Preparations...

Well, tomorrow is the big day! I've been running around doing errands and planning my trip all day today, and plan to leave around noon tomorrow. We'll see how much stuff fits in the car!

The day in Seattle yesterday was a lot of fun. I got up reasonably early and drove down to Tacoma to meet up with my Aunt and two of my cousins who were there for a conference this week. We chatted a while and drove out to Point Defiance before they had to get to their sessions at 12:30. Then I drove up the the U district to spend the day with Stephen and friends for his birthday. Among other things, we went canoeing in the arboretum across the bay from the UW, had dinner at the Ram, jammed, ate strawberry shortcake, etc. Tim also stopped by, since that was about the only time I was going to be able to see him.

In other thoughts, the more I drive the new car, the more I love it. I think I'm actually looking forward to spending some long days driving. (I'll probably have different opinions after the first long day, but hey. Why ruin the fun before it starts?)

It'll probably be a few days before I have internet access again, but I'll keep writing and post whenever I get a chance. I'll be at Alta lake (in eastern washington) tomorrow night with the college group from my parents' church, then at Glacier NP in Montana for three nights before I get to Wyoming (and internet access).

Why I miss the NW:

Living in Upstate NY is definitely nice (at least in the non-winter months), but there are things I acutely miss about the northwest. Such as the mountains. The following pictures are all from a hike I did today, summiting Vesper Peak. (about an hour drive from my parents' house to the trailhead) The day was perfect... it more than made up for that rainy Pilchuck hike on Monday.

Approach to Headlee pass through a beautiful valley surrounded by jagged ridges

Just past Headlee pass, crossing a talus field (loose rock)

Ptarmigan near the summit

View of still-frozen-over Lake in basin approaching Vesper

Outlet of above lake. VERY clear, blue water (its probably 10 feet deep here!)

360 degree panorama from the summit (click to enlarge). Enough mountains for you? Ranier, Baker, and Glacier peak (3 of 4 volcanoes in WA) are visible. Mt Pilchuck is also visible (See Monday post). It's on the horizon of the left side, halfway between Copper lake and Spada Lake.

One of the prettiest view from the summit: Copper lake, right beneath Big Four (reddish). I've climbed the leftmost peak on the horizon (Three Fingers) and Mt Baker is right above left flank of Big 4.

Vertical panorama of Three Fingers and Copper Lake

It really doesn't get much better than this. It was actually only about 4 miles one way (and 4000' up). However, the trail itself was steep and rough, and there was a lot of scrambling in places, which made things a little more strenuous.

THE CAR!

The stage is set. I'm in Seattle, with no return ticket, and I have a conference in Austin in a bit over a week that I need to get to. A car is distinctly necessary. I've been watching craigslist since I got home and calling all over, but nothing really seemed right. But then, when I checked craigslist thing morning, wahla! just what I was looking for: a mid-90's BMW 325is with a manual transmission in good shape at a decent price.

Enter, the second character:

My new car, which I am quickly falling in love with...

It seems almost unfair. For just 55 Franklins, I now have a car that runs perfectly, accelerates hard, handles like a train on rails, and has comfortable power everything on the inside. Sure its older (1994), but this one has been well cared for, and even some brand new cars can't quite compare (especially in handling!). Its a lot of car.

I'll be getting pretty familiar with this nice, comfy interior in the next few weeks!

The guy I bought it from took really good care of it, and replaced a bunch of stuff, so even though its got 170K on it, it feels brand new. It should be a good car to last a long while!

New toy in the Rain

One of my rare gadget-purchases arrived on Monday. Its a Delorma Earthmate PN-20 handheld GPS reciever. (review here) It's on the high end of the market, (although I didn't pay quite as much as the price they list) but it holds a bunch of detailed topo maps, satellite views, has a color screen, does automatic routing for navigating on roads, etc. In short, the perfect thing for a cross-country hiking/driving adventure (and certainly useful down the road, too). So, despite some slightly bleak looking weather, my dad and I took an after dinner hike up Mt. Pilchuck.

Rain and fog brings out a nice character of the lower elevations of the cascades: its an almost ethereal beauty.

Mt Pilchuck is a 5300' peak that takes less than 45 minutes to drive to the trailhead. The hike itself is a bit over 3 miles one way, with about 2500' vertical climb. So pretty easy. We hammered our way up in not much more than an hour. However, the bleak conditions meant that it was a completely socked in (with clouds), somewhat drippy hike. As miserable as that sounds, it was actually warm enough that I did it in short sleeves, and it the slight misting rain felt really good. Whereas on a clear day you have a vista of the entire Puget Sound region, we had a nice view of the insides of a cloud. But it was a successful exercise to play with the GPS. (which I really enjoy, by the way.)

