped us learn the area and narrow down our choices of where to live.  Both of these classmates had been at the 10-year reunion and they were both on the organizing committee for the 20-year.  So attending the 10-year reunion did help get me in touch with classmates who had been a big help to us later.  I felt this made it worth attending the 20-year.

During the 6-12 month period before the 20-year reunion, I came across at least three things that reminded me of high school.  In 2011 there was a Broadway revival production of Anything Goes starring Sutton Foster and Joel Grey.  My wife had downloaded the soundtrack because she is a Sutton Foster fan.  Many of the songs sounded familiar because I was in my high school production of Anything Goes.  In March of 2012 I read the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn for the Banned Books Club.  I had previously read that book during my junior year of high school.  Also when I was a junior I traveled to Boston and Washington D.C. with my U.S. History-American Lit. Honors Block.  In May 2012 I made my first return trip to the Boston area for a work trip.  What finally sold me on attending the 20-year reunion was that I received an official invitation via email.  For a while I was afraid that they would use a social networking site for the invitations.  I was happy they did not and that they asked us to print out and mail our registration forms.  I did so using a money order to pay the $35 for the reception.  I did not register for the reunion cruise on July 5 nor the tour of Juneau-Douglas High School on July 6^th.  I was more interested in seeing the newer high school in Juneau: Thunder Mountain High that opened in 2008.  I only registered for the reception on July 6 at the Baranof Hotel (they previously said it was at the Juneau Arts and Cultural Center (JACC)) and the picnic at Sandy Beach on July 7.

We didn’t decide to come to Juneau for the Fourth of July and the reunion until Memorial Day weekend, after my work trip to Boston.  Tickets to Juneau on Alaska Airlines cost about $700 for two people using a companion fare.  My parents graciously helped out with that since we hadn’t originally budgeted for the trip.  On June 27 we used our karaoke machine to sing songs we remembered from high school.  They included “Lithium” by Nirvana, “Express Yourself” by Madonna, “Silent Lucidity” by Queensryche, “I’m Gonna Miss You” by Milli Vanilli, “Shiny Happy People” by R.E.M., “Everything I Do…” by Bryan Adams, “Nothing Compares 2 U” originally by Prince and made famous by Sinead O’Connor, “Faith” by George Michael that actually came out in 1987, “More Than Words” by Extreme, “Real Real Real” by Jesus Jones, and “Right Here, Right Now” by Jesus Jones.  We sang more songs as guitar singalongs using our Jingle books on July 2, the eve of our departure for Juneau.  These songs also included “Nothing Compares 2 U” and “More Than Words” along with “Unbelievable” by EMF, “Roam” by the B-52s, “Losing My Religion” and “Stand” by R.E.M., “Bittersweet” and “Tears Run Rings” by Marc Almond, “I Remember You” by Skid Row, “Secret” and “Alone” by Heart, “To Be with You” by Mr. Big, “Hole Hearted” by Extreme, and four songs from The Cure’s Disintegration: “Lovesong,” “Pictures of You,” “Lullaby,” and “Fascination Street.”  By the end we were ready to step back in time.

We flew to Juneau on an evening flight on July 3^rd that left SeaTac airport at 6:52 p.m.  Our plane departed out of satellite terminal N.  Before boarding we had lunch at Waji in terminal C.  We had a beef wrap that turned out not to be very good.  The beef was ground up and had lots of fat, and the tortilla was soggy.  We won’t eat there again.  Our plane left several minutes late.  It was to stop in Ketchikan on the way.  During the first leg the flight crew gave a shout out to the K-High (Ketchikan High School) alumni flying back for their reunion.  Several K-High alumni sat next to and behind us.  I didn’t see any other JDHS alumni besides myself on the plane.  After we landed in Juneau and deplaned I found that the airport looked different from what I remembered.  They had added another baggage carousel and some seagulls in Native designs hanging from the ceiling.  When I tried to use my cellphone to call my mom it said I was roaming.  My mom soon found us.  She had also been confused by all the changes at the airport.  On the way to my parents’ house we passed by an Ace Hardware store that used to be a grocery store originally called Shop N Kart and later Family Grocer.  I think the only supermarket in town that still had the same name as twenty years before was Super Bear.

That evening we drove to the Douglas Island side of the Juneau-Douglas Bridge to see the Fourth of July fireworks.  They always have them starting at 11:59 p.m. on July 3 to ensure it is dark enough.  We watched them from the bridge.  There were people shooting off amateur fireworks from the beaches.  The professional ones came from a barge out on Gastineau Channel south of the bridge and closer to the Juneau side.  Many other people watched from the bridge or near it.  It didn’t rain much but I still saw one kid in shorts and a T-shirt.  The fireworks went on for a while.  Some were impressive while others were partially obscured by smoke generated by earlier ones.  We didn’t get to bed until after 1:00 a.m. on the 4^th.

I didn’t sleep in much the next day because I was still getting used to the time change and sleeping in a different bed.  At around 10:30 my mom drove my wife and me into town.  She had wanted to park in the Federal Building parking lot but the traffic going there was too slow.  We ended up parking at JDHS.  I noticed many changes to the area.  The Augustus Brown swimming pool building was painted blue, they had removed some buildings in front of JDHS and the former Marie Drake Middle School and put in a soccer field.  Part of the former Marie Drake Middle School was now an alternative high school.  There was also playground equipment in front of Harborview Elementary School.  The building that housed the doctor’s office where my mom used to work now had two stories and housed an architecture firm.  However, the garden remained intact.

We walked the stretch of Egan Drive behind the Foodland Center.  The parade had already started and many people lined the route.  We later walked to a spot near the Centennial Hall events center.  The weather was cool and cloudy but it wasn’t raining.  We watched the parade that included a large paper “rubber” ducky, a truckload of square dancers, the Sons of Norway that included Vikings, the Filipino community float, Shriner cars, a group called “Chicks with Chairs,” some large “box-people” costumes, and many others.  Alaska Airlines had an inflatable dancing cartoon airplane, people wearing inflatable airplane hats, and a large old-school (i.e. non-wheeled) suitcase with a large baggage claim check.  A couple of floats included these whale tails decorated by different artists and sold as a fundraiser for a full-size breaching whale sculpture on the wharf, if I remember correctly.  The JDHS class of 1972 had their own entry.  Some of them walked while others rode in a Juneau trolley car.  Each of them held up a square foot photo of themselves from when they were in high school.  There was one classic car, a yellow car that gave tours.

After the parade ended we walked down Egan Drive past the Gold Mark hotel that used to be the Westmark Hotel.  At the parking lot near Egan and Main they now had a parking garage and a building with a police station and transit center.  The windows had these old photos of Juneau slightly faded and drawn into them.  We walked up Main Street to Front Street and down South Franklin.  Near the cruise ship docks there was a street, actually a stairwell, leading to houses on the mountain east of South Franklin, that had the same name as my mom.  We walked around the parking garage with the library.  Facing the cruise ships was that mural of old Juneau personalities by Dan DeRoux.  We returned to Egan and Main and climbed the new zig-zagging ramp up Telephone Hill.  Up there were some old houses that may be cleared away to make room for a new capitol building.  My mom noticed that the railing of the ramp had different patterns as we climbed.  We also had a good view of the rooftop garden on the transit center/police station building.  Behind some of the houses on Telephone Hill was this old fence with some shapes carved into it.  They included an apple and the bars of a jail cell.

