I Don't Get It

The story of Mohammed Jawad can only make me shake my head in wonder. Though no one knows for sure, he was about twelve years old when he was picked up in Afghanistan almost seven years ago. He is accused of throwing a hand grenade that injured a couple of Americans and their translator. He ended up in Guantanamo, was tortured, and confessed to attempted murder. On July 16th, a federal judge ruled that the military case against him was "riddled with holes" and ordered him released. And unlike some other detainees ordered released but with no country wanting them, Afghanistan has asked to have him returned. Now the Obama administration is considering transferring him to the American court system for further prosecution. How can this kid ever be, or ever was, a threat to America? Is he a mutant with super powers capable of bringing down the wrath of Allah on the US if he is released? Will he be plotting the next attack with Osama bin Laden as soon as he gets out?

And this is Obama's administration that is fighting against his release. I don't get it.

If you're interested, you can read more here.

It's a record!

103ºF (that's 39.4ºC) was the official high temperature yesterday! That is the highest temperature EVER recorded in Seattle.

This is for all the teachers out there

For whatever reason, there are a lot of teachers in my life. This is for all of you... Martha, Caroline, Peter, Tricia, Dolly,Rosemary, Nancy, and many more. Hold your heads high and enjoy!

Baby, it's hot outside!

When I first moved to Seattle twelve years ago, one of the lines I heard about Seattle weather was that it had never been 100, and it had never been zero. Well, one of those records may well fall today, with a forecast high of 100! (That's about 38C to my Fahrenheit-challenged northern brethren) And all this without AC! We are indeed a hardy lot.

Megan came over for a while early yesterday evening, and it was too hot to hang around inside or to do anything outside, so I called my neighborhood pub, Dad Watson's, to check if they had AC. They did indeed, so we wandered down the alley to enjoy burgers and beer in relative comfort. Hal's mom Joan had just arrived from LA to celebrate her 80th with her baby boy, so we brought them along. A good time was had by all. Happy Birthday Joan!

What a GORGEOUS Day!

Megan and I escaped from the blistering heat (yes really, I think the high was 92!) in Seattle to play in the snow on Mt. Rainier. You could say we got more than half-way to the top, and that wouldn't really be a lie because we climbed above 9000' and the summit of Mt. Rainier is over 14,400'. It would be stretching the truth at least a bit, because we started out at the Paradise Lodge at an elevation of around 5500'. We turned around a couple of hours away from Camp Muir (around 10,000'), which is the traditional base camp to get to the summit. We hadn't really set an actual goal on the mountain, so we took our time and had a leisurely lunch which would have been even better if Megan hadn't left the sandwiches to bake in the car! We turned around when we ran out of time and it looked like the weather was starting to turn bad. (Actually it stayed just fine.)
Here's Megan demonstrating glissading, the highly technical mountaineering technique sometimes used to quickly descend glaciers. I myself did not partake in the technique due to my lack of expertise and my fear of glacier grit invading my nether regions.
At times it looked like Megan was kayaking in the snow.

There were lots of people on the mountain, including folks like us on a day hike, and those who had made it to the summit and were heading down. I chatted with a few of them, most of whom seemed to be in a state of near exhaustion.I can imagine what Caroline felt like last year when she made it. The typical Rainier climber climbs to the Camp Muir base camp (Caroline took the Camp Sherman route on the other side of the mountain) and spends a day there getting acclimatized to the altitude. They start out from the camp around midnight in order to summit around dawn, and then head down. So most of the people I was meeting had been climbing or descending continuously for 15-20 hours. And in spite of the great weather, it was cold and extremely windy at the summit, and there was no view because of the lenticular cloud that often forms at the peak.

The scenery was truly spectacular, complete with waterfalls emerging from the base of the Nisqually glacier.


At the lower elevations, the alpine meadows were in full bloom! I expected to see and hear Julie Andrews burst into song at any moment.
Furry creatures took little or no notice of the human interlopers in their midst.

Mt. Rainier is truly the gem of the Northwest, and part of what makes it so fabulous is that it's so readily accessible. Anybody can drive up there in just a couple of hours.