Pike Place and more...

So, on Saturday I headed down to Seattle for a day of just hanging out with the folks at the Shop (Guys I lived with my last year at UW). There were actually some other out-of-towners there, so we headed downtown for breakfast at a crumpet shop near Pike Place. Man, I don't think I've ever had a fresh-baked crumpet before (I can't recall the last time I've even eaten a crumpet) , but was delicious. Then we wandered around downtown a little, and found a little music shop with a lot of interesting acoustic instruments.

After that we headed back to the Shop, hung out, jammed, grabbed teryaki on the Ave, and generally did nothing all afternoon. It was grand. I ended up heading home early evening because I was pretty tired (jetlag induced, I'm sure) and some people had other engagements that evening. I'll get to see them all again on Thursday though for Stephen's birthday... The other reason I decided to go home early was that I was playing drums in my parents' church (FBC), since the normal drummer was out. That went well. Kind of a flashback to high school days when I did that every week.

Arrived safely

Well, I made it to Seattle alright last night, after a few additional delays though. All in all, I arrived about 24 hours after I was scheduled to. Besides one flight being delayed an hour, then sitting on the tarmac an additional hour, the travel day was OK. But its always kinda late getting to bed at 1AM Pacific time when you've been up since 7AM Eastern time.

As I was flying from Philly to Seattle for 5+ hours watching the ground go by, I couldn't help but think, "Man! Thats a long way to drive!" But it'll be fun.

I spent most of today running errands and replacing a turn signal bulb on my motorcycle. Yes. Several hours total on that last one. For some reason, nobody stocks turn signal bulbs for a '93 Ninja... not even Cycle Barn! (I could have ordered some from them, but they would've come in about the time I was arriving in Texas...) So I got some that seemed likely would work from Schucks, but then the relay that makes them blink wouldn't work, so I went back to schucks to try some other bulbs (because for some reason they cant just put the VOLTAGE and WATTAGE on a LIGHT BULB PACKAGE - Or even have a list where I could look it up!) But none of those worked, either, so I ended up just doing a quick modification of the circuit so that the blinker worked with the lower-wattage bulbs. Yuck. I finally got it working and posted the add for my bike on Craigslist. I really will be bummed to see it go...

I did take a look at a car today. I really had no intention of buying it from the start, but I wanted to see it in person to make sure this was a model I'm interested in (a mid-90's BMW 325). I came away knowing for sure I didn't want THAT car (it had been abused a little), but pretty sure I do want a 325 if one comes up at the right price.

That's all for now... It looks like I'll be hanging out with friends in Seattle tomorrow.

Off to a Roaring Start

SO its 10:20pm (ET) and I am supposed to arrive in Seattle at 11:20pm (PT). But what am I doing? Still sitting at my work computer here in Ithaca. However, I count that as lucky because the other option would have been sleeping on the floor of Philly International Airport.

Right as I was setting off to the airport this afternoon, I got a call from US Air saying my flight out of Ithaca was delayed enough that I would miss my connection (which happened to be the last flight to Seattle this evening). So they rescheduled my flight for tomorrow afternoon, upgraded me to first class to keep me happy, and here I am getting more work done.

Not ideal, but it could have been worse. More to come tomorrow...

Kickin' it off...

Time for another summer adventure! Although this one will be somewhat shorter than the last two (12 weeks in SoCal and 11 in Europe), I plan to drive more miles, visit more states, and see more cornfields than the last two summers combined. OK, so that's not really a fair comparison, but you get the idea.

I have a one-way plane ticket to Seattle tomorrow evening. I'll spend a week+ around the Northwest, buy a car, sell my motorcycle (yeah... kinda bummed about that, but it's not doing much for me sitting in Washington), hang out with friends, and go hiking a lot if the weather permits.

Then I'll pack up a bunch of stuff, and set off across country back here to NY. Via Texas. Yes, I've looked at a map and know that Texas is not on the way. However I have a conference in Austin Aug 6-8 where I'll be presenting my first paper to be published. But rather than rush back to Ithaca to catch a flight there, I can take my time, go hiking in the Rockies, see friends in WY (see March 07 post at my main blog), visit relatives in Dallas/FW area, go to the conference, and even get to see some friends from Seattle that just moved to Louisville, KY. It could stretch into almost 3.5 weeks away from Ithaca if I let it... (although 5 of those days could be considered "business")

I'll keep you all posted as this thing gets underway!