We walked down the other side of Telephone Hill passed the State Office Building (SOB) and the Juneau City Museum.  Just past the SOB was a house with a cute well.  We then passed the Governor’s House with its white columns, and an old house that was being renovated with a turret to be added.  We passed the entrance to Cope Park where I used to play soccer.  We walked along a torn-up road to get to Evergreen Cemetery.  We passed the graves of the city’s founder, Joe Juneau and Richard Harris.  My mom told me about the time many of Joe Juneau’s descendants came to town and went to mass.  At the small cathedral they ask people to stand up and introduce themselves.  The descendants stood up and said things like, “I’m John Juneau from _______” and “I’m Mary Juneau…”  We returned to the car at the high school.  The car hadn’t been towed or ticketed.  My mom drove us home for a quick lunch.

After lunch my mom drove us to Douglas to check out the Fourth of July festivities.  The traffic was very slow between the bridge and Douglas (it used to be a separate town but has long since been incorporated into Juneau).  She dropped us off at The Island Pub that used to be Mike’s Place.  From there we walked to the main drag in Douglas.  We passed the library, post office and fire hall.  Outside one of the building some people were selling Filipino donuts or “karioka.”  We later saw some people eating them.  They were not round but looked like fried macaroons on sticks.  The people couldn’t stop raving about them.  We walked to this sloped street behind Savikko Park (a.k.a. Sandy Beach).  I think it was St. Ann’s Street.  It was lined with different tires for the soapbox derby.  It took a while for the derby to start.  We watched a few of the racers and then walked down to the park.  In one large area there were booths selling food including a barbecue place with a very long queue.  In a grassy area they had a stage set up with a live band playing covers.  One baseball field had the sack and three-legged races.  The Society for Creative Anachronism had their tent set up in one corner.  It looked like mostly kids playing with the plastic and wooden swords.  I only saw a couple of adults in medieval dress or armor.  No one was wearing “Despair and Die” shirts (see earlier review of Richard III).

It was cold and cloudy and it started to rain.  We walked back to the library and called my mom who picked us up outside the Island Pub.  Traffic was again slow going back to the bridge.  For dinner we had some of the King salmon that my dad had caught a few weeks earlier and for dessert we had a rhubarb pie made from scratch by my mom.  A friend of hers had given her the rhubarb.  It was delicious.  In the evening we watched a DVD of the film The Fighter starring Mark Wahlberg and Christian Bale.

On the morning of the next day, July 5^th, we just rested.  The morning before, we were looking at my mom’s basket of actual Japanese fishing floats, part of a large collection a friend had found on the beach and given her.  They reminded us a bit of Ma Chihuly’s Floats that we had seen at the Tacoma Art Museum a few weeks before.  I think it was the morning of the 5^th that I started perusing my parents’ copy of Gastineau Channel Memories Volume II: 1880-1967.  They also had volumes I and III.  They consist of many short memoirs of people who had moved to Juneau between those years and stayed there.  They are written either by the people themselves, their descendants or friends.  I recognized several of the names that were sometimes connected to people I knew.  I just skipped through and read selected ones.  My favorites so far were by Bob Armstrong and Dr. Reiderer who closed his practice to fish out on his boat.  The books also included old photos, before and after photos, and articles and menus.  One writeup on a basketball game between Douglass and Treadwell from 1906 or so said the final score was 14-13.  A set of before and after photos showed Riverside Drive before in July 1988 and after in September 1988.  The difference was that it was paved.  One volume had a picture of classic trucks and captioned one as a REO speedwagon.  I think that volumes also mentioned that the first volume was available online at www. Juneau.org/parkrec/museum.

In the afternoon my mom drove us to the Mendenhall Valley to see the relatively newer high school, Thunder Mountain High that opened in 2008.  It’s on Riverside Drive in the area that used to be all Dimond Park.  On the way we stopped at Twin Lakes park where community volunteers had built some new playground equipment.  It was very impressive with a tall castle, sides, and walkways.  Much of it was faux wood that did not splinter.  We then stopped by Riverbend Elementary school but found that its drive was not connected to the high school’s drive.  Thunder Mountain High looks very large and has interesting architecture.  Its colors are blue and grey and they dominate the design.  The building all spreads out from a central commons area.  Through the windows we could see the exercise rooms that looked very well set up.  We found that the main doors were open.  The commons area that we entered had an industrial feel with a concrete floor.  It had a totem pole with a falcon at the top, the school’s mascot.  To the left were four wings of classrooms on two different levels.  Each had different colored lockers, a mural of high school students, possibly real people, and a lounge/lunch/commons area that looked out onto the track and football field outside.  Each of the classrooms had the same kinds of chairs and table-like desks that could be arranged differently to suit the classrooms’ needs.  It looked like a very nice school to attend.

After visiting the high school and walking around the track where the artificial turf field was set up for soccer, we walked to the new aquatics center.  I think it opened in 2009.  It has what looked like an Olympic-sized pool along with a more recreational pool.  We had brought our swimming costumes because I had heard that the aquatics center had a lazy river and we thought we may be able to go kayaking.  However the lazy river turned out to be a moving curved waterway within the recreational pool.  It also had a sloped section, some fountains, and a large slide.  While we were there they cleared out the recreational pool for cleaning. The lap pool had a section of bleachers for watching swim meets.  I thought the pool looked much nicer than the old Augustus Brown where I first learned to swim.  The last place we tried to visit was this private recreational center down the drive from Thunder Mountain High.  It was large and my mom said it had an indoor track, but it was closed.  As we left the high school/sports complex my mom mentioned that they also planned to build a library there to replace the one in the Mendenhall Mall.

On the way home we stopped by the A and P (for Alaskan and Proud) supermarket at the Foodland Center. When I lived in Juneau it was just called Foodland.  The market was going to close in September.  That was too bad because it was a nice market.  They had more kinds of juices than most of the markets in Tacoma we’ve visited.  They even had Jarritos soda, though no Sidral Mundet.  We got some strawberry-kiwi Sierra Mist that we had never seen before.  I had to buy drinks for my reunion picnic on Saturday.  That evening I watch the first two episodes of Band of Brothers that my brother had borrowed from a coworker.

On the next day, July 6, we hiked up some of the Dan Moller trail to where it met the snowmobile trail along the Treadwell Ditch.  My parents pointed out several wildflowers that they knew in the muskeg meadows.  Luckily that section of the trail was on boards.  We followed the Treadwell Ditch back to the parking lot for snowmobile users.  Then we walked down some of the upper streets of West Juneau including Blueberry Hill road.  There were many large nice houses.  One of them had an impressive garden.  Another looked like a large fish with a relatively flatter roof and large windows.  We later saw in the Juneau Empire newspaper that the house was for sale for $550,000 and it was 3000 square feet.

We returned to my parents’ house and I read through their copy of the satirical Real Alaska magazine.  It had articles on very likely made-up things such as a zip line commute, outdoor roller derby, and visqueen farm.  It had many silly ads that I think were from actual businesses.  One showed a horse wearing brown Xtra Tuff boots a.k.a. Juneau slippers.  Another for the Island Pub showed a mile-high pizza with every topping imaginable.  I spend part of the afternoon practicing fly casting with my dad.  After an early dinner of salmon sandwiches my mom drove my wife and me to the Alaska State Museum.  Juneau has an art walk on the first Friday of every month when the museums are free and some galleries have special exhibitions.  The Alaska State Museum is in a white stone building that has been around since long before we moved to Juneau in the late 1970s.  My mom said they were going to replace it during the next couple of years.  The museum still had the old eagle’s nest exhibit along the ramp to the second floor and the Abraham Lincoln totem pole.  It also had a new large globe with lights projected onto it.  I noticed that their Umiak was mounted upside-down above people’s heads rather than on the floor as I remember.