Big Green Egg Pizza

On Tuesday night, daughter Megan came over for a belated birthday celebration and mutual gift exchange. I asked her what she wanted to have for dinner, and she said she wanted pizza. Some time ago, I saw a recipe for pizza online at the NY Times, so I figured this was a good time to try it out. The recipe was unusual, at least in my experience with pizzas. No tomato sauce, no pepperoni or mushrooms. Get this - the toppings are dried figs, carmelized onions, bacon, and gorgonzola cheese! I've made pizzas quite often on the BGE, and they turn out pretty well, but I usually use dough from the local PCC. This time I figured I'd use the dough recipe from the Times, but I hadn't worked with flour and yeast for a year or more ago when my culinary instincts had led me to try baking bread. Anyway, I screwed it up by putting in too much water, and I ended up with a sticky, almost runny dough, so I added flour until the dough was workable. I wasn't sure if it would work or not, so I bought some fresh dough from PCC as an emergency backup. As it turned out, the pizza dough and the resulting pizza was the best I'd ever made! And one pizza was more than sufficient for Megan and me, so I had half the leftover homemade dough as well as the fresh dough I'd bought.

I didn't want this to go to waste, so last night I invited Hal and Colin over for pizza. I had enough ingredients for another fig pizza, and Hal brought over ingredients for a more traditional pizza. All went well until I put my pizza in the BGE and was ready to start on the second one. Where the hell was the dough? I knew I'd put it on the counter after taking it out of the fridge. Was I losing my mind? It's not in the fridge, it's not behind or anything under the counter. Why is Farley looking guilty? Why was Farley in behind the hot tub a while earlier? I thought I'd seen him with a ragged old ball or stuffed toy that he must have found somewhere.

Well, Colin made a quick trip to the PCC to get some more dough; the pizzas turned out great; and Farley seemed to be in no distress. The only question is how the dough ball (and cellophane it was wrapped in) would make it through Farley's system. Farley woke me up this morning to go outside, and though I'll spare you the details, he seems to be fine.

All's well in the world of Big Green Egg pizzas and dough-eating dogs.

Summer Camp for Adults

Well, we had our best Race Week ever! This was our third time around with basically the same crew, and we're finally getting our act together, more or less. The first year we raced, the only awards we won were for innovative sailing techniques (like crossing the upwind finish line with our spinnaker still flying) and for finishing DFL (you figure it out!). Last year we improved a bit. We weren't DFL, but we were awfully close. This year, thanks to the ninth boat in our class not showing up, and a new competitor from Kirkland, we were two full places away from the bottom. I had always thought that if we could put together a few races without major errors, we could end up in the bottom middle of the class. This year most of the races were completed without major incident, but in this recessionary year, most of our competitors were the hardcore types, and we were badly out-classed. Those guys are good!

Monday's races were cancelled due to lack of wind, and we ended up tied for first place, but unfortunately also last. The winds returned on Tuesday, and from then on, we had three races a day! Tuesday was disappointing for us because we completed three races without a major screw-up, and we still ended up next to last. Our saving grace throughout the week was Sea-Duced the new boat from Kirland. Sea-Duced is a boat owned and crewed by a bunch of Microsoft friends of our skipper Mike. They have a fast boat, but have only been racing for a year, so they've got a lot to learn. I guess it goes to show you that you don't have to be smart to be good. I'm sure the Microsoft boat beat everyone in the cumulative IQ department, but they never got out of last place. We had a thrill on Thursday when the posted results showed that we'd actually placed fourth in a race! Alas, those preliminary results didn't make it to the final results. We finished 7th out of nine in every race.

We had lots of fun and excitement throughout the week. At this level of racing, the skippers are very aggressive and competitive. The starts and mark roundings are the wildest. I don't know if I could ever be a racing skipper. I don't know if I have the cojones. These are big boats, going full speed, literally inches apart. At the starts and turns there are all sorts of maneuvers to cut off your competitors. The skipper has to know the rules inside-out and needs nerves (and other body parts) made of steel. We witnessed several collisions, including one where a boat trying to cut into the starting line was cut off and ending up ramming the committee boat. No major damage was done, but the next day the committee boat showed up covered in caution tape. During one race later in the week, we clipped a boat rounding a mark, but again, no major damage was done, we did our two penalty circles and carried on.

Megan came up for the last day of races and took a bunch of great pictures. You can see them here and here.