Coming Home On Part 1: Leaving Bainbridge

Time had come to bid our daughter's family goodbye for now.  I was taken aback by the price of Seattle-Anchorage tickets when I was booking our flight home.  I don't remember the details, but I just remember the 10 am flight was higher than normal and the later flights were even worse. 

Problem is we start off from Bainbridge Island.  That means you have a 35 minute ferry ride to downtown Seattle.  Then either a walk to the light rail and to the airport, or get a cab.  Cabs are $40 plus tip.  Light rail, for seniors, is $1 each.  So if there's time and it's not raining hard, we go light rail.  

This winter my daughter warned me about delays with the ferries and some ferries getting cancelled meaning you have to wait 50 minutes or more for the next one.  There were some problems with the ferries themselves, but mostly it's a staffing issue.  Lots of retirees recently and new people need special training and aren't as experienced. 

I even signed up for notifications when there was a delay or cancellation on the Seattle-Bainbridge ferry.  This was helpful to get a sense of how often there were delays and cancellations. I got fewer alerts as time went by and there were far fewer cancellations.

But that makes planning a trip to the airport a real pain. Especially when I think of the 10 minutes it takes to get to the Anchorage airport from our house. An 8am flight means getting up really early and hoping your ferry is close to on time.

On the Bainbridge Ferry page there's a link to get text message alerts on the left.  And a cool link is a real time map of where the ferries are - usually there are two ferries going between Bainbridge and Seattle.  

You can see the Tacoma is coming from Bainbridge to Seattle and the Chimacum is in the opposite direction.  There's also one coming toward Seattle from Bremerton.  

So rather than mess with the ferry early in the morning, we got a hotel room at the airport.  It was much cheaper than booking a later flight. An old high school friend who lives in Seattle, picked us up at the ferry Thursday afternoon and we had a great Ethiopian dinner (the special veggie combo at Delish) before he dropped us off at the hotel.  

One other tip I'll mention for people catching a flight from SEATAC (the Seattle Tacoma airport) is SPOTSAVER.   You can go on line and reserve a spot in the TSA line.  You tell them a time and you've got 15 minutes before and after and that gets you into a much shorter line.  I didn't think it would be necessary for an 8am flight but I signed up anyway.  Problem was they only offered appointments at 4:30am and 7am.  We wanted to arrive around 6:30 am.  So I booked 7am.  Good thing I did.  There was a long line.  I explained my 7am reservation and he let us go through.  SPOTSAVER was even shorter than the TSA precheck line.  

When we got to the gate, I was a little tempted to go to Gate 18 instead of 17, but I resisted.  

Sorry, it's out of focus, but you can read the destinations.  

This was originally going to be about how beautiful it was in Anchorage when we arrived, but it seemed like a better idea to make two posts.  Part II will be soon.  

Cancelled Wiz Leads To Seattle's Pacific Science Center

 The Wiz was not high on my todo list.  It wasn't even on my todo list.  But when invited to accompany my daughter and granddaughter to see the Wiz, I, of course, said yes!

The ferry into Seattle was jammed with Seahawks fans.

We made our way to the Art Museum restaurant for lunch and while eating my daughter got a voice mail saying that the afternoon performance of The wiz wasn't.  An hour before the show we learn it was cancelled? That's even more bewildering because looking on line today I find this at the 5th Avenue Theater site:

"Masks will be encouraged but optional for audience members at The 5th for performances of The Wiz. We strongly recommend and encourage the wearing of highly effective masks such as N95, KN95, or KF94.  Please CLICK HERE for further details.

Please note, the performances of The Wiz on November 19, 20 and 27 matinee have been canceled."   

If the matinee was cancelled last weekend, why didn't they notify us sooner?  (I suggested to my daughter that they hadn't sold enough tickets and she responded that they'd been sold out.)

Oh well.  Flexibility.   

The Pacific Science Center at the site of the 1962 Seattle World's Fair was my granddaughter's immediate alternative destination.  That meant a short rail ride to the monorail, then the monorail to the Space Needle.  

A walk over to the Science Center and to the laser show.  

I was underwhelmed.  I  expected a laser show in 2022 to be more than lots of moving squiggles and primitive cartoons backed with lame electronic music.  (Note:  I like good electronic music.)