The exhibit that we came to see on the second floor was Dan DeRoux’s History of Alaska, a show of colorful, humorous paintings by the artist who painted that mural on the side of the library/parking garage.  His paintings put an Alaska spin on old masters such as Botticelli and Rembrandt.  He painted “Dutch Harbor” as a harbor with buildings that might be found in Holland.  Another painting, 50-Knot wind portrayed a ship in a storm of knots tied with rope.  They were fairly silly.  Others included a walrus cribbage board and an oar embedded with gold ore.  I remember one of them referenced the walrus pin that everyone is given when they move to Alaska.  I used to have a pin like that.

We left the Alaska State Museum and crossed the street to the Juneau Art and Cultural Center.  This building used to be the old National Guard Armory.  It’s an events space where they have dances and trade shows.  They had originally planned to have our reunion there but moved it to the Baranof Hotel, possibly because of the First Friday Art Walk.  In one of the small rooms they had displays of native carvings including ceremonial masks and halibut hooks.  One of the carvers was there answering questions.  Many carvings were for sale at prices ranging from hundreds to thousands of dollars.  They also had a store selling works such as spoons and cards.

We walked from the JACC to downtown Juneau.  We walked up Seward Street to the Rookery.  It’s just north of Juneau Drug and the shoe store Shoefly, the store where former governor Sarah Palin bought her Naughty Monkey shoes.  The Rookery is a coffee shop that had on display some photographs by a young artist.  They looked like they were printed on metal and had very defined lines.  They were mostly of fishing boats and harbor settings.  Each was for sale for hundreds of dollars.  They also had prints of them for less.  We left the rookery and briefly visited Annie Kails’.  We then walked up Franklin Street, entered an old building (called the Triangle Building), walked down a hall and found Aunt Claudia’s Dolls A Museum.  It is also the studio of Mary Ellen Frank, a world-renown maker of dolls of Eskimo people.  There were several of her dolls on display along with others from all over the world.  Some from either Scandinavian or maybe Russia wore coats of fish skin.  More of the collection was displayed in another room.  Mary Ellen Frank gave most of the tour.  The collection also included a stuffed animal that laughed hysterically when touched. 

Mary Ellen Frank showed us her studio where she made her dolls.  She was working on one of the current mayor of Juneau, Bruce Botelho that was commissioned by his mother.  It was a very close likeness.  She explained how she incorporated elements of the young and current age of Botelho.  He looked younger from the front and his girth showed when he turned sideways.  She was also working on a doll of her mother wearing jeans that included the “dingleball” sweater (made out of Gold Toe socks) that her mother always wore but her sister hated.  She showed us the completed doll of an elderly woman sitting on a doll-size office chair next to a doll-size file cabinet that was actually a cabinet for business cards.  She also showed us her tools that were mostly different sized miniature chisels.

We left Mary Frank’s studio and still had some time so we walked to a shop/gallery down on South Franklin.  The art included a painting of the Xtra-Tuff “Juneau slippers” boots.  My mom said she had a Bill Speare pin of these boots.  There were also some paintings of religious icons by an artist who was there to answer questions.  There were photographs of Juneau and the Aurora Borealis, paintings and many other artworks.  My mom showed me some glass stars made by her former lab partner.  I think we saw him and said hi as we walked down South Franklin Street to the gallery.  They we giving out blondies to visitors.

The clock reached seven bells and it was time for me to go to my reunion reception.  I said goodbye to my wife and mom and entered the Baranof.  I ran into a classmate as I walked in the door.  At the registration desk they had us create our nametags with red ink.  Guests used black ink.  For the reception they had a large ballroom with a dance floor and tables surrounding it.  On the tables were yearbooks from 20 years ago and a picture/profile book published for the 10-year reunion.  There was also a room where they served a variety of finger foods and a large hall in between.  Most people congregated in this hall.  There weren’t too many people there at the beginning but it filled up quickly.  Many were dressed in the school colors of red, black and white.  I wore my red and white plaid shirt from Nordstrom and black chino pants.  That was about the right dress code that ranged from one person in a T-shirt to a few in suits and ties.  They had an open bar but it had Coke products for soda or pop as it’s called in Alaska.  At one point one of the organizers gave a speech praising the principal organizer and gave her a gift certificate to a spa near Juneau.  They also had a DJ play music and saw a few people dancing.  But most people stood around talking.  There was a small room off of the hall where we could leave our coats.

I talked to many of my classmates.  There seemed to be more at this reunion than at the 10-year.  Though several from the 10-year did not return for the 20-year.  I was surprised at how many knew me, some of whom I didn’t know that well.  Many brought their spouses.  We mostly talked about where we lived now, what we did for work and our families.  Many lived in the Puget Sound area from Marysville to Olympia.  Quite a few others lived in Juneau.  They either never left or returned during the last 5-10 years.  Others came down from Anchorage.  Some came from as far away as Michigan, Illinois, and Florida.  There was one from San Diego who I was surprised to see.  One of my classmates from Tacoma was there.  The other who was very helpful in our move in late 2011 couldn’t make it, unfortunately.  Many looked very similar to how I remember them from high school.  Some gained some weight though no more than expected for our age.  What did surprise me was how tall everyone was.  I guess I’m just used to being around shorter people.  Everyone at the reunion looked great.  I tried to at least greet and talk briefly with everyone I knew there.  I had one interesting conversation with the spouse of a classmate about the Medicare wellness exam and fee schedules.  Several of my classmates were either in the military or had spouses in the military.  Many had children, though it sounded like most had children who were very young.

I could have easily stayed until midnight but I was getting very tired and I didn’t want to have my mom pick me up too late.  Not long after 10 p.m. I started saying goodbye to the organizers and some others.  One of my classmates left with me and waited because he wanted to visit with my mom.  I went home tired but still worked up from all the socializing.

The next day, Saturday, July 7, my dad made omelets for breakfast.  Just before noon my mom drove us to Sandy Beach for the second reunion function, the picnic for families.  My wife came with me.  The weather didn’t look too good in the morning, cold and rainy.  It mostly stopped raining in the afternoon.  There weren’t as many classmates at this function, though most who did come brought their children.  It was also more low-key.  We brought the strawberry-kiwi Sierra Mist, though many others brought drinks and not many partook of ours besides us.  I should have smuggled some in to the reception because it was pretty good.  We brought about half of it back for our family.  I talked to a few others and saw some others that I didn’t talk to or see at the reception.  The food was pretty good.  They char-grilled hamburgers and hot dogs.  Someone brought some delicious smoked salmon.  There were many salads including fruit, vegetable, and potato.  They were selling hats and yearbooks for $5 each.  We bought a Crimson Bears hat that listed the initials FBC.  I think the proceeds went to high school sports.  We left after 3 p.m. after thanking and saying goodbye to the organizers.

