Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Chilly Hilly, Take 2

Waq Waq, IslandWood’s 4-foot tall paper mache frog

Two weeks of solid work finally culminated in Cascade Bicycle Club’s annual Chilly Hilly ride. Last year, Marilyn, Nick and I rode it together for the first time. It was so crowded I vowed to never ride it again.

This year I had the privilage of working the event as a member of the Cascade staff. I had a gap in my responsibilities between 8:30 a.m. and 2 p.m. so I decided to give one more go. And you know what?! I had a great time.

At the back of the pack people were having fun, stopping to look at the views, walking without shame up the steep hills and towing frogs!

Side note: Lens Day’s challenge this week is “enchanted.” Given the decidedly enchanting nature of frogs, I submitted this picture.

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Franz Joseph Glacier

It’s not every day that a team of guides cuts a staircase into the side of a major glacier.

New Zealand photo update: At least half of the pictures I took in New Zealand are now off the camera. The other half will come off tonight. Then it’s on to post-processing - the tedious task that turns ordinary photos into ... well ... better photos.

This picture was taken at the base of the Franz Joseph glacier. Tourists pay guides to take them up the glacier for a half or full day of icy fun. When I went, we crawled around in “worm holes,” jumped over crevasses and did a lot of stuff you’d never get to do on a guided trip in the states. It was good fun!

Friday, February 10, 2006

Fun Friday Quiz

I’m still working on the pictures from New Zealand. In the mean time, I thought I’d post a fun little Friday quiz for you literary types. 

You may or may not know that I’m a “first line” buff. That is I’m crazy about the first sentences of books, plays, poetry, etc. I especially like the ones that become as famous as the work itself. So, in honor of first lines, here’s a little quiz to test your literary mettle.

Arranged by brevity (shortest sentence first), try guessing the author, work and year it was published. (Highlight the blank space below the clue to reveal the answer.)

Call me Ishmael.
Herman Melville, Moby Dick, 1851

Mother died today.
Albert Camus, The Stranger, 1946

I am an invisible man.
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man, 1952

It was love at first sight.
Joseph Heller, Catch-22, 1962

It was a pleasure to burn.
Ray Bradgury, Farenheit 451, 1953

All this happened, more or less.
Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five, 1969

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins.
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita, 1955

I am a sick man . . . I am a spiteful man.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground, 1864

In the town, there were two mutes and they were always together.
Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, 1940

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
George Orwell, 1984, 1949

Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.
James Joyce, Ulysses, 1922

You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain’t no matter.
Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 1885

In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains.
Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms, 1929

It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York.
Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar, 1963

riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.
James Joyce, Finnegans Wake, 1939

Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo.
James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, 1916

When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon.
James Crumley, The Last Good Kiss, 1978

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.
Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, 1859

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.
J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, 1951

I, Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus This-that-and-the-other (for I shall not trouble you yet with all my titles) who was once, and not so long ago either, known to my fiends and relatives and associates as “Claudius the Idiot,” or “That Claudius,” or “Claudius the Stammerer,” or “Clau-Clau-Claudius” or at best as “Poor Uncle Claudius,” am now about to write this strange history of my life; starting from my earliest childhood and continuing year by year until I reach the fateful point of change where, some eight years ago, at the age of fifty-one, I suddenly found myself caught in what I may call the “golden predicament” from which I have never since become disentangled.
Robert Graves, I, Claudius, 1934

Monday, February 06, 2006

On losing the Superbowl

At 3 p.m. yesterday, Nick and I were at the tail end of our afternoon bike ride around Issaquah and Bellevue. The streets were eerily empty even for a Sunday. The few folks that were still on the road drove recklessly (running red lights and squealing tires as they rounded corners) to make it to their appointed television in time for the kickoff.

After 30 years of football mediocrity, the Seahawks were finally going head to head with the Pittsburg Steelers in the Superbowl. Weird.

Being an almost lifetime resident of the Seattle suburbs, I thought it was my duty to at least have the TV turned on to the game. Nick was noticably determined not to watch the game, so he retired to the front porch with a cup of coffee and a copy of VeloNews.

At half-time, it was clear that I wasn’t watching the game very closely, so Nick contrived to get me turn off the TV by offering to help install my new heated motorcycle gloves. (They represent cold weather riding nirvana, but that’s another post.)

I’m not much of a football fan. And I care even less for the Seahawks. I am proud to work in Seattle and live just across the lake from this beautiful city, though, which is why I was tickled by David Horsey’s cartoon in the P.I. today. Of all the commentary I’ve heard and read so far, I think he said it best:

“Sadly, it was not to be. Final score: Pittsburg 21, Seattle 10. Still, Seahawks players and fans walked out of Ford Field with something incredibly valuable: a seat for a return flight to Seattle, that fantastic city on Puget Sound. The Steelers? They had to go back to plain old Pittsburg.”

Friday, February 03, 2006

Mohammed Cartoon

If you haven’t been living in a hole lately (or been out of the country on vacation) you’ll have no doubt noticed the row over a Danish newspaper that printed several cartoons depicting Mohammed. The most offensive cartoon apparently is one of Mohammed depicted with a bomb for a turbine. Since the corporate American media has been cowardly refusing to print the cartoon, I thought I’d do my part to support free speech. Here you go:

(Now, if you’d be so kind as to put all fatwahs and death threats in the comments, I’d greatly appreciate it.)

In all seriousness though...I think the stink people are putting up over this is awfully silly. I’m all for being respectful of various cultures, religions, et al, but don’t the armed Muslim protesters realize that going on rampages - smashing furniture, destroying Danish symbols, and shouting death threats - is where the idea for these cartoons come from?

For crying out loud! People make mistakes! Isn’t forgiveness one of the highest virtues?