A bathroom break.  This was probably the best surprise of the Science Center.  Most surfaces had great sciencish cartoons.  Though this one leaves a sexist conclusion that lacks some key context.  Did they have this same example in the women's room?  (I think you can click on this to enlarge and focus it, but I won't know until it's actually up.)

Then we engaged in various science activities while waiting for a 4pm planetarium show.  Some time in my favorite spot - the butterfly garden.  

Parts do look like they were built 60 years ago for the World's Fair.  

A four o'clock planetarium show was going to get us to a late ferry back to Bainbridge. And we found out that planetarium had an open house, so to speak, where people could drop in and ask questions.  So we got to visit various planets and moons.  It's been a while since I've considered how amazing and humbling the universe is.  All those stars and planets out there that we only have a tiny inkling about.  

From there, we wandered over to the Space Needle.  It seems the women decided that this was a good opportunity for my  granddaughter to go to the top of the Space Needle since both her parents have separate reasons for not taking an elevator 60 stories up in order to look 60 stories down and Grandpa was a perfect escort.  

It's been 60 years since I went to the top of the Space Shuttle, when three friends and I drove up to the World's Fair in 1962 in a '32 Model A Ford.  My memory of being up there is rather hazy.  

But I remember yesterday pretty clearly still.  There are three public floors.  In the top one you can wander around inside with glass walls, drinks, snacks, photo opportunities, or wander around semi-outside, with large glass walls and benches.  The picture above was from that level.  

I'd point out that if you find the green ferris wheel you can see one of the ferries to Bainbridge and Bremerton right behind it.

Here's another view of that outside top area of the Space Needle.

Then there is a middle level that didn't seem to have windows, but did have bathrooms.  

Finally, the lower level also had windows all around.  And it had a ring of floor, sort of like a ring around Saturn, that was glass and slowly rotated.  That took some instinct erasing to step on.

Then back on the monorail to the light rail and a walk back to the ferry where we encountered the Seahawks fans once again.  You couldn't tell their team had lost.  They were loud and chanting - one person shouting "Sea" and the crowd answering "Hawks."  There also seemed to be some testosterone at work.  Though a women managed to push one of the excited ones back until a security officer took him off somewhere. 

And finally, as the ferry left the terminal in downtown Seattle, we could look back up to the Space Needle - that tall tower just left of the center.  

A long and busy day with two of my favorite people.  

Trial Day 9: Skagway Explains Their Close SEI With Downtown Juneau

Judge Matthews, Mayor Cremata, Attorney Brena

The judge hadn't ruled on the East Anchorage petition and said he'd do so today.  It's now up and he's denied the East Anchorage amendments, but with some wiggle room.

We're onto the Skagway case now.  They don't like that their house district pairs them with the Mendenhall Valley part of Juneau instead of downtown as they are now in their present district.

We heard the Mayor of Skagway, Andrew Cremata, Brad Ryan, Borough Manager Municipality of Skagway Borough, and John Walsh, lobbyist for Skagway.  

Basically they all made the same argument:

Skagway's interests are very closely tied to downtown Juneau with whom they've shared a district these last ten years.  Those interests are most strongly connected by the fact that the cruise line industry has a huge economic impact on both communities.  Mayor Cremata pointed out that the long term lease of Skagway's port ends in March and Skagway will soon own and control the port.  He emphasized how important it has been to be able to work closely with the port people in Juneau in planning funding for expanding the port and dealing with the infrastructure needs of having so many passengers disembark downtown.  He mentioned they had to build Skagway's first crosswalk. Skagway's all year round population is about 1000 and it triples when a ship comes in.  

In addition to the socio-economic relationship with downtown Juneau because of the port, the witnesses testified that all the services Skagway government, businesses, and citizens use are in downtown Juneau -engineers, doctors, dentists, lawyers, shopping, government offices, and on and on.  

The Board's attorney, Singer, eventually gave up asking about connections the Mendenhall Valley Skagway (and Haines and Gustavus) residents have - hammering on the fact that the ferry terminal is in their new district.  They replied that the terminal is just a stop on the way to Juneau and pointed out that the airport is part of the downtown district.  

His next tack was to keep saying that all of Juneau borough is socio-economically integral because it's all in the same borough.  