My mom picked us up in their Jeep.  By this time I had gotten good at putting out the footstool for my wife who usually sat in the back.  I was the “footman.”  We drove home and chilled for a bit and then went to the Saturday vigil mass at the Cathedral of the Nativity in downtown Juneau.  We parked in their rather inconvenient parking lot on the side of the hill and arrived just after they had finished asking people from out of town to stand up and introduce themselves.  I think it was the regular pastor who said mass though there was an older visiting priest from Austin, TX who assisted him.  Compared to the churches I’ve attended during the past 20 years, the Cathedral looked very small.  But the stained glass windows were the same as I remember.  During the petitions the priests did not open it up to the congregation like I remember how they used to.  At the end, the presider said something like, “Now you know why it’s called a rainforest.”

We had barbecued ribs, biscuits, and salmon salad for dinner.  After dinner we packed up what we could and went to bed early.  We had to catch a 6 a.m. flight back to SeaTac the next day.  I think we got up around 4:00 a.m. and arrived at the airport before 5 a.m.  We were able to find room for our carry-on luggage just as we were on the trip up.  A couple of my classmates were also on the flight and one of them sat by me.  We talked for some of the flight.  He lived in Lynnwood, WA but had to commute to Tukwila for work.  This time we had a direct flight.  After we deplane we rushed to catch the next 574 bus, but didn’t catch it.  We had to wait around 50 minutes for the next one.  I noticed a place near the baggage claim where Princess Cruises was picking up the luggage for its soon-to-be passengers I was guessing.  The weather was warm and sunny outside SeaTac Airport, quite a change from Juneau.

In all, it was a good trip.  It was rather busy with the Fourth of July, the new things in Juneau that I wanted to see, and the reunion functions.  It was also nice to spend time with our family there.  I’m glad I went to the reunion.  Maybe next time I won’t go the picnic and go on the cruise if they have one.  After we got home I did a count and roughly determined that I talked to 51 classmates at the reunion and recognized eight others.  This compares to 41 greeted and 2 more seen at the 10-year reunion, though I might be forgetting some there.  We’ll find out who I may have to reach out to for help and who will show me kindness as my classmates in Tacoma did last year.  It might be another 10 years, but it’s still worth it.  Next year we plan to stay close to home for the Fourth of July and sing all the verses of the National Anthem.

Five Years in West Covinazusa

Today, August 20, 2011, is the fifth anniversary of our move to our home in southeast Azusa near Covina and not very far from West Covina.  On August 20, 2009 I published a blog entry reflecting on our first two-and-a-half years in Azusa.  Since then most of the things we’ve done, the restaurants we’ve tried, and shows we’ve seen have been covered in my blogs, reviews, and photo albums.  There has been much since August 20, 2009: over 130 reviews and around 16 blog posts, along with 25 photo albums.  Most of these are probably not about places and things in West Covinazusa, but many of them are and it would take too much time to sort through them all.

What I can do for this reflection is mention a few things that I believe are not covered in the blogs, reviews, and photo albums.  One is something we call “The Weirding Way.”  This is a driveway leading out of the Sacred Heart Church parking lot, through some hedges, and into the parking behind the strip mall containing United Catholics Federal Credit Union that has a driveway connecting to Hollenbeck Ave.  We sometimes take this way when it’s too crowded exiting onto Workman Ave. or we need to drive west after mass.  The term “Weirding Way” comes from the book Dune.  It is the specialized fighting martial art of the Bene Gesserit that incorporated full control of each muscle in the body learned through training known as prana-bindu.  The Weirding Way enables one to deliver powerful blows and move with extreme precision and speed.

Another new term that we learned during the past 2.5 years was “Spreading Ground.”  In late 2009 and early 2010 there was much road construction around the intersection of Citrus Avenue and Arrow Highway especially north on Citrus and east on Arrow.  Often we had to circumvent the intersection by going all the way to Gladstone St.  These routes sometimes involved using The Weirding Way.  While working out in the (now defunct) fitness room at our condo complex I found a flyer from Los Angeles County.  It described that the purpose of the road work was to connect the Citrus Spreading Ground to the Ben Lomond Spreading Ground via underground pipes.  Now we knew what that body of water was that we could see out our north window: Citrus Spreading Ground.  Both that and the Ben Lomond spreading ground were on L.A. County land.  We called them Loch Citrus and Loch Lomond and we could say we lived on the Bonny Bonny banks of Loch Citrus.

We continued to go to Victoria Gardens shopping destination in Rancho Cucamonga that was less than a half hour’s drive from home.  On June 14, 2011 we went there to see the weekly free outdoor movie that they showed in late spring and early summer.  We had wanted to eat dinner at a southern food place in the food hall that we had seen during an earlier visit.  Unfortunately the southern place was already closed and we ended up having dinner at Corner Bakery.  They showed the outdoor movie on the dirt of Chaffey Town Square near where they ran the Choo-Choo Monga train for the kids.  People had already been sitting on blankets and lawn chairs by the time we got there.  The screen was set up using an inflatable moon bounce-type device.  We initially sat on a concrete bench but when that got overrun with bugs we moved to a place in the middle of the square.  The movie, Despicable Me, started at 8:13 when it was just dark enough.  It didn’t have sound for the first 15 minutes.  Once they got it working we enjoyed the movie.

The Weirding Way, the spreading ground, and the outdoor movie at Victoria Gardens are a very small fraction of the many things we’ve been able to see and do by living in southeast Azusa near Covina.  Tonight we plan to celebrate the last five years by having dinner at Famous Dave’s in Redlands.  Our time here has been worth it and we’ll always remember it.

Oak Glen

We spent most of my 2010 birthday eve in Oak Glen, California.  We had talked about going there for years, ever since we read about it in an L.A. Times article in the fall of 2005.  It mentioned the major apple orchards, types of apples I hadn’t heard of such as Spartan, Stayman Winesap, and Lura Red.  It described cider mills, places giving free samples of apple slices, farms being in families for generations, and relatively newer farms such as those purchased by the Rileys in the 1970s.  We finally decided to go in 2010.  The orchards are most active in the fall in October and November.  We reread the old 2005 article, looked on the website oakglen.net, copied some pages from our San Bernardino/Riverside County Thomas Guide and determined a tentative plan.  It seemed like many places were closed on weekdays or on Monday and Tuesday.  The Riley’s Los Rios website said they only served their applewood barbecued tri-tip on weekends.  But the article also said that places got very crowded on weekends.  We still resolved to go on a Monday.

A few days before we checked the weather and learned that it was going to be cloudy with showers likely on my birthday eve.  We stuck with our plans.  This weather meant I wouldn’t have to wear suncream.  I had marked up copied pages of our Thomas Guide after finding the places we planned to visit on MapQuest.  We headed out at 10 a.m. on my birthday eve taking the 10 east.  It looked like it had rained earlier that morning and it was sprinkling some as we got underway.  We drove by the exits for the Ontario Airport during daylight hours for the first time in a while.  We usually go to the airport very early in the morning and leave it very late at night.  We passed the Citizens Business Bank Arena, an indoor karting facility, the exit to Auto Club Speedway in Fontana.  We drove through Colton, the hometown of Jimmy Messina.  One year earlier we saw Messina perform at the Greek Theatre as part of Loggins and Messina.  Colton seemed like a very industrial town.  South of the freeway there was this hill with a flat top, possibly the result of digging holes.  It had a pole on top with a large U.S. flag.  Was this Colton’s Fort McHenry?  After Colton we drove through Redlands and saw exits for the University of Redlands.

