Monday, April 23, 2018

More America

Home alone, I found a female hummingbird trapped in the garage. On this trip my mom taught me how to clean the hummingbird feeders and how she makes the food. The males are so gorgeous and fly right between us as we sit in the hot tub.

Oh, hot tubs, how I miss them. They don't exist in Germany. Or, if they do, no one I know has one.

As I took photos and video, I realized these things are more like bees than birds, the noise their wings make. I won't show you the video because I flailed around a bit trying to save myself.

Later I couldn't find the bird, she must have found her way out, but I realized my car's windows were open, and the horrible thought occurred to me that she might be in the car, and start buzzing around my face while I'm driving. Thankfully she was gone.


     

She's about half the size of my fist, and for her size, has a huge weapon.




     

For years I've been longing for food to be delivered to my house in little white boxes. I finally got my wish, I was eating out of those boxes again.




     

Our first trip downtown. I was thrilled that the viaduct is still there, Seattle's double decker highway with spectacular views of the water and the mountains. They're replacing it with a tunnel, which is nice for residents, but a pity for commuters like me.




     

There's my favorite building center left. I have a photo of me riding Baasha in front of it: )




     

Now you believe me?: ) Circa 2004.


     

Oh dear, what happened to Groundspeak!? What is this "Geocaching" company? And Google here at Lake Union?




     

It's true, they've changed their company name to Geocaching. Ugh, I hate it. But it makes sense. Groundspeak doesn't mean much to the average person.

We met up with Bryan again, a really nice founder, and discussed business. There are some shady things that happen by geocachers and J is trying to make them right. Bryan was extremely grateful for his work.

Bryan tells us in 2020 they will celebrate 20 years and have the biggest block party ever. J told him to coordinate with their receptionist Sven, a German guy, who will be familiar with the holiday schedules in Germany so people with kids, or teachers like J, can make it.

The cool new thing took me a moment to grasp - there's a TV screen with live cache finds. So, an image of the globe, and then every 5 or 10 seconds, it zooms in on a location and announces which cache was found. Amazingly, more than half of them were in Germany! Per capita, geocaching is more popular in Germany than any other nation. But the caches here are HARD...so on our Seattle trip we raised our standards to "over 10 finds being a good day, over 20 a great day." That's my thing, J disagrees with me that 5 make a good day.




     

Across the water from Groundspeak (I'm just gonna keep calling it that), houseboats. Floating homes! We saw so many, in so many areas of Seattle, we learned there is even a community called Lake Union Living Aboard Assoc. Lula.




     

I want this one.




     

Or this one. Almost all of them have boats as well. Oh how I love being on the water in a tiny craft.




     


What the heck, Fremont.



     

I had to laugh cuz after J entered the correct code to unlock the "newspaper bin" - he didn't know how they open. I guess these things don't exist in Germany, I'd never noticed.




     

Then we visited Epic Team Adventures to do our first escape room. A friend of mine helped create this company and I was excited to try one of his rooms. We picked the easiest one. And FAILED. And we were a team of 6! And we're not dummies! Ugh, that was hard. ETA has won awards in the escape room community, perhaps that is why. In retrospect, it was fun, even worth the money, but afterwards I was annoyed for days that we couldn't solve all the puzzles.




     

Afterwards we ate at a Hawaiian place (they are suddenly a thing in Seattle), and I was delighted when not only my escape room guy showed up, but also my dear friend pictured above, who I used to be so close with until moving away. He's got himself another BMW, this one was amazing - the interior doors light up like a space ship, and you can even pick which color for the light effects. Funnily, his license plate is APP DEV, cuz that's what he is: )

My heart was in pain as we said goodbye to him yet again. He was one of the best things about life in Seattle. My husband needs a chance to get to know him, but both my friends on this day are married now and raising children. Phantom children, I've never seen them and cannot imagine them.




     

One of our last geocaching trips, in a gorge near my parent's house by the water that I swear I've never been in, but J says we were, 10 years ago. It sounded like a jungle in there, and all the trees were still naked except for thick coatings of moss.



     

I found a pink trillium, but my camera could not capture the color.




     

This is for Aarene. I used to hate salmon berries, well, they taste great when ripe enough, but they clamber over the trails as bad as blackberries and make riding painful. I used to carry loppers on my saddle to get these out of my way.




     

Ferns went all the way up the maple trees. Like, all the way to the tippy tops!




     






     

The place is called Shorewood on the Sound and although right next to where my parents live, and where I spent my teenage years, I cannot recall this neighborhood.




