The Brain Train Derails

For those of you who've had the pleasure of speaking with me in the last two weeks, and wondered why I seem a little shell shocked and suffer from what I like to call "word synaesthesia" (I speak but what I say makes no sense because I replace random words in sentences with other words that don't fit)...This is a screen shot of what I have been dealing with for 8-10 hours a day...I figured it would explain better than I could.



That's right. Multicolor, 100K row spreadsheets. It would drive anyone mad.

Springtime in the great Northwest

That's right, spring is here. This weekend has been sunny and warm(ish). This has led to every person in Seattle going outside to try to rack up some much needed vitamin d. So, what have Russell and I been up to now that we finally get to experience seasons again? Well, yesterday we celebrated the wonderful weather by.......spending the day inside. This was not because we were hiding from the sun like some kind of mole people, but rather, we had agreed to help judge a beer competition. The competition in question was the regional finals for the National Homebrew competition. Judging took place at the Pyramid brewery downtown, so there we headed at 8:00am to help out. Here's a hint. When you have to judge beers at 8:30 am, be sure to have a good breakfast, and volunteer to judge porters or stouts. There is actually such a thing as a breakfast stout, and more importantly, both of them have "coffee character" which takes the edge off.

For anyone skeptical about the possibility of drinking beer at 8:30am, you're not really downing a bunch of beers, you're sampling and then grading them against a set of standards (like in a dog show), and each sample is about an ounce. It's surprisingly actual work as opposed to just drinking.

Judging went on all day, and in the evening we went to a friends birthday. Busy busy.

Today we got our "enjoy the outside day" with the rest of Seattle. YES! First thing in the morning: bake scones and make lemon curd for breakfast. Delicious!


Next proceed to the farmers market. We go every week, but now that the weather has been improving its even more exciting. THERE ARE NON-ROOT VEGETABLES AGAIN, YAY! Today's haul included early salad mix, wild watercress and knotweed, some pasture raised ground beef, chicken wings, eggs and this:

That's a goose egg. We're going to poach it and put it in salad tonight.

Spring being here also means gardening season. We asked our landlord if we could put in a few raised beds, and he was totally game. So Russell built some, we had some dirt delivered, and today we planted planted planted.




Planted are peas, onions, shallots, spinach, lettuce, mustard greens, mizuna, turnips, thyme, and some random flower seeds.

That was the weekend. Sadly its back to the grind at work tomorrow. Hopefully Frankenbike will come back from the shop in a few days so I can get back to riding (She's having her spring tune up).

Summary

Wow, its been too long away from the blog. I've been a busy little bee so I thought I'd present a little photo essay of what I've been up to for the month of March.

Russell and I tried to go snowshoeing in the cascades, but there was no snow so it turned out to be just a hike. A beautiful day though.





I did some weaving and successfully finished a project. Behold the MacGregor Tartan Scarf.


We went on another hike. This time up around Chuckanut. The view over the water was excellent.

And I found a great mushroom! (Great as in interesting, not great as in tasty).


It finally snowed again in the Cascades, so I got one more ski trip with my dad. We skied Ammabilis Mountain. The view near the top.


Russell, Al, Grace, and I went Razor clamming out at Copalis/Moclips beach (I didn't have my camera so these photos are shamelessly stolen from Al and Russell). We all four dug our limit of 15 clams and proceeded to feast on them the next day.






Somewhere in there I went to a conference that went really well, and I continue to work too much at my post doc, but no pictures are necessary for those. They mostly involve staring at a computer screen for too long (which is why I don't blog enough, by the time I've gotten home, I'm all screened out).

Given that spring seems to be here, I expect some more adventures shortly.

Posting soon with pictures,

I promise.

Life has kind of exploded over here. I've been frantically getting ready for a conference. But also taking some time to have some fun (on weekends) so I'll give a triple weekend update soon. Probably Friday.

Sea Lions!!!

So the last post was just a preview of today's full report, I've been busy.

Last weekend I had the opportunity to go diving with sea lions for the first time ever. It was awesome. No other way to describe it. A group of divers from the shop I patronize (Bubbles Below) makes the trip every year. But, I've been in Florida, so this was the first year I got to go.