We entered one more town after Redlands, Yucaipa.  By then, the scenery was much less developed such as large grass-covered hills.  It was still cloudy but not raining.  We exited at Yucaipa Blvd. and turned left to go east.  After driving a few miles we turned left on Oak Glen Road.  We drove steadily uphill past schools and parks.  After we crossed Bryant Avenue, the road got steeper and the scenery got more rural.  There were large red apple-shaped signs with white lettering for Oak Glen and the various orchards: Parrish Ranch, Law’s Cider Mill, etc.  Many we had heard of from the L.A. Times article and the Oak Glen website.

We were looking for the Oak Tree Village, a collection of small shops and a restaurant, Apple Annie’s, where we planned to eat lunch.  I had thought the Village was around the second intersection with Potato Canyon Road.  We passed Parrish Ranch, signs for Wood Acres, Law’s Cider Mill, a few other shops and restaurants.  By the time we reached Mom’s Country Orchards shop I thought we had passed the village so I turned around.  We turned around again in a long steep driveway.  We drove back taking a detour on Harris Road and passing the Wood Acres.  Again we didn’t see Oak Tree Village.  We again passed Mom’s and soon found Oak Tree Village on the left (north) side of the road.  It had a slightly sloped parking lot and consisted of two buildings along boardwalks and several smaller buildings behind them.  The boardwalk building on the right that contained Apple Annie’s also contained a candy shop with a cartoon mouse in its sign.  The weather was cool and we could feel the slightly higher altitude but it looked like the clouds were clearing and it was getting a bit sunny.

After a dissatisfying lunch at Apple Annie’s (see review) we explored Oak Tree Village a little bit.  Despite being a Monday there were several other groups of people there including a large group of kids brought by a school bus.  Most of the little shops and Oak Tree Village were closed, though.  It looked like there was some kind of zoo or ranch above the shops on the hill that was also inactive.  At Apple Annie’s we had picked up a brochure for Oak Glen that included a map and listed more places than the L.A. Times article and the Oak Glen website.  We left Oak Tree Village and continued to drive east on Oak Glen Ave.  We passed the entrance to the Snow Line Orchard on the south (right) side that had a painted wood cutout of a farmer along with a sign listing all of the different kinds of apples.  We passed an orchard with the signs Riley’s Los Rios and U-Pick on the left side of the road.  The gate was closed.  We were going to Riley’s Los Rios but not to this orchard.

We reached our destination soon afterward: Riley’s Los Rios and the Wildlands Conservatory.  They consisted of a large parking lot, a building with a store and small eatery and some smaller cabins along dirt roads through the orchards.  The eatery was open and they were barbecuing tri-tip.  Now we really wished we had just passed up Apple Annie’s and eaten here.  People were at picnic tables eating hot dogs rather than tri-tip.  We followed the dirt road to the right of the main building to the cabin headquarters of the Wildlands Conservatory.  I had heard there were nature trails at Rancho Los Rios.  I entered the cabin and asked the guy about them.  He said there was a trail that started at the park at the end of the dirt road, went down a bit steeply, and climbed back up more gradually to just above Rancho Los Rios parking lot completing a loop.  He mentioned that many smaller trails veered off and back to the main one including a boardwalk.  He warned that the trail is steeper than people expect.

I was still determined to give the trail a try.  We followed the dirt road down further and passed very close to an orchard of green apples.  This wasn’t a U-Pick.  Signs said you couldn’t touch the apples or trees.  They were shorter than I expected.  Not much taller than me.  The apples were green so they could have been Granny Smiths.  We kept walking and found the park that the guy was talking about: a clearing in the large green trees with some picnic tables.  We found the trail at the other end.  By this point the weather had become sunny and warm.  The trail was a slightly steep downgrade that wound back and forth.  In the distance we heard some drumming that I thought might be the historical re-enactment they had at another Riley’s farm nearby.

The downgraded trail ended in a dirt clearing with a place to build a fire.  There was also a little doghouse-shaped structure with the sign “Firehose.”  The trail passed a pond that stank, and crossed a creek.  Another trail, I think called “Chaparral” something veered off to the left and later returned.  Wooden signs identified plants along the way such as the Box Elder.  When the trail got more wooded I found that one of the trees grew apples and there was a cute little apple on the ground.  Up ahead we saw a group of older kids and some guides giving a presentation.  Rather than take the dirt trail near them we took the boardwalk trail to the right.  It felt comfortable after walking on the rough dirt trail.  It went through some grassy areas and continued the slight uphill grade.  We stopped to rest at a bench built-in to the boardwalk.

The boardwalk ended while still in the grasslands.  We took a fork to the right that led to an orchard of reddish-green apples.  There was again a sign saying not to touch.  Some of the apples looked rotten and many littered the ground.  We passed some cabins, some younger kids and Wildlands Conservatory guides, a small wooded area that gave way to another orchard of darker red apples.  One of the apple trees was held up with support poles.  The scenery was nice with the tall trees, mountains, and orchards in the background.  We passed a rock with a Shakespeare quote painted or carved into it.  The trail soon ended at the north end of the Rancho Los Rios parking lot just as the guy said it would.  This is one of the few times when the trails directions I received, verbally this time, were correct and easy enough to follow that we didn’t get lost or lose the trail.  It was also well-marked.

We went to the large store at Riley’s Los Rios that was in the same building as the eatery.  They sold all kinds of apple products: cider, apple butter, apple syrup, jelly, salsa.  They also sold apples and had some slices for us to try including Mutsu, Spartan, Gravenstein, Cortland, and Stayman Winesap.  I liked the Cortland the best as far as flavor.  They are a New England apple I hadn’t heard of before.  I thought the Stayman Winesap and Mutsu were a bit tart for just eating raw.  Gravenstein and Spartan were pretty good.  They also had wooden sticks for sampling the syrup, apple butter, salsa, and jelly.  They had a keg for free samples of cider but it was nearly empty.  They sold apples in large bags and some in individual, though they only served the uncommon varieties in large bags.  We got some apple butter (unsweetened) and apple syrup.

We left Rancho Los Rios and drove back up Oak Glen Road the way we came.  We turned left into the drive for Snow-Line Orchard.  When I originally read about Snow-Line Orchard in the L.A. Times article on Oak Glen I wasn’t so sure about it because it said that visitors had to drive down a half mile of perilous mountain road to get there.  But later when we looked at their website we saw that they sold apple cider and fresh mini donuts made with cider.  Now these we had to try even if a mountain road was required.  It actually wasn’t too perilous or steep and directions to the orchard were clearly indicated by signs.  A steeper turnoff led to a bed and breakfast but we stayed on the flatter path.  It split into two one-way drives: the right entering the orchards, the left exiting.  We took the right and drove around to a large dirt parking lot.  The lot was surrounded by U-Pick raspberry bushes.  Beyond them was a large white house.  The weather was getting cooler with clouds covering up the sun and blue sky.

Snow-Line had a small picnic area, orchard, and store right across the exit drive.  We entered the store and could already smell the donuts.  At the counter to the right of the entrance we bought a dozen fresh mini donuts for $3.60, cash only.  A sign said they stopped making them at 3 p.m.  It was after 2:30 p.m. so we had come just in time.  We went back outside to enjoy them while sitting on a bench against the building.  They were as delicious as they smelled, fried just right so they were a bit crispy and not soggy or greasy.  They had a hint of cinnamon flavor.

