3D Manito Duncan Gardens

Click on the picture of your choice to make it bigger. Cross your eyes to form a third picture in the middle of the two already displayed. Look at that middle picture. Hey, it's in 3D!

Lists

At work, I usually have very little control over the day. There are things that must get done each shift but all those "musts" can fall by the wayside when the bell hits. I can bike through the station doors with the best of intentions. A list sits in my pocket with some specific training evolutions or station work scribbled in only to have the plan shitcanned due to a big fire, unscheduled training by admin, multiple medical calls or other emergencies that pop up during the day (the real job). A shift with twenty calls leaves little time to do more than drink some water and take a leak between the calls. I have to say that these are my favorite kind of days. I like being busy and I enjoy running calls. My grandson Jack gets it!. Thanks to my daughter-in-law, "Li'l Sarah" for the picture.

On my days off, I schedule my activities, or at least I always have a to-do list. Which is pretty weird, I guess. I would imagine most people have very scheduled workdays and look forward to not having a specific schedule on their days off. When I am not scheduling things on my days off, it is a conscious decision - "I am taking a break today." Yesterday, was like that.

Sarah and I did Spokefest yesterday. She hasn't missed one! The only one I missed was last year when I had to work, and to be honest, it took some weight off my shoulders to end the streak. So, yesterday we did the Classic Loop, rode back home, ate and drank at Benneditto's, watched the Seahawks lose, napped, ate popcorn and watched Sense8 episodes (a new favorite here). What a great day!

This morning, I was back on my schedule. So what did it look like?
Run 3.5 miles
Pay some bills, other admin stuff
Errands - Station 11, Library, Grocery shop
Rake pine needles
Pick vegetables
Study for my paramedic recertification
Edit poetry book
Obtain ISBN number, Library of Congress info for poetry book
Design cover art for poetry book
Spokanarama post (hey that's what I'm doing now)
Reading (soon)

These are pretty common tasks. I do something I call "The Spaz Workout" twice a week. Sometimes, I will have longer runs. Haiku Friday takes up time some of the days. I will design new t-shirts and then have to print up shirts as well.

It was a great weekend. My son Ike and I hung out with my brother Joe in Saltese. The heir to the Russian Crown brought us goat milk, bread and a dish towel commemorating George Washington's dad's birthplace. Why am I not blogging about that? We flyfished. Sometimes, you have to deviate from the schedule.

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Eleven Years of Spokanarama

To many, it seems longer.

I realize there have been many ebbs and flows in the blog. Issues of quality, content, timeliness and overall WTFery have not been a concern for the last 10 years or so. And it shows. I promise to continue this lowering of the bar.  If necessary I will shovel.

There have been some recent developments in my sidewebbiness. I have made or will make sites for all the side projects this blog has spurred. If you go to www.spokanarama.com, there they all are - smack dab and unaesthetically at the top. Some of you know other wacky projects I have shepherded. I will get some of those up there too.  It is not a very nice looking website, but it is functional. Thank you former USSR for design inspiration.

I have two main side projects that I have been involved with lately - Haiku Friday and a book of poetry that I would like to see on the shelves of your local poetry-warehouse/convenience-store sometime in October. I have also thrown my hat in the ring for Poet Laureate of Spokane. What I lack in actual works of poetry, I make up for in a can-do attitude and pluckiness. I promise to bring rhyming back!

Spokanarama has always been my number one. I try to celebrate Spokane more covertly in all my other work, but this blog has been, sometimes,  a gushy love letter to the weird and wonderful place I live and love.

My real job has become busier and I have a lot of work that I will be doing in the upcoming months off duty. I think this will help me get more of the web, writing and art stuff done. For whatever reason, when I am busy, I can really add more stuff on, and it seems to help propel all projects.  

Thanks for your readership and participation.

Macklemore and Lewis DOWNTOWN video - filmed in Spokane

A lot of this was shot near the fire station I work at. Looking good Spokane!

Sasquan!

My first brush with Sasquan was not as a participant. I was working Friday when a lot of conventioneers were already well into the fun. We responded to a call in the convention center where a fellow was not feeling well. Later on that night, we had a lady who was feeling the ill-effects of our smoky atmosphere. Downtown was hopping that day, and especially that night. The brownish air and the smell of smoke provided an apocalyptic off-world setting for the doings. Not a bad thing for a science fiction convention and overall partying downtown, but not so good for breathing. A frolicker at Zola's punched a sprinkler head around closing time, so we spent a long time there helping to get them back up and running. It was a day of a lot of calls and a busy night, as well.