It went on and on with examples of what specific things Skagway and downtown Juneau have in common and how little sense it makes to split the Valley in half to put Skagway there instead.  

Skagway is up against the ruling that every place within Borough boundaries is socio-economically integrated.  On the other hand, Skagway is outside the Borough boundaries.  The issue is to convince the judge and then the Supreme Court that they are more SEI with one part of Juneau than the other.  

Judge Matthews at one point asked John Walsh, the lobbyist, if the downtown Juneau legislator was already an enthusiastic supporter of Skagway's interest, wouldn't it be better to have two legislators instead of just one.  

Skagway lobbyist Walsh and
Board Attorney Singer on right

Walsh said that it was a presumption the Valley legislator would work hard for Skagway's interests, but it might work out.  If not they would have to find support elsewhere, like Ketchikan (also a cruise line port of call.) He was worried a Mendhall legislator would have maritime interests and wouldn't have the urgency a committed legislator would have.

Then Matthews followed up asking if the Mendenhall legislator would be opposed to Skagway's interests or just less interested in them?  The latter, was the response

Skagway's argument is similar to Valdez' argument that being paired with downtown means they have more clout in the legislature.  Except in the Valdez case, they didn't just argue they'd have more clout with communities along the pipeline corridor.  They also showed that they were actually in competition with Mat-Su on some very significant issues.  

While Skagway said a Mendenhall Valley rep wouldn't know their issues as well and thus wouldn't represent them as well, they didn't show any actual competing interests with the Valley.  I'd note that Brena is the attorney for Valdez and for Skagway.  

Singer, the Board's attorney, might point out that in the Valdez case, they argued that the Valdez port was in competition with the Mat-Su port, but in this case he's saying both having ports gives them a common interest.  I imagine Brena's response would be that it's a very different situation.  Mat-Su would be competing for the cargo shipping to the interior that Valdez currently has, and can put that cargo on a train rather than the road.  

But in the case of Skagway and Juneau, they are on the same cruise ship tour route so they aren't in competition.  They can work together as Alaskan ports for better port management and to learn from each other.  What wasn't mentioned was teaming up to get better terms from the cruise lines.  

Though no one made that argument and my suspicion is they are all very cosy with the cruise lines and that Skagway is making enough revenue from the cruises they are willing to give up the small town quaintness that makes Skagway a good place to live (and for cruise lines.)  While the mayor talked about all the impacts of the cruise line passengers - need for more infrastructure to handle them, more police, more fire fighters, more roads, more health care, more housing - he didn't say anything negative about that kind of growth. Only that they needed to work with Juneau to learn how to handle it.  

Tomorrow Board member Budd Simpson will be testifying.  He's from Juneau and drew the map.  Brena said he'll need a lot of time with Simpson.  

Started Day In Bainbridge, Ending In Anchorage

The day began on Bainbridge Island walking my granddaughter to school.  She had on a backpack and a yam (rising tone, like you're asking a question).  That's the Thai name for the shoulder bags you see on the left.  Those are from a blog post in 2008.  I told my granddaughter I'd bought the yam for her mother long ago.  

She said I sounded like I was asking a question and I responded that in Thai each word, actually each syllable has its own tone and yan is rising town.  In English the tone goes with the sentence, so that's why you think it sounds like a question.  When I was studying Thai, at the very beginning, we were just being taught how hear the different tones and then repeat them.  The teacher would say "mea" very flat tone and we would say it adding an English question to the word and changing the tone to a rising tone, which meant dog instead of to come.  

She was quiet for a while and then she said, "Grampa, if Thai words all have tones, how to they make songs?"    She's eight, going on nine.  Good question.  I wonder how much her piano lessons helped trigger that question.  

Then we got a ride to the ferry.  Actually, it was balmy, if cloudy, about 60˚ F.  We'd usually walk, but our daughter offered us a ride.  

I did walk around the deck, but it was very windy.  Here's a picture just as the ferry was leaving Bainbridge.  Downtown Seattle is in the middle, just to the right of the trees.  I thought about it.  Why do we think of the tall cluster of skyscrapers as an image of Seattle.  It's just a tiny fraction of the city.  