After finishing the dozen mini donuts we re-entered the store to see what else they had.  They had cider made on a press nearby and it came in three flavors: apple, cherry-apple, and raspberry-apple.  They had enough in their sample kegs for us to try all three.  I thought the cherry cider tasted a bit like medicine and I still liked the straight apple cider the best.  In a cooler they had specialty sodas such as apple beer (that they didn’t have at Apple Annie’s), Faygo brand cream soda and orange soda.  They also had sample apple slices.  Their stock included Empire, Lura Red, Beverly Hills Gravenstein, and the yellow-apple, Winter Banana.  I thought the New York apple, Empire, tasted the best.  We bought a half-gallon of cider and had to again pay cash since credit cards required a minimum $15 purchase.

We drove back west on Oak Glen Road.  We turned left into the parking lot for the Mom’s Country Orchard store.  I had read in the L.A. Times article that “Mom” is part of the Law family who also have a cider mill and orchards.  They had apples and products such as fruit butters, salsas, cider, etc.  They also sold specialty sodas such as Jones brand and some specialty foods such as Krema brand.  An employee who was possibly a family member cut us fresh samples of apple to try.  These included Spartan apple that tasted better than the ones we had at Los Rios Ranch.  We also sampled some apple salsa for which an older employee (Mom?) gave us chips and some spicy peanut butter by Krema brands.  They sold little apples in small white bags.  All the apples we saw in Oak Glen seemed smaller than the ones we see in regular grocery stores.  I was determined to get apples that we couldn’t normally find at Ralphs, Fresh & Easy or Trader Joe’s.  I got a small bag of Spartan apples.  We also got some Mom’s apple salsa, Jones apple soda and root beer, and a jar of Krema brand spicy peanut butter.

We left Mom’s and decided to leave Oak Glen by the opposite way we came.  We drove east on Oak Glen Road.  It turned south just past the road to Snow-Line Orchard.  We passed Los Rios Ranch and the other Riley’s farms.  At one we saw a woman dressed in a historical costume as a farmer’s wife.  I had thought they only did re-enactments on weekends.  The road went downhill quickly.  I used the lower gears to reduce stress on the brakes.  Several cars came up behind up coasting faster.  I pulled over to let them pass, at one point pulling into the driveway of the Edward Dean Museum.  The weather was much cloudier.  Oak Glen Road Beaumont Ave.  The downhill ended as we crossed into Riverside County and we turned right onto Cherry Valley Blvd.  We drove by some very rural-looking fields and eventually got back on the 10 freeway going northwest.

We drove through Yucaipa into Redlands where we stopped by a Target and had dinner at Eureka Burger (see review).  It rained hard while we were at Target but stopped by the time we finished dinner.  It was also getting dark.  We again drove through Colton, Fontana, Ontario and Montclair.  We returned to L.A. County and home without experiencing much traffic.  It was a great way to spend my birthday eve.  I had enough apples for the rest of the week.  We tried the apple syrup with vanilla-flavored coconut ice cream and it tasted great.  We also enjoyed the spicy peanut butter.  There are several places we haven’t yet visited in Oak Glen such as Law’s Cider Mill and we haven’t yet tried the applewood-smoked tri-tip.  Then there are the fresh apple cider mini donuts from Snow-Line Orchard to try again.

Fort McHenry

Tuesday, September 21, 2010 was the second day of our Baltimore trip for my work.  I had to make the trip for work and my wife tagged along with me.  I had no work commitments on Tuesday morning so we decided to visit Fort McHenry.  It was highly recommended by the travel book Fodor’s Virginia and Maryland that I checked out from the library.  Both my wife and I had visited Baltimore separately before but neither of us had been to Fort McHenry.  It is the fort whose attack by the British was Francis Scott Key observed in 1814 (during the War of 1812).  The fort’s perseverance in fighting off the British war ships inspired Key to write the poem The Star Spangled Banner that would later be set to music and become the U.S. National Anthem.

We knew from Fodor’s book and the fort’s website, www.nps.gov/fomc that Fort McHenry National Monument opened at 8 a.m.  At 7:30 a.m. we had the bellhop at the hotel summon a taxi for us.  We sat in the back seat of the cab and the driver had turned on a Democrat-leaning talk radio station.  On the back were the Baltimore cab rates: $1.80 for the first 1/11 of a mile, $0.20 for each additional mile and $0.20 for each 30 seconds of wait time. 

We went through a couple of alleys and then went north on Charles Street, east on Pratt Street, and south on Light Street.  There was some traffic in the Inner Harbor probably due to the morning rush.  After a confusing intersection, we merged from Light Street to Key Highway.  We passed Federal Hill, the Rusty Scupper restaurant and the American Visionary Art Museum all along Key Highway.  We would revisit this area in the evening when we went out to dinner.  We turned on Lawrence and left on East Fort Street.  I noticed that most buildings in Baltimore were 2-3 story brick.  I bet none of them would survive an L.A.-style earthquake.

East Fort Street meanders south and west past some industrial areas and a railroad yard.  We may have crossed a bridge over a river.  At 7:50 we reached our destination.  The driver wasn’t sure if he could enter the gate to the monument.  The sign said “No Buses” but nothing about cars.  The meter said $11.80.  I paid the driver $15.00 including tip and we got out just outside the gate.  The park ranger at the entrance told us we couldn’t enter the monument until 8 a.m. and asked us where we were from.  I said, “California.”

We planned to take the Baltimore MTA city bus back to where we planned to have lunch.  We decided to wait and see where the 7:59 bus would stop so we would know where to catch our later bus.  The 7:59 came early and turned into a looped turnoff to stop at a small shaded bus stop that we didn’t notice before.  It was a bit chilly that morning and probably the only time during the trip that we wished we’d brought our jackets and not left them at the hotel.  Soon 8 a.m. rolled around and we could enter the park.

Much of what we saw at Fort McHenry is recorded in the photos we took.  Along the paved path in the grass were plaques for each state in reverse order of statehood.  Alaska and Oregon were covered in dirt while Washington and California were clean.  Most of the plaques were set up in 1932 which I think is the same year that the Star Spangled Banner became the national anthem.  It might actually have been earlier than that, though.  The ranger had told us that they were doing construction and the temporary restrooms were in a trailer near the gravel parking lot inside the gate.  We followed a path to the right of the main one to the current visitor’s center.  It led to some small trees planted in 1932 each with a plaque dedicated to important connections to Fort McHenry: President George Washington who commissioned its construction in the 1700s, Secretary of War James McHenry after whom it was named, Francis Scott Key, Lt. Colonel George Armistead who commanded the fort’s defense in 1814 and fought off the British.

Nearby was a 24-foot tall statue of Orpheus with a lyre on a tall decorated pedestal.  The info sign said it was sculpted in 1914 and moved to its present location more recently.  Another path led to a Civil War magazine, a brick building with a peaked roof and very thick walls and ceiling for keeping ammunition safe from cannon fire.  The expansive grounds included a stage that I think was for the reenactments conducted on weekends.  We walked around the outer path along the water.  Several joggers passed us all wearing yellow shirts.  A logo on their shirts revealed them to be Navy.  We could see outer barricades of the fort: grassy knolls with black battery cannons mounted behind them.  We made our way to the fort entrance where a ranger said we needed to pay admission and get stickers from the visitor center.