Saturday, Sarah and I joined her siblings at the Pend Oreille county fair and had a great time. I was wiped out from the day before. A perfect fair frame of mind. Here's Sarah and her brother Steve. Steve has an encyclopedic knowledge of just about every car ever made. He'll let you know it too! An amazing guy.

  

Here's an intersection at the fair. Watch out for traffic!



Sunday, with a good night of sleep under my hat, we went to the closing day of  Sasquan.

 

We had a blast. I wore a shirt promoting my 1997 novel Millennium Laxative as a joke that only I would appreciate. Sad, yet funny, I guess.



$40 seemed like a lot to get in. By the end of the day, I had had way more than $40 worth of fun. We hit three seminars. The first was a panel discussion on the health effects of global warming. It was a great talk. I thought I was up on most of the climate change information, but I learned a lot. The second presentation featured artists and directors from Z Nation. This was not very well-attended, but was very good. We heard a few spoilers for the next season and also learned of some new featured locales. This show uses Spokane and the neighboring countryside to chronicle the characters' departure from New York and their trip across the country. Spokane is such a great place to make movies and TV shows because of the variety of scenery and the great urban core. I was a big Walking Dead fan in the beginning, but after it became too melodramatic, I lost interest. Z Nation is a fun show and I like the comic book feel of the stories. The last presentation we attended was on creating your own web series. Instead of a panel, there was just one guy. He did a good job, and during his talk, I realized that I kind of have a web series with my little Haiku Friday dealio.

Sarah and I talked to artists and writers, as we made our way through the trade show. We tried on helmets and crowns. Why not?







I admitted to one author that my knowledge of current science fiction writing probably peaked in 1974.

I was unfamiliar with Disc World, which seemed to be a crowd favorite at Sasquan!

I picked up a novel from a writer I struck up a conversation with. We purchased a t-shirt for our grandson. There was a vendor selling nothing but Red Dwarf stuff. I bought a DVD set from him and he, kindly, threw in another one for free. Plus, he showed us some articles, with pictures, of the ill-fated American rip-off of Red Dwarf. This was something I had heard of but had never seen anything about. Very cool!

Here I am posing with the costume of a space age Davey Crockett. Yeah!



Sarah and I had lunch and a beer in the alien setting of a cantina. Folks were playing a game based on the artwork of John Picacio.  Mr. Picacio, himself was running the game. How very cool.

All in all, a great time, and I really enjoyed the fans who wore costumes and celebrated what they loved.



Personally, it  rekindled a lost time for me. From about fourth grade to eight grade, all I would read was science fiction. I bought Ray Bradbury paperbacks (and MAD magazines) from the grocery store with my lawn mowing money and plowed through them. A religious experience. When I started junior high, the library there was my refuge. Weirdly enough, it was well stocked with Kurt Vonnegut books and a lot of other novels that would probably be banned in today's new puritan movement. At Quimby Oaks Junior High School, the book baton was passed from Ray to Kurt and then on and on.

Today, I saw this article about Ray Bradbury. The FBI was keeping an eye on him! I could pick them even back then. Way to go Ray!

I was inspired by what I saw, heard and the people I met at Sasquan. I am doubling down on my own writing, which right now is a small book of poetry,  and I'm going to start reading more contemporary stuff!  Four contemporary science fictiony type books I have read lately are The Martian,  The Windup Girl, The Library on Mount Char and On Such a Full Sea. Any suggestions?

Welcome Sasquan!

The world science fiction convention is in Spokane this weekend! Incredible. This is where they pick the HUGO winner!
 I dedicate this Haiku Friday to you science fiction fans who gather here in Spokane - Happy Sasquan!


Love Science fiction
Raised by writers of my youth
Stars to steer my life

There’s Ray Bradbury
Vonnegut, Arthur C. Clark
Asimov, Herbert

Do you like them boiled?
Brooklet peanut festival. 
Nutty place to be. Joel

Pale skin and black mane.
Punching Doc Martin princess.
Ghostly butt kicker. Joey

I don't get this post.
The message is lost on me.
I'm out of the loop. - Bob

The party is now over
Formerly young men return to their lives
Only the lonely souls remain … Scott

Spokane Engine One...
To the 'Mill as water flows,
Butterfly immersed. Kelly

 "Let's make a movie. One second, twenty four frames. You, me, and our friends.” Steve

"Oooo! I can't get my hair wet"........

