Miscellaneous Notes - Rams' Male Cheerleaders, Peter's "Nights At The Brazen Huskey" and Travel Shots

1.  Rams' Cheerleaders - An LA Times story this morning highlighted Quinten Peron  and Napoleon Jinnies, the NFL's first two male cheerleaders, and next Sunday, the first two male cheerleaders in the Super Bowl.

"Last March, during open cheerleading tryouts, Peron and Jinnies showed up out of nowhere.
Peron is a professional dancer and choreographer who got the idea while watching a Lakers game.
“I’m looking down at the Laker Girls and I thought, ‘Why can’t I do this?’ ” he said.
Jinnies is a professional dancer and makeup artist who got the idea from friends dancing alongside him during a Disneyland show.
“We were just casually talking about auditions and I thought, ‘Why not just show up?’ ” he said.
In the Rams’ two previous seasons since their return to Los Angeles, no males had tried to make the cheerleading team. But there has never been a rule against it.
“He came home one day and said he was trying out for the Rams cheerleaders and I’m like, ‘They’ll let you do that?’ ” said Peron’s mother, Sherry. “He said, ‘It doesn’t say I can’t.’ So I said, ‘Go for it!’ ”
The men drew long looks when they showed up among 300 or so hopefuls, but their dancing and interviewing skills quickly won over Rams officials and their future teammates.
'They’re not just incredible men, they’re incredible people,” said Sarah
Scheade, one of the team’s five captains. “We thought it would be so special if they could represent our city.'”

I tried to find video of them performing - this one seemed to have the most of that, though not enough.  Also, its ad can be skipped after 4 seconds.




The Rams cheerleaders is not a topic I ever thought I'd post about.  In the big scheme of things, this is not a that big a deal - say like climate change or the Mueller investigation - but it sounds like these two have already become role models for many young male dancers.


2.  Nights at the Brazen Huskey
You can read Chapter 1 of Peter Dunlap-Shohl's new graphic novel "Nights at the Brazen Huskey" at
this Frozen Grin website.  Peter's previous book was his incredible adventure story of dealing with the villain PD (Parkinson's Disease.)













3.  SF-Seattle Shots - Mt Rainer Still Stands And The Sun Still Sets




After taking our grandson to pre-school yesterday, we headed for BART and the SFO airport to get back to Seattle for more time with our granddaughter here.  We flew out over Oakland.

That's Lake Merritt (the upper body of water.





And Mt Rainier still towers over the Washington landscape.

Here are two shots of downtown Seattle - one from the plane as it circled around to land from the north - and one from the ferry.  If you look closely at the aerial view, you can see the dock with two ferries about the middle on the right, and the ferris wheel a little below it.  (You may have to double click to enlarge and sharpen the image.)


From the ferry, the ferris wheel is pretty obvious.  I'm not happy about the reflected lights in the ferry window, but couldn't angle my way around them.  But this picture shows more of downtown to compare to the aerial photo.
The long gray line along the waterfront is the Alaskan Way viaduct - a highway that is being torn down 'early 2019'.  It's being replaced by a tunnel which will be open for people to walk in this Saturday.  Tickets are available online for free for the two mile walk.  From Engineering News-Record (ENR) Northwest:

"Seattle residents will get the opportunity to celebrate their new tunnel Saturday and Sunday, Feb. 2-3, and get one last chance to check out the Alaskan Way Viaduct, which will be fully removed in the coming months.
Washington State Dept. of Transportation has spent years leading the effort to build the nearly 2-mile-long State Route 99 tunnel under downtown Seattle and erase the need for the viaduct, considered seismically vulnerable. Now, on the eve of the tunnel opening to vehicle traffic, WSDOT has an entire weekend of festivities planned.
Saturday includes an 8K fun run, tunnel walk, family-friendly STEM activities and a community celebration and art festival on the viaduct. Sunday features a bike ride through the tunnel. Some events require tickets."

From the air again, looking straight west, from the water's edge out toward the Olympic range, it was looking out any time in the last ten thousand years - no sign of modern life at all.

And at the end of the ferry ride, we were welcomed by a fiery red sunset.  I tried to catch it with my iPhone camera, but it came out pale compared to the real thing.  (I know how I could have gotten it more accurately on my little Canon Powershot, but not on the iPhone.)  But I got it back closer to what it really looked like using iPhoto, though it was more red than orange.