     






     






     

I imagine if you're from a dry state, and you see this creeping green, it could be disgusting. An infestation of fur that threatens to take over all other life forms.




This is a mostly deciduous forest, which looks bleak to me, but the birdsong was nice.

It's fun to go through these photos and videos again. Just a little more to come...

7 comments:

sidesaddle queen said...

Glad you had a nice trip to Seattle. My family got together for Easter and did an escape room in Austin, 2 radiologists, 1 veterinarian, 1 pediatrician, 1 hospital worker, and 1 teenager. It was a nautical theme, and I helped with some constellations & minor stuff, the older brother really shone, as he had been in Boy Scouts. There was semaphore, sailors knots, and Morse code, all of which he aced!

We finished with 20 seconds to go, even with all this brain power.

Glad you are figuring out how to get some miles on Mag. Maybe you could get connected with the endurance community there and do some shorter rides on a regular basis. It’s harder when you don’t have your own truck & trailer, but maybe someone could haul the 2 of you out on a regular basis?

Nuzzling Muzzles said...

So, I haven't been geocaching in years, mainly because of my leg pain, but also because I only like finding geocaches in nature, and most of the ones around me are in cities. It's impossible to look for geocaches in cities without nosy people staring while you dig around, wondering what kind of crime you are committing. Anyway, I've been hiding and looking for painted rocks instead... at least up until the admins of the group told me they only wanted children looking for the rocks. Then I was only allowed to paint and hide them. One lady found one of my rocks and said it was near a geocache she owns. I told her I would go look for it. It turned out there were three geocaches in the locations I've been hiding my rocks, so I went to go look for one last week, found it, but forgot to bring a pen or pencil to sign the log. None was provided despite there being plenty of room for one. I was bummed, because now I have to go back to complete the process. I am so jealous that you got to experience an escape room. Those have always fascinated me. We had a TV show for a while in which three teams compete to see who can solve all the puzzles and escape the room first. I was astounded by how difficult the puzzles were. In a lot of cases, none of the teams beat the clock and escaped. As is true with all good TV shows, that one disappeared. Did you see Mick Dodge on your hikes?

Kitty Bo said...

Love the pictures. The wooded area is beautiful. I think hummingbirds take great delight in buzzing right in front of you. My bird book describes them as "all are bold and pugnacious."

EvenSong said...

When I think of Burien, all I can picture is Sea-Tac, hotels, and the police academy! Didn't know there was anyplace "wild!" I've been to Seahurst Park, off West Seattle, though, so I guess it shouldn't surprise me. I tend to avoid the west side--it's too crowded!

AareneX said...

Salmonberry blossoms and trilliums (and skunk cabbage) mean SPRING!!! Finally. Winter was longer than usual this time.

Those ferns on the trunks of trees are called "licorice ferns" and the roots are edible and taste like anise. Makes a decent tea. Because if you're lost and alone in the woods where nobody delivers in white boxes, you might wanna make some tea.

lytha said...

Sidesaddle, omg you have my exact frame of mind when I arrived in Germany 10 years ago. Simply hook up with endurance riders and get going, get a mentor, whatever. So far it's been impossible for me. I keep frequenting the endurance website though, and keeping my eye on the rides available. They are all typical German - there is a lengthy form that must be filled out about each ride detailing everything imaginable, including How Many Kilometers of the Trail are on Paved Streets. Yes, and sometimes that number is 30% of the ride. Can you imagine? It's just not something I look forward to doing - endurance on pavement in towns. But I will, if I can, someday.

20 seconds to go, thanks for sharing that - it helps with the pain of defeat; )

NM, well I'm jealous that you can get little white boxes delivered to your house, and a million other things I miss so much: ) I'm sure you can find an escape room, and thanks for sharing about the difficulty level. I was so discouraged! Who is Mick Dodge?

KB, "ALL are bold and pugnacious" LOL right they are!

EvenSong, Seahurst is in Burien! I know, you don't think of lovely beaches and mossy woods when you think of Burien, but that water has to go up the coast somewhere, and even places like White Center (rat city) have a gorgeous coastline with fancy homes looking down on it. It's odd how often you have one side of the street craptastic, and the other side, the view side, multi-million $.

Aarene, I thought the licorice ferns had black stems. But I'm glad you noticed the ferns that go all the way up! I couldn't get a photo. It's hard for me to look at these photos because of intense homesickness. Like, when you never eat Thai food and you forget how good it is. Then you have it, and the next day you MUST have it again. That's me and Seattle.

AareneX said...

Now I want Thai food. Oh, look:Monica has made curry. You need to come back and visit again!