Day 202: Nuclear War

Did you ever think you’d be worried about nuclear war?  Who among you remembers the Cuban Missile Crisis?  I was ten years old.  My Mom was a church secretary.  There was a storage closet underneath a set of stairs.  She put two gallons of water, crackers and deviled ham in the closet.  We were told to go there if the balloons went up.  Looking back, it’s just comical for any of us to have thought we would survive.  We truly feared for our lives.  Then things got better, countries calmed down.

But now, in the twinkling of an eye we have a bellicose president, threatening “fire and fury” at an equally unstable leader of a nuclear armed nation.  Yes, we can over power what ever arms they have, but at what cost.  It will leave the Korean peninsula a smoking radioactive hole.  As the only nation to have ever used nuclear weapons,  do we really want the honor of doing it again? 

So that was yesterday.  Today the White House is walking it back, saying he got off script and pay him no nevermind.  I’m not sure which is worse; that he would blurt something like that out on camera, or that staff would tell the world to ignore the words of the President of the United States, former leader of the free world.

There is an excellent essay on Medium, about survivor bias.  The author’s thesis is that because the US has survived threats to the democracy in the past, we believe we’ll survive them in the future.  I’m not so sure.  It’s not long, go here to read it.

This was taken in Greece.  I’m not sure where it came from, but it’s a lovely picture.

Riding the Sammamish Slough

It is so hot, again.  Really hot.  My recliner is on the hot side of the bus.  I’m currently sitting on the bed because the rear air conditioner is doing a much better job on the bedroom than is the front air conditioner.  Today would be a good day for a third a/c, but we’re not going there.

This morning, before it was really hot, we drove out to Marymoor Park.  It is the jewel of the King County parks.  They have cricket, soccer, RC planes, climbing walls, a velodrome and more.  We just wanted to park there and ride up the Sammamish Slough. 

Staff was running a bicycling camp for little kids.  Some knew how to pedal and others were being pushed around until they found their balance.  They look like mushrooms in those helmets.

The slough, or river, drains Lake Sammamish into Lake Washington.  It doesn’t have a lot of current, today it was looking pretty brown.  It is, however, water.  And water front commands a premium price in the real estate market.  This makes the continued existence of this mobile home park, and another one up the road so astonishing.  I can not believe they haven’t torn these down and put up condos.

They have been here forever.  It’s kind of nice to see some of the old parts of the area surviving.

This is an older section of the trail.  The parts that are currently being paved, at great inconvenience to the people who fought the project in the courts for years and lost, will be 12 feet across.  It will be very pleasant riding, assuming they finish while Jim and I are still alive.  I wrote about the trail last year, and you can read it here if you are interested.

As we were leaving Marymoor we saw a Google motorcycle coming down the bike path. I’m assuming it’s Google, I don’t know who else drives around with a rotating camera.

I saw these photos on Facebook, this is the Cariboo wildfire.  This is the source of the smoke we are currently inhaling.  The number of fires in BC is just staggering.

This is distressing. 

Other than sweltering, we have not too much to report. 

Preston and Mitchell Hill

We were up early to ride before it got too hot.  I hate early starts, it interferes with my coffee consumption.  The area is still full of smoke.  We’ll all probably have brown lung by the time this moves out.

The river was, as always, very pleasant to see.

On the way home, we drove through Preston.  It’s a defunct mill town.  In the 1970s the mill closed and everybody was laid off at once.  Then the old mill burned down. 

Here we have a young male deer.  He has tiny little antlers.

There is a cemetery up the hill.

This man lived a full life.  He made it to 90, which considering his service in WWI and the state of medicine at the time, is an amazing accomplishment.

It’s an interesting area.  Preston and the land up the hill is called Mitchell Hill.  It was King County’s first Transfer of Development Rights.  The county wants to keep open space for the animals.  The developers want to put houses on every square inch.  Here is a description of what happened in the area.  The entire article from 2000 can be found here.

Mitchell Hill became the point of an arrow called Transfer of Development Rights (TDRs), which could be the model for a countywide policy intended to contain growth and save green space. It's too early to say if TDRs are going to show up in anything but small, specific cases, but the first one is a doozy.

TDRs work like this: A builder buys development rights to a forest or open space, most likely somewhere in east King County. Those rights are then shifted back west to the developer's project, ensuring the open land will never be developed. Essentially, the money goes to lock up forests from development. In exchange, the builder puts more square footage into another site.