Quiet solitude
Of late afternoon showers;
Gift from vanity - Craig

Confused bees ponder
Poppy boings from painted lawn
Nectar of the clowns - me

More Expo '74 song singing

The grass is greener!

I painted a section of our lawn the other day. It's a part that is mostly dead weeds and dirt interspersed in ancient grass. I thought it would be funny to have the transformation take place while Sarah was away for a couple of hours. She noticed the next day and thought it was an improvement. So I painted the rest of the front lawn. It's like our grass has been sloppily replaced - a turf version of  Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I like it.

At $30 for a thousand square feet of coverage, it's kind of expensive. It's supposed to last for months.

Next year, I might make my own version with some built-in turkey repellant.

Yes, you can! IN SPOKANE!!!

My buddy Eric sent me this. I hope it adds a little zip to your day.

325th Bomb Sqdn Reunion

 Really excited about my old bomb squadron's reunion this weekend. The 325th Bomb Squadron got its start in WW 2. Notably, on a mission (I think maybe the first mission of the squadron) they launched on a bombing raid over Germany. Everybody got shot down. The only guy who survived, so the story goes, was a guy who had been DNIF (Duties Not Involving Flying) that day. Basically he was sick in bed and then became the entire squadron.

 I started out as a navigator and then moved over to the radar navigator (bombardier) seat. Life was pretty simple. Mission plan one day and fly the next. Once every four weeks we would have to be on alert at the base. There were six crews with six members on each crew. each crew had a B-52 bristling with nukes parked next to where we slept. We would live in the alert facility for a week at a time, and then would get three and a half days off before we started flying training missions again. Actually, it was a lot of fun. Lots of pranks. Lots of movies and talk. I entered the Air Force as a Reagan Republican and left on the opposite end of the spectrum, thanks to conversations with my lefter-leaning friends on alert. I wonder how many can say that their military service did that? The Air Force was, in fact, the most socialist organization I have ever been a part of, and functioned very well. This somewhat creepy painting hung in the stairwell at the partially subterranean alert facility:

B-52s left Spokane about a year after I left B-52s. Before their departure we had the crash and that really made their subsequent absence in Spokane skies all the sadder. I used to look up when I heard that familiar noise of eight engines. I would think about who was on the plane as it passed overhead. I guess I do the same thing now when I hear a siren and see a fire truck go by. It's been cool being surrounded by friends in the air or on the ground, just about all the time.

So, to say I'm excited about seeing old pals (and we are really old now) is an understatement.

The Pulaski Trail

Yesterday, Sarah and I finally hiked the Pulaski trail. It's something we've wanted to do for a while, but never got around to.

Timothy Egan's book The Big Burn recounts well the story of the 1910 fires. They wreaked havoc here in the Northwest and elsewhere. Entire towns were burned off the map. A lot of public policy and other political maneuverings grew out of these fires. The major story which transfixed the nation came out of Wallace, Idaho. If you read my posts, you know I am a big fan of this little town.

A man named Ed Pulaski, in a nutshell, knew that fire crews were about to be overrun by the fire and formulated a plan. He remembered an old mining tunnel and led 45 firefighters into its mouth. Pulaski soaked blankets in the mine's puddles and held them up at the entrance to create a barrier against the howling flames and crushing smoke. He eventually burnt his hands and became blinded from his efforts. At the beginning of the ordeal, guys began to panic and one made a break out of the mine and into the hellfire. Pulaski's response? He pulled out his revolver and promised to shoot anyone who tried to leave. How cool is that? When morning arrived, only six of the 45 men had died.

Climbing out of the tunnel and thirsty for water from Placer Creek, at the mouth of the mine, they found that its once clear current was now a befouled mess of debris and animal carcasses. The little water that flowed was an ashen, muddy elixir, unfit for drinking. Hard to imagine that today.

When they stumbled back into what was left of Wallace, they were offered whiskey and coffee. All they wanted was water. Pulaski checked on his home to make sure that it was still standing and that his family was safe. It was. They were. He then spent a long time in the hospital recovering from his wounds. Eventually his vision returned. His burns healed. The rest of his life he had difficulty breathing and his eyes never were the same.