The current visitor center is very small and in a couple of years will be replaced with a new one currently under construction.  After we paid our admission for $7 we entered a small theater where they showed a 15-minute video about Fort McHenry during the battle of 1814 and how Francis Scott Key got to observe the battle.  I learned that the Americans only suffered four killed and 24 wounded.  They did not give the British casualty count though I was curious about that.  The film ended with the curtain opening to reveal the real Fort McHenry out the window and a recording of a men’s choir singing the Star Spangled Banner.  We left the theater and looked around the visitor center a bit.  They had a model of Fort McHenry that clearly showed its shape as a 5-point star with each point a diamond called a bastion.  There were also displays of some artifacts such as a copy of the Star Spangled Banner music and lyrics.  From it we learned that the song actually has three lesser-known additional verses.  They don’t quite roll off the tongue as well as the familiar first verse.

Now wearing our blue admissions stickers we returned to the fort itself.  We visited the triangular “Ravelin” magazine outside the walls, the underground “Bombproof” shelter at its entrance, the buildings inside it with displays of officers’ and enlisted men’s quarters.  There was a tall flag pole with an American flag and we wanted to catch the changing of the flag.  It occurred later than we thought after a group of school-age kids arrived.  The group consisted mostly of boys and they seemed to be from sort of military program even though they wore regular clothes.  They lined them up and a ranger told them about Fort McHenry and how it was the first federally mandated place to always display the U.S. flag.  It currently sported a “small” flag or 9x15 feet and they were going to exchange it for a larger flag of around 15x25 feet.  In organized groups they slowly lowered the smaller flag, detached and folded it and then quickly attached and raised the larger flag.  Then the kids were allowed to explore the fort on their own.  We did so too, checking out the magazine inside the fort.

They were doing some construction on the fort building and the upper floors were closed.  A sign on a building said this was our Recovery dollars at work.  When inside the lower floors we could hear staff walking on the creaky floors above.  We ended our tour by walking around the batteries set up on the grassy barricades outside the fort proper.  We had been there for nearly three hours despite the Fodor’s book saying to reserve two hours to see it and another source saying one and a half hours.  We stopped by the restrooms on our way out that were very nice for being in a trailer.  We passed more state plaques going all the way back to the first state, Delaware.  After exiting the gate we saw a bus already parked at the stop across the street.  The driver was waiting for his 11:35 am departure time.  He graciously let us on early though and we paid our $1.60 each.  A few other people also boarded and we left the historic green expanses of Fort McHenry ground to return to the brick edifices of Baltimore.

Galaxy vs. Real Madrid

On Saturday, August 7, 2010 we saw the Los Angeles Galaxy soccer team play an exhibition game against Real Madrid at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena.  Like many people we had gotten into following association football or soccer by watching the World Cup on TV in June and July.  This game would feature several players from the World Cup including Landon Donovan from the U.S. team and Iker Casillas from the Spanish team.  We got our tickets online a few weeks in advance and by that time there were no more general seating tickets available.  We got some assigned seating tickets for about $10 more in section 1-L, row 67.  Also online we learned that the Galaxy would have a Soccerfest festival on the grounds near the Rose Bowl in the afternoon before the game.

Before seeing this game neither my wife nor I had actually been inside the Rose Bowl venue proper.  We used to walk around the grounds and parking lots of the Rose Bowl in the morning on some Saturdays and Sundays.  We called this exercise TMA for Three Milers Anonymous.  We still do TMA occasionally.  Something else my wife had learned was that a good parking arrangement wasn’t to park in one of the large lots near the Rose Bowl for $20 but to park at Parsons Engineering near Old Town Pasadena for $15 and take a shuttle.  On the Saturday, August 7 we left home at 2:20 p.m. took the 210 freeway west and exited at Fair Oaks.  We turned left to go south on Fair Oaks and after crossing W. Walnut St. we turned right into the large Parsons Engineering complex.  We had to go down some driveways and lots to the far side of the building where there was a large lot, though not too many cars.  We parked at around 2:40 p.m.  We walked west to Pasadena Ave. where we caught the shuttle.  It looked like a Pasadena city bus.

There were only a few other people on the shuttle.  A couple of young women next to us looked like diehard Galaxy fans.  One of them wore this bracelet with little plastic soccer balls that my wife liked.  She said she wanted one like it.  The shuttle left right away and got on the 210 freeway north.  It exited at Lincoln Avenue, turned left on Lincoln and drove into some neighborhood streets.  It turned right on Westgate and later left on Arroyo that led to the Rose Bowl.  It dropped us off at Lot H.  From there we walked to Soccerfest that was on a large spread of grass nearby.

The festival consisted of several booths, a stage, many places selling food off to one side, many tables and chairs, and already many people, mostly Latinos with many wearing Galaxy gear, or gear for international football teams.  Over the course of the evening we saw many jerseys for David Beckham and Landon Donovan.  We also saw them for Cristiano Ronal-D’oh (a reference to his appearance in a commercial with Homer Simpson), Zidane, IROD, (Xabi) Alonso, Messi, Higuain, Casillas, Sergio Ramos, Rooney, Drogba, Iniesta, Buddle, Kaka, Tevez, Torres, Ozil, Villa, Eto’o, Cannavaro.

The first booth we visited was Fox Sports soccer channel.  They had us fill out forms and gave us some black scarves with their logo.  We then queued up at a booth where they had people spin a wheel to win a prize.  It was a long, slow queue and while waiting I watched the soccer ball juggling contest at the State Farm booth nearby.  Contestants would try to keep the ball from touching the ground without using their hands or arms.  An announcer with a microphone would count every time a contestant would touch the ball with their foot, leg, head, or chest.  Closer to the front of the queue we could see the prize wheel.  When it stopped on the “Pelota Loca” section or “Campeon” a person got a dark blue soccer ball.  When it stopped on “Gol” or “Celebrar” they got a Fox Sports T-shirt.  After waiting for 20 minutes it was our turn to spin.  We were awarded a Fox Sports T-shirt. 

We walked around checking out the booths.  They had one for making signs, another for temporary tattoos, a small soccer field bordered by an inflated “moon bounce” barrier where many kids played.  Near the stage were life-size cardboard cutouts of Galaxy players David Beckham and Landon Donovan.  A band came on stage and played Latin and Caribbean music including the song “The Girl from Ipanema.”  Many people started to surround the booth of the Futboleros, a group of young people affiliated with the Galaxy who performed juggling tricks with soccer balls set to music.  One would balance the ball on the back of his neck, roll it over his shoulders.  They kicked the ball into the crowd a few times and I once had to kick it back.

My wife wanted to get some face paint and for $1 got a drawing of Landon Donovan and the word “Donovan”.  We also bought a white plastic vuvuzela from a vendor that had a Mexican flag on it.  To sound it we blew into small tube on the side with just the right pressure.  Later my wife got a blue L.A. Galaxy headband.

We decided to have dinner and there were many choices including barbecue, Mexican food, Cajun food, teriyaki bowls, grilled Middle Eastern food, hot dogs, etc.  We first figured out what we wanted and then went to a booth in the middle of the grounds that sold food scrip: red tickets each costing $1.  I got some grilled Middle Eastern chicken with sides of hummus, coleslaw and pita bread.  It was good, though it got a little messy.  The coleslaw had raisins in it.  My wife got some fried catfish and Cajun fries to eat and citron lemonade.  The food was a bit expensive.  I think we had to buy 25 scrip tickets but it was probably better than the food sold inside the Rose Bowl venue itself.  We sat down and ate at one of the white round tables with an umbrella.  A few other people sat at the table and it looked like they had brought their own food.