The Mitchell Hill Connector is the first TDR enacted and becomes a tale of county, local government and the developer doing a square dance of revolving partners. King County agreed to the sale of development rights on 315 acres of forested land to Port Blakely Development Co., creator of Issaquah Highlands - formerly known as Grand Ridge. For $2.75 million, Port Blakely acquires rights that are transferred from Mitchell Hill into Issaquah Highlands, which then adds 500,000 square feet to the 2.9 million square feet of commercial space Microsoft plans to use. An additional $250,000 from King County goes to the land owners to round out the full cost of the TDR to $3 million.

The city of Issaquah had to sign off on the deal because it's getting more density. Port Blakely agreed to put $1 million into a bypass to help with easing traffic out of Issaquah Highlands, which is expected to generate about 7,000 car trips a day onto environs of Issaquah.

There are many private roads leading off the main route up the hill.  According to descriptions of the area, there are many Microsoft millionaires and NBA stars with mansions back in the woods.  I think this would not be one of those mansions.  I could not get a complete picture of all the stuff these people have in their yard, but there is more off to the right.  They can never move.

This is currently on the market for $860,000, which is actually not a terrible price.  It sits on 5 acres, has room for horses, and a three car garage.  The price per square foot is $255, which is really good for King Country.  And it’s air conditioned.  I do wonder how much of the surrounding hills they can see, or if they just look at the trees.

Other than this, I have nothing to report of much interest. 

Sunset Yesterday

This picture turned out pretty good.  It always feels odd to point the camera at the sun.



Air quality was marginally better today.  The smoke is supposed to hang around until Thursday.  Rain would be good!

Aggravation

It’s been an aggravating week.  We took the truck in to Safelite for a new windshield.  When we arrived we were offered a new pre-scratched windshield for full price.  No, I think I would prefer a windshield that is pristine.  Before we knew that we wouldn’t be getting new glass, we attempted to call a cab to take us somewhere for the 90 minutes the replacement would take.  Do you think you can just pick up your phone and summon a yellow cab?  Why no, you may not.  You must have an app, and with that app on your hackable phone, you must provide a credit card.  I don’t see this as an life improvement.  Anyway, we didn’t get a windshield, and we didn’t get a cab.  I think we’re back to having it done on the RV site, so we don’t have to hang out in a glass shop for hours.

The weather is just vile.  The atmosphere is poisonous.  We’re under a huge dome of high pressure, which is pulling in air from BC Canada, which is where the fires are.  Allegedly our air quality yesterday was worse than in Beijing.

The sun looks orange in this picture, it was actually a blue-red.  It was just weird.

There is a local controversy over a flag display.  It’s on county property and has been there in one form or another for several years.  It’s also on a narrow winding road.  The county got a call, asking for the retaining wall to be cleared of the display.  So, they did.  Outrage ensued.  The pro-flag people staged protests and planted even more flags into the retaining wall.  It’s an interesting response.  The flags are not lighted, and therefore should be taken down at night.  In these partisan times, it seems like everything must become a cause.

From the better news side of the spectrum, we now have DSL.  I ordered 12 mbps, but they wrote it up for 7 for some reason.  Apparently speed is tied to the type of modem they send.  I didn’t know that.  Anyway, the new modem arrives on August 8, and things should be faster.  Jim and I are big fans of rabbits eating raspberries.  I also enjoy the occasional cat video.

Hot and Political Humor

Holy Cow, it’s hot.  Thursday it’s supposed to hit 99.  Very few homes in this area have air conditioning.  I feel bad for them.  This morning’s walk would have benefited from me getting out earlier.

The hibiscus are in full bloom.  It amazes me that they survived last year’s terrible winter.



This particular plant is in front of a senior living facility.  Maybe it’s an omen for us.



So far Jim is not seeing much improvement from the epidural.  I would have to say things are worse now than they were.  It can take up to two weeks to effect change, so it’s too soon to be despondent.

Are we all familiar with Representative Maxine Waters reclaiming her time from Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin?  Instead of providing crisp answers to her questions, he went off on meandering non-answers.  She used a parliamentary procedure wherein she repeated “reclaiming my time” to get her time back. The internet went crazy about this.  Her words were worked into a gospel song.  There are many articles on the subject, one of which can be found here.  I used to be able to imbed stuff from youtube, but that function seems to be gone.  Anyway, click here for the gospel version, it’s really a hoot.

Finally, I can not resist this meme from Twitter, it’s funny.