When you hike to the cave, you are coming from the opposite direction that Pulaski took to seek its refuge. It's hard to imagine the terror of that day, while the beautiful creek rolls by, the wildflowers bloom and thimbleberries are begging to be eaten.

There are many sites and signage along the trail. The signs are hemmed in artistically by mounts of the fire tools which bear the inventor's moniker - pulaskis. This tool remains one of the most popular in wildland firefighting. Today, firefighters still use them to scrape an area out in the ground to create an area to deploy their fire shelters - their own personal tunnels - to survive being overrun by wildfire. Some die with their pulaskis still in their hands.

After that dramatic description, I realized I forgot to take a picture, so I borrowed this one from visit idaho.org. Thanks! You can see the pulaskis on the outer posts.

The hike is beautiful, historic and moderately easy with an elevation gain of 800 feet over two miles - terminating at an overlook of Pulaski's tunnel. After you hike back, there's coffee and whiskey waiting for you in Wallace.

Directions.

 

 

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Tubing the river

A couple of days ago, Sarah and I took a float down the Spokane River in tubes. This is something, for whatever reason, I never contemplated doing until this summer.

Back on the fourth, my crew was called to go check on a supposed campfire. The couple who called 9-1-1 met us at the Sandifur Bridge and directed us to the "confluence of the Spokane River and Latah Creek, about an eighth of a mile - that way." We parked the engine at the gate and hiked in about a half a mile carrying shovels and a pumpcan. The fire turned out to be a propane stove. Perfectly OK. On the very hot hike back, numerous tubers passed by in the river. We stopped and talked to people who were getting ready to enter the water at Sandifur, and it looked like a blast.

Sarah and I bought a couple of tubes at the General Store. We decided on the ones with cup holders.

We put in at Peaceful Valley. Near a garbage can were the deflated remains of a tube of the same make and manufacture of the ones we had purchased. Not a good sign.

ROW was at the site with their bus. Folks were getting in rafts and inflatable kayaks to go on their professional adventure. We probably didn't help ROW out by launching next to them in our half-assed flotilla adquately stocked for the three-hour tour, the three-hour tour.

The water was cold. And as the river picked up steam, I was glad to be wearing the mandated life jacket. You have to pick your line pretty well to get through the rapids without scraping your ass, the river is so low.

I've been on a lot of rafting trips, and although the water was fairly tame, being in tubes made the river pretty exciting, at times. It's amazing how small a riffle looks from the bank, but when you are in it, it seems huge.

We floated under the old bridge at San Succi. We bobbed past many places where I've helped pull people out of the water, put out fires, stumbled upon little meth labs, etc. From the middle of the river, I couldn't even imagine any of that ever happening. The banks were devoid of litter. No shopping carts jutted out of the current. No flotsam or jetsam. Nothing creepy or gross peered up at me from Davy Jone's locker. It was cold, beautiful and fun.

We took out just past the TJ Meenach Bridge, apologizing to fly fishermen and transients for the disturbance.

 

 

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Hose sandals test run

I made some running sandals yesterday from some scrap five-inch hose. This is the hose we use to get water from the hydrant to the fire engine.

The design was pretty straight forward. Trace your feet on paper, add a little buffer and then trace the paper on the rubber. I used a drill to make the holes for the shockchord laces. The tricky part was figuring out how to tie them. Seems like everyone has a favorite way of doing it and they have all made videos to show you how.

I had to move one of the holes because my right foot was sitting too far back on the rubber.

This morning I took them for a run - once around the park and then onto the High Drive trails.

I found myself sprawled out on the east end of Cannon Hill Park. I had, apparently, ducked just in time to avoid planting my face into the end of this sawed-off branch. It did catch the top of my head, leaving a scratch and a bump. I don't think I lost consciousness but was dazed for a bit. And my head hurt.

I dusted myself off and continued on for a little run on the trails. I found the sandals extremely loud on pavement. On the trails they protected my feet pretty well from rocks. One thing I worried about was picking up pebbles between the sandal and my foot. This did happen, but the pebbles came out really quickly while running. Encountering some sprinklers in a final lap around the park, my feet slipped around on the sandals. This makes sense because the tops of the sandals are the interior of the hose. It is purposely slick to reduce friction loss for better water pressure.

All in all. I think they worked pretty well. I wont run in these every day, only occasionally. I have an idea about using some other discarded material for the next pair, something a little more soft and grippy. These hose sandals are something I will probably wear as a daily replacement for flip flops and to weddings.

 

 

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