This trip is up to Hornby Island, a little island off Vancouver Island in British Columbia. It's a really lovely community, and home of Hornby Island Diving, who were our excellent hosts for the weekend.

The weekend started on Friday. Early in the morning I grabbed my duffel and caught a bus to meet my parents in Lake City. They had my dive gear from a dive we did last weekend. It was super early (6:30 am bus) but we wanted an early start because we were worried about lines at the border. I met them and we headed North for BC. The drive is scenic, but familiar and we made good time. At the border, despite being the opening day of the olympics, no traffic. So on to BC and a series of ferries and drives to Hornby. Really the whole first day was just driving. We made it up in good time and got settled in at the lodge. No dives the first day because weather was crap for evening diving.

Bad weather turned into kind of a theme. Saturday the weather was really bad. The wind was up and the boat couldn't get out so most of the group hung out at the lodge. My dad and I, gung ho crazies that we are, however, wanted a dive, so we opted to dive the lee side of the breakwater in the Harbor! This turned out to be an excellent choice. It is in the harbor, but the breakwater was a huge rock wall in about 30 ft of water, and there was a surprising amount to see, and it gave both of us a chance to play with our cameras.




That last orange blob there is my favorite nudibranch, Rostanga, it could sit on the end of your finger. We hung out, played games, and watched the weather with the other divers for the rest of the afternoon.
In the evening, we decided to go for a night dive, this time joined by fellow diver Jen. It was a good little dive. I saw two octopi, and we even had a drive by sea lion! My first of the trip!

Sunday the weather was brilliant, sunny, calm, and cloud free. The whole crew set off first thing after breakfast for our first official sea lion dive. The location was Norris rocks, a haulout island for a colony of Stellar's sea lions. This dive, however, the sea lions were enjoying the sun as much as we were, so only a few joined us for the dive. This was still cool, and gave the newbies like me time to adjust to being in the water with such a large animal. Here's my mom and I (as photo'd by my dad) just after entering the water:
And some shots of sea lions, as photo'd by my dad. I took only video myself.






It was cool! The second dive of the day wasn't supposed to be a sea lion dive. We went across the bay to a site called Dinner Plate. A really cool series of stepped walls. However,
a few of them decided to join us anyway. My camera lens fogged pretty bad on this dive, so I'm not going to post many photos. I saw some really cool Puget Sound King Crabs (both juvenile and adult) lots of different sea stars, scallops the size of plates, and of course more sea lions! I find sea lions to be a cool distraction, I'm always looking for little inverts, but with them around I was always trying to keep one eye out for them too.

The final dive of Sunday was another sea lion dive at Norris Rocks. This time a few more sea lions were ready for the fun. One came up and kissed my head, otherwise I wasn't really mobbed, but I got some great video. Me with the sea lions.
And some great video. I love it when they blow bubbles.

Monday, before heading back to the U.S. we got one last sea lion dive. This one they were really ready to play! As soon as the boat pulled up 30 or so sea lions dove off the rocks and headed for the boat. As soon as we hit the bottom the first thing I felt was teeth on my head. They get really mouthy when they play! It was so much fun! The tumble all around you, play and show off, come up and nibble on you. On the boat they warn you not to interact to much and this is true. If you start to play back they up the ante and when you are buried in sea lions, this can get really intense. Really the best way to describe it is being in a room with 30 puppies who are all the size of full size great danes and think of you as a beach ball. Really, it is best to act as a beach ball.
I had a lot of fun! See the video in the last post. At the end of my dive, things got intense for me. About 10 sea lions (I am not exaggerating) decided I was their beach ball and started bouncing me around. Unbeknown to me, one of them got my mask strap loose. Shortly afterward one figured out that if it nosed the purge valve on my regulator, it blew bubbles, and thus starting hitting it. This caused my mask to start to leak. I cleared the mask, and as soon as I let go, another sea lion dove in and grabbed it off my face! I made a quick decision to go to the surface, and made a controlled swimming ascent (I was still being used as a beach ball) and headed to the boat. I still had fun, even losing my mask! I'll be back next year for sure!

