STP 2013

Last Saturday, July 13, Lief rode his bike with his friend Tim from Seattle to Portland, participating in the annual "STP" bicycle ride.

They left the University of Washington campus in Seattle at 4:45 AM and I waved them by at 5:41 AM in Renton. Then I packed up my car and headed south on the freeway, to catch up with them in Centralia. They picked up three friends along the way, so there were five of them when I found them in Centralia. Notice Tim, in the blue and black kit on the left, still wearing his leg warmers in 75 degree weather.

The next photo shows them across the Columbia River from Longview. Tim is still wearing his leg warmers, but when they stopped here to take advantage of the spare water I was carrying, he finally took them off. The temperature was 85 degrees.

The bike in the foreground is not part of their group, but unfortunately by this time they had left two of their new friends behind. The one remaining new friend is Adam.

In this photo you can see Tim is still leading the group, with his leg warmers off. Another thing you can see here is Tim's strategy to keep the group going as fast as possible. He would push the pace a bit faster, then when they began falling behind, as in this photo, he would back off and let them catch up again. In this photo they were cruising at about 27 MPH with a tailwind.

Except for the shuffling of traffic lights, all three would have arrived at the finish line at the same time. Here is Lief just prior to entering the finish line gate. If I had a faster camera I could have also captured a photo of Tim and Adam.

Finally, after crossing the finish line the three intrepid cyclists posed for a photo together. Notice the lighting of a late afternoon (6:00 PM) rather than an evening twilight (8:00 PM) photo like it was when I rode that route. Their average speed, while moving, was more than 20 MPH.

Not included in this collection, are photos of salt encrusted shirts and wind blown hair both on heads and on legs.

The Bat is Back

After all my work building a nice house for bats, that crazy little creature decided to come back to the bamboo shade outside our living room window this summer. The bat house is empty.

Those bamboo slats measure about 3/8" and if you don't count the one leg stretched out that he's hanging from, he measures about four slats from the tip of his rear end to the tip of his ears. I measured four slats on another shade and found four of them measure 1-5/8" so he's just a tiny little guy.

Maybe as the days progress, and he moves from one place to another for maximum sleeping comfort, he may still find the bat house I made for him. Then maybe he will bring some friends to stay with him, or maybe move the rest of his family in with him.

Monya seems to be taking it well this year. Last summer she nearly freaked out about having rabies or something, until we did some research and found out that they don't really cause any problems at all, and they eat their weight in bugs each night.

What I find most interesting is that I can hold the camera right up to the glass and take a flash photo of him. That doesn't bother him in the least. He must be blind as a bat. Probably if the glass wasn't there he could hear me approaching and then he would fly away. This photo was taken through dual pane glass and an insect screen. Without the window glare captured by the camera you can see his claws and watch him wriggle and stretch his wings.

Hot Weather and Mermaids

Last weekend we had a rash of hot weather. It was 92 degrees here in Renton. I set up the inflatable swimming pool in case the mermaids happened to stop by. Here's a photo of them just moments before their legs turned into mermaid tails.

Eventually the water looked so good that two adult bicycle riders climbed in. The mermaids tried to defend their turf by splashing them but the bicycle riders were able to hold up a wall of water with their legs going at 90 RPM.

When the splashing stopped the water was milky white with dissolved air.