More Fall in the GPNW

Greetings Earthlings. One of the downsides of RV life, with our particular floor plan, is the lack of a desk. Recently the living trust that Jim's parents established has been amended. This has generated a flurry of documentation requirements from the financial institutions where May's accounts reside. It's interesting that every single bank and credit union has different levels of required paper. BECU has been the worst, I suspect that May's association with them will be severed at the first opportunity because they make everything more difficult than it could ever need to be. Note the electrical cord trip hazard caused by the printer.

This is Jim and Kim Waddle, I took this Thursday. Kim had a very full day. She was up at 6:30 for a 7 mile hike with 2,500 feet of climbing in a fairly short distance. After that they were up and out for wine tasting and dinner at a restaurant at the art museum.

Here we are at the Issaquah Fish Hatchery. The Chinook salmon run has just begun. The obstacle the fish are trying to jump over is called a weir, and it is designed to be impossible to jump. After awhile the fish get tired, give up, and wander over to the fish ladder.


The fish ladder is much easier for them to climb.


Eventually they reach a containment pen. Later on they'll donate their genetic material and the fertilized eggs will be transferred to trays at the hatchery. In December the eggs hatch into little fish. They leave in May and come back years later to repeat the cycle.

While we were not living here (2007 - 2010), Bellevue grew and changed to a tremendous degree. They've done a pretty good job of urban planning to become a dense city of housing, retail and places to work. One of the new developments is The Bravern. It's quite the ostentatious, over the top, gratuitously expensive shopping emporium. The Yelp reviews are not good. Apparently the parking garage is a nightmare, and even worse, there is no coffee shop. What were the developers thinking - retail with no coffee in Seattle. The original plan was retail on the lower floors, and condos in the accompanying high rises. We saw on the news that many of the condos are converting to apartments because no one is buying. Their timing was not so great what with the collapse of the planetary economy and all.


Examine these two pictures of the shopping area. What do you not see? You do not see anything to keep the rain off of the shoppers. To go from store to store you must go outside, in the rain.

I do like the gym window.

Saturday was a gift. Rain had been predicted all day, but it cleared early and was just spectacular. Highs in the low 70's with sun. We got the bikes out while the getting was good.



These are brave Northwesterners doing the Wave charity ride Sunday morning. It just poured much of the morning. We're east of Seattle, in the Cascade foothills. The mountains stop the clouds and suck them dry of water, it rains a lot more here than in Bellevue, which is not that far away. Anyway, they were out there on the trail.


Riding with a smile.

See the sun on the trail? That's a sucker hole. The sun comes out, your spirits lift, and then the hole in the clouds closes and it rains again.

Monday started with yet another visit to the podiatrist to complain about the orthotics. The arches are too high, they are too far back on my heel, they give me shin splints. After 3 months of futzing around with these things, he has decided to order new ones, which should arrive 2 days before we depart. I am not hopeful that I will leave with anything that works. It's always something.