Thanks Rob and Amanda (Hornby Island Divers) and the Bubbles crew for a Blast!

(And finally a quick disclaimer: This kind of dive is legal, we don't go chasing sea lions, you get in the water, and if they want, they come to you (Frankly there's no stopping them)).

Answer to an important life question

What is it like to be inside a ball of sea lions.

A bit like this:

Meet Frankenbike

After recent events (detailed later) I have decided to introduce you to my trusty steed. This is Frankenbike.

Frankenbike started her life at least 20 years ago (I'm not sure her exact age, Dad, you want to chime in here?). My dad purchased her for my mother, hoping they'd bike together. But what with the busy existence of myself and my sisters that happy thought got serious back burnered. So back burnered I don't know if my mom ever rode Frankenbike. Over the years she languished in the garage, being used as a parts reservoir for my dads bike.

Enter 2003, and I moved to Miami. As a student in Seattle, I had been a devoted bicyclist, riding my little mountain bike all over the university district. In Miami I hoped to do the same. Here's the thing. The University district, as Seattle neighborhoods go, is pretty bike friendly, and no one drives that fast. My new commute in Miami took me across the Rickenbacker Causeway. While this is one of the few roads in Miami with an actual bike lake, the adjoining traffic regularly travels at 60mph or more. The little mountain bike just wasn't fast enough. I began to talk about getting a road bike, to be at least a little faster (I realized that there was no way I'll go 60 mph, I just needed more speed of some kind). Mentioning this to my dad, he proposed to send me Frankenbike. A week later she arrived in the mail, and now her transformation had truely begun.

When she arrived to me, she was largely in tact, except for one critical feature. No Pedals. So I bought some new ones. However rather than sticking with her road bike toe clip roots or going for some fancy clips, I went with hybrid pedals, more commonly used on commuter bikes. I wanted something with options for my urban ride.

A couple years later she was further transformed. I wanted to add a rack and panniers. Sure they add weight, but I wanted to be able to carry more stuff since I was after all commuting. Only problem, being from a true road bike pedigree, Frankenbike lacked the cleats for attaching the rack. No problem, I found some convenient adapters, and a rack was attached.

More recently, I moved to Seattle. I'd been riding on some (quite old, but still usable) slick road tires for all of Frankenbikes life so far, but in Miami most of my rides were relatively dry. Here in Seattle I commute every day by bicycle, rain or shine. After one close call of skidding out, I made the decision that I was definitely going to to need commuter tires for the winter, so I took her in and had some wider commuter tires put on. Her transformation to commute bike was complete. But the fun wouldn't stop there.

Saturday I was involved in a crash. Specifically, I was hit by a car. In my neighborhood a lot of intersections don't have stop signs, and as I went through, a car didn't see me and caught my back wheel (though in all fairness, I had seen the car and attempted to yield because I could tell the driver didn't see me, but the pavement was wet, and I began to loose control of the bike as I braked hard in the wet conditions, at that point I made a snap decision that if it was going to be hood or tires, I'd rather hit the hood. I almost made it across the road, and the driver just caught my back wheel. In dry conditions this never would have happened). The guy was very nice, and very worried about me, I assured him I was ok, just a bit banged up, and we each went our separate ways. Only damage was some bruises, and the rear tire of my bike.

What you can see if you look closely is that the whole rack is shifted to the right from the impact, and the wheel is pretty warped. But pretty minimal all things considered. Took her in to the ASUW bike shop, and with the crackling of lightning and cries of "SHE'S ALIVE!!!!! REALLY ALIVE"......they replaced the back wheel. Frankenbike indeed.


New wheel isn't fancy, but frankly, while I am an enthusiastic bicyclist, I am not a serious one (ie, I love commuting, and suffer from the delusion that I am tough and fast, but in my heart I know I'm no Lance Armstrong...doesn't stop me though) so Frankenbike with all her Frankenparts will serve me well for years to come.


P.S. Yeah the candy, totally full of crack! I sooooo agree.