COVID and warnings about jammed TSA lines at SEATAC put us into a taxi instead of the train to the airport.  It's really fast that way - about 20 minutes instead of over an hour.  Because of the long lines, they've set up a system where you can make a reservation for a spot in the line.  Ours was for 11:15 (you get 15 minutes period).  Turned out there was no line whatsoever.  And we were in the terminal waiting for our flight.  

I thought this was an interesting sign.  Not sure where they store all the water.  Do they collect it from the roofs of the terminal buildings?  

Our flight was uneventful - the best kind - and were in Anchorage a little early.  We had a great Somali cab driver.  Hope to see him again.  You know, maybe people are afraid of immigrants because they know they are smarter and willing to worker harder than they are.  

And here's the back yard.  

I'll shovel tomorrow.  Nice to be back and to be greeted by much warmer temperatures that we were hearing about.  Our outdoor thermometer says 20˚F.    Didn't feel cold at all.  But we didn't spend that much time outside.  But not the shock that it sometimes can be when it's below 0.

Leaving Seattle Arriving SF Photos

We had a cramping call for a few days in SF.  So here are some pictures of our departure from Seattle and of San Francisco.  First step was taking the ferry through the fog.

Eventually, we were above the Seattle clouds and flying past Mt. St. Helens.  It's been a forty years since she erupted.

And soon we were flying past San Francisco and looping back into the airport.  This view is from the west with the Golden Gate bridge barely visible at the bottom left.

We BARTED into town and had a great Mediterranean lunch

Today we bused with the kids to the Children's Creativity Museum, a great place for kids.  On the way we passed the cable car turning around.  

"One of the finest street clocks in America"














And here's the clock.  It didn't seem to be working.

The park near the museum is in a canyon surrounded by buildings, and has a waterfall

The kids had a great time at the museum and I couldn't get them from the first floor activities.  The little one had a crying meltdown on the way home.  But she held my hand and kept walking.  Getting really tired.  On the bus she continued until I started telling her the story about the little girl who cried so loud on the bus that it hurt other people's ears.  And that her tears flooded the bus.

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.

Sunrise Seattle

We're on the move again.  To help our son with the other grandkids while his wife is traveling for work.  As cool as it is to take the ferry back and forth to Bainbridge Island, it makes the trip to the airport a long one - especially when you have to go early because the next ferry would be cutting it close.  But an advantage of getting up early is the sunrise.

Here's a closer view of downtown Seattle.

These are with the good camera.  We're normally good at keeping our luggage down to a minimum, but this time we worked on getting rid of all unnecessary weight.  So for quick pictures, I'm going to go with the phone.  My Canon Powershot stayed behind.  No books this time.  Some magazines.  We're down to two backpacks and a relatively small duffel bag.  But this is only a short trip - returning Wednesday.

There are repeated announcements for the flight at the gate next to ours.  It's going to Puerta Vallarta and they're calling passengers to check their passports.  The announcement:  "If you hear your name, or something like it, please come to the counter."

Anchorage-Seattle Views

Yesterday's post was about the politics of traveling.  Here's some of the joy one can get if the weather's ok while flying south from Anchorage, just by looking out the window.  Aisle seats may mean you can get up easily, but you lose the great vistas outside the plane.

Here's Eagle River and beyond at 9:30am in January.  Light, but the sun's not up yet.

.









It clouded up quickly, and I was sitting in the exit row, so my view was often blocked by the wing. Here's further along somewhere in Southeast Alaska. (These all get bigger and sharper if you click on the image.)

Bellevue, Washington, just before landing at SeaTac.








The train from the airport.

And then on the ferry.

Anchorage Airport and Beyond

From my seat before we left.

Backing out from the gate.

Dirty snow pile beyond the wing.

Empty Anchorage runway.  And when we got to Seattle, there were no delays like last time.

Cloud islands as we head south.

I always did like Mondrian.

Ranges west of Seattle.

Everything worked right.  We left on time.  Arrived a little early, with no delay at SEATAC like last time. Our luggage was on the carousel before we got there.  We only waited a minute or so for the train into town.  And had plenty of time to get the 4:45 ferry.

On the other side we met our daughter and granddaughter for dinner and on home.

Started reading Michael Ondaatje's Warlight.