Just after 6 p.m. we left Soccerfest and started walking toward the Rose Bowl venue.  There were lots of cars parked in the lots surrounding the Soccerfest grounds.  Some of their drivers were having their own tailgate parties.  People were already entering the Rose Bowl and I noticed that one woman wasn’t allowed to bring in her vuvuzela.  We figured the same would happen to us so we blew our vuvuzela a few times, took some photos of me with it around my neck and then hung it on a tree near the chainlinked corridor leading to where the shuttle bus would pick us up.  We doubted it would still be there when the game got out but hoped it would.  We then entered the Rose Bowl venue for the first time, climbed the very steep bleacher-like rows to our seats, and sat down at 6:23 p.m.

Despite being fairly high up it seemed like we had a pretty good view of the field.  They had sprinklers irrigating it when we just entered.  The stands didn’t look very crowded at all especially the upper levels.  This would change as it got closer to game time with nearly all seats filling.  The one right next to ours did not fill, however.  Screens that high up on the ends of the stadiums showed ads for Galaxy sponsors Turkish Airlines and Tequila Jimador.  They played music over the speakers that included the song “Stop for a Minute” by the band Keane and the rapper K’naan.  We had seen Keane in concert two weeks earlier at the House of Blues Las Vegas.

They stopped the sprinklers and at around 6:40 p.m. some players came out to practice on the field.  We couldn’t tell who they were.  The ones in white uniforms practiced closer to us and in dark uniforms at the farther goal box.  By 6:53 both full teams were out.  The one near us was the Galaxy and we recognized Landon Donovan.  They practiced some shooting and passing drills.  Donovan was in the corner closest to us for a short time.  At 7:19 p.m. the players left the field.  They would actually wear the opposite color uniforms for the game: the Galaxy in dark blue and Real Madrid in white.  Some people brought out this circular dark blue parachute-like banner with logos for the Galaxy and their sponsor Herbalife.  Staffers also brought out these black boxes with pipes sticking out of them and placed them towards the center.  The Galaxy’s mascot, a cute light green smiling alien in a white Galaxy uniform came out and waved to the crowd.

They moved the parachute banner to the middle of the field.  The players came out and faced the stands opposite us.  They announced some special recognitions of attendees who had helped better their communities.  They also announced that this was Galaxy player Clint Mathis’ last professional game.  He had played for the Galaxy for many years and had also played for the U.S. in an earlier World Cup where he had scored an impressive goal.  Around this time American Idol contestant Ace Stevens performed the national anthem.  During the song, fireworks shot out of the boxes with pipes showing us some real “rockets’ red glare.”  After they finished they cleared out the banner and black boxes and the players took the field.  Galaxy goalkeeper Donovan Ricketts in a green uniform took his position in the goalbox nearest us.  Real Madrid had Jerzy Dudek rather than World Cup winning goalkeeper Iker Casillas.

Not long after we took our seats we saw some people in front of us with these game programs.  I found one on our bench closer to the aisle and it was a roster card listing the players’ names for both teams and boxes to enter the names of the goal scorers, the halftime and final scores, the substitutions, and the recipients of red and yellow cards.  Only a few players from World Cup teams played in the first half: Landon Donovan and Edson Buddle on the Galaxy, Sergio Ramos (Spanish team), and Lasana Diarra and Rafael Van der Vaart (the Netherlands).  We could see the Galaxy players’ numbers and easily tell who they were that way but we couldn’t see the Real Madrid players’ numbers.  We kind of had to guess who they were other than the ones with long hair such as Sergio Ramos and braids such as Royston Ricky Drenthe.

The Galaxy seemed to dominate the first half though Sergio Ramos had an impressive tackle early on.  On a corner kick at Real Madrid’s end the ball seemed to bounce around between players and finally into the Real Madrid goal.  It was credited to Galaxy defender Todd Dunivant.  Plays would repeat on the screens.  They took Clint Mathis out around midway through the first half to applause from the crowd.  Later, Real Madrid player Drenthe high-kicked a Galaxy player in the chest.  The Galaxy were granted a free kick for this and Landon Donovan took it and scored putting the Galaxy up 2-0 at the half.  There was no stoppage time.

Roundabout halftime many seats behind us were filled by a group of young mostly Caucasians who from what they said sounded like UCLA recent graduates or grad students.  During halftime and the second half they talked on and on about their lives, jobs, and parties they’d attended.  They only paid attention to the game when someone scored a goal.  I found them annoying and tried to drown them out by giving my own commentary on the game as I watched it.  Real Madrid put in star goalkeeper Iker Casillas.  They seemed to bring out their big guns in the second half and since this was an exhibition game they weren’t limited to just three subs.  The Galaxy also brought in a different goalkeeper, Josh Saunders.  They didn’t announce all the subs but from their numbers I could tell that Real Madrid put in World Cup players Karim Benzema, Angel di Maria, Xabi Alonso, Gonzalo Higuain, and Cristiano Ronal-D’oh. 

Not surprisingly, Real Madrid dominated the second half.  Xabi Alonso scored and Higuain scored twice.  Cristiano Ronal-D’oh did not score but he set up some of his teammates.  When he missed an attempt someone from the crowd yelled, “You suck!”  Casillas didn’t get as much action as Dudek did in the first half.  There was one point where Casillas did some fancy footwork and faked out a Galaxy player.  There were 5-10 minutes of stoppage time at the end of the second half.  I noticed one section of fans across the stadium from us but at our end of the field and in much better seats that was cheering very loudly and had lots of banners, signs and, possibly, a drum.  They seemed to be a Galaxy fan club.  The game ended after stoppage time expired and Real Madrid had won 3-2. 

When we left the stadium we ended up walking down the bleachers in front of us because people were so slow going down the aisle.  Some people had started leaving before the game ended.  It was a slow walk through the tunnel to the outside of the venue.  We walked toward where the shuttle buses were and noticed a queue emanating backward away from it.  Chainlinked fences, a wooden fence, and staffers enforced the queue that just seemed to go on and on and on.  After a long walk we finally found the end and queued up at 9:49 p.m. expecting a long wait.  I noticed some people from the Galaxy fan club walk by still chanting loudly.  Surprisingly, we didn’t wait long before the queue started moving and it moved quickly.  We passed the tree where we had left our $3 vuvuzela trusting that the other attendees wouldn’t touch another’s personal property.  Not surprisingly, it was gone.

We reached the shuttle pickup location at 10:15 p.m.  The shuttle filled up with all the people in front of us so we caught the next one and were able to sit down.  It filled to standing room only capacity.  Some people were drunk and a bit loud but no one got too rowdy.  Someone jokingly pulled the cord for “stop requested.”  I don’t remember if the bus got on the freeway but eventually we were going south on Fair Oaks crossing Mountain Street, Esther Street, and Maple Street.  I think we turned right to cross a freeway before arriving at Parsons Engineering at 10:42 p.m.  We found our car, followed a line of cars on the drives going out of the complex and I think we had to take a few side streets before getting on the 210 east to get back home.  When we got back it was still August 7th.  I don’t know when we’ll ever go back inside the Rose Bowl stadium proper, but our first experience there was pretty good.  Only the Galaxy losing and us losing our vuvuzela kept it from being perfect.