The 27 Hobbies

Once in awhile somebody asks me what I’m doing to keep busy as a retired person.  My stock answer is that I have 27 hobbies.  If they ask me to what they are I can’t list them extemporarily.  For this report I’m going to try to list 27 hobbies that keep me busy.  Since it’s my report I reserve the right to show sub categories as separate hobbies. 

Here goes (in no particular order so I’m using bullets instead of numbers):

·         Writing a blog – When I began Christine had just announced we were having a drought so I began the Lake Boren Drought Report.  The first day I posted she announced the drought was over.  Shortly after that I changed to a Rapid Transit Report because Newcastle will be among the last places to get rapid transit.

·         Using big words – long ago in High School pals of mine introduced me to “pusillanimous prevaricators” as a way to sound naughty without getting sent to the principal’s office.  What a concept.  Lots of big words do that.

·         Since the regular news is somewhat suspect I like to convert it to fit my own ideas.  Thus “making stuff up as I go along” is another hobby.  I have a fiction book started and at some point I’ll write “Al Explains Science.”

·         Watching progress on the library in Newcastle:  The structure is nearly complete and soon they will cover it with glass and wall board.  It’s supposed to open next fall.  I wonder if they’ll have my books.

·         Digital photography:  When I was a photographer in the Army and they had darkroom staff to develop my pictures.  I don’t do darkroom.  It’s dark and smelly.  Getting a good print is way too hard.  Then somebody invented digital photography and gave us Photoshop (and other digital editing programs).  It was like a dream come true.  I can do this.

·         Manipulating pixels to fit my own vision:  I can render my photos (in Photoshop) into many artistic formats.  I create paintings out of my own photos.

·         Personal computing: one prerequisite to becoming a reasonable photo editor is to understand the machine.  I’m not saying I’m any kind of expert but I know enough to get the software working.  That includes the editing, rendering, cataloging, and printing functions.

·         3D Photography: one of the biggest benefits of digital to me is that you can take two side by side photos (simulating two eyes) and align the images to produce 3D.  It’s fantastic.  Best of all is that the software that does that is FREE!!

·         Keeping the leaves out of the yar:.  This one is involuntary.  I’m required to exercise in order to keep some of my health issues at bay.  We have this Big Leaf Maple tree behind the house and I get lots of exercise each fall raking up the leaves.  We also have uncounted shrubs that require some kind of care and I get plenty of exercise doing that all year.

·         Walking around Lake Boren: It turns out that a brisk two mile walk around Lake Boren gives me my daily quota of exercise.  It’s a nice break from yard maintenance.  It also provides an update of the changing Newcastle landscape.

·         Bird watching: We have about 924 species in North America but I haven’t seen them all yet.  It’s a challenge because some of them occur in very small areas.  For example the cave swallow can only be found in south Texas.  Texas!  Rick Perry lives there.

·         Cow watching: Cows are easier than birds in that they tend to remain somewhat stationary.  If you see a black and white cow it’s probably a mix unless there’s a sign on the fence announcing “Purebred Holsteins” or something.  So it’s easy to do but hard to get a Life List.

·         Antique tractors: Long ago farmers used horses and oxen (cows).  The advantage was they helped fertilize the fields.  The problem was you had to feed and water them whether they worked or not.  That included keeping them alive during harsh winters when nothing was growing.  Along came people like Holt, Deere, and Oliver building tractors.  You could park them in the barn for winter and in spring change the oil and add fuel and off you go.  Boy is that an over simplification.

·         Antique trucks: When I was a boy in Kansas the highway ran right through town.  Many big rigs had the Diamond-T badge and forever after I refer to a big rig as a “Diamond-T.”  I still visit truck stops across the country and just wander along the rows of Diamond-Ts.

·         Classic Cars: America has a fantastic history of car design.  My first car was an Oldsmobile.  They don’t make those anymore but I’ll always remember that 1948 Olds and its connection to the originals.

·         Museums that honor classic ancient mechanical designs: Cars, trucks, tractors, airplanes, and other metal objects are in museums.  There’s Pioneer Village in Minden, Nebraska; Auburn Cord Duesenberg Museum in Auburn, Indiana; Central Washington Agriculture Museum in Union Gap, Washington; and Museum of Flight in Seattle.  These are favorites; there are hundreds of others.

·         Scientific American: A monthly magazine whose title makes you think they know about science.  OK, they try, but they often get it wrong.  For example they say nothing can go faster than light.  Did you see Star Wars?  They make a lot of mistakes about things on the ground too. 

·         Genealogy: Looking up old ancestors.  I’ve been doing this for years and it’s even better now.  I think the most important lesson is that names and dates are just part of it.  You need to study peoples’ history.  Were your ancestors participants in one of the big migrations?  If so it tells you a lot about how they lived, why they moved, and what was on TV in 1567.

·         Volunteering: For some reason us retired folks need to get out and participate.  I was at the National Archives in Seattle for a couple years.  I enjoyed helping folks find their ancestors.  Now help the Ag Museum in Union Gap.  See how some of these hobbies relate?

·         Construction projects: Right now I’m watching condos and the library in Newcastle.  I also follow the “progress” on several other projects such as the Alaska Way Viaduct, light rail to Bellevue, and the SR 520 Floating Bridge.

·         Making fake Good-To-Go passes.  These won’t work and if you get caught it can cost you a bundle.  But the good news is I’ve yet to sell one, so don’t worry.

·         Maintenance of the machine: As I get older I find it takes more time and effort just to stay even.  I take pills, exercise, and rub stuff on my skin.  A sub-category is dealing with insurance which is a big waste of time.

·         Taking care of the house work: As a retired person with a working wife it’s my job to clean.  That includes KP after meals.  I like to eat out.

·         Keeping up with the 21^st Century: I have a facebook page and a smart phone.  Both have me baffled.

·         Visiting the woods: We have an old cabin in the mountains that we visit several times during the warm months.  No phone or internet.  Three days is about all I can stand.

·         Reading other blogs such as the Schoonover Farm and Wonkette.  One keeps me up to date on the kid and the other teaches me new phrases.  Very entertaining.

·         Watching football: I don’t have a fantasy team and I don’t go to games.  Too expensive.  But I watch these overpaid prima donnas beat each other up on TV.

There: 27!  See why I can’t just list them on the spur of the moment?  You would probably combine some of these into single hobbies and my definition of “hobby” is pretty loose, but you get the picture.

Al

Boring Report - Let's Dig a Tunnel

One important activity in Seattle right now is complaining.  It’s one of many sites across the nation where people wander around complaining.  It’s like a national sport without trophies. 

Digging tunnels is another activity in Seattle.  We have new sewage tunnels, light rail tunnels, and tunnels where they store wine until its ready.

The State DOT (WashDOT) is replacing a part of Highway 99 in Seattle called the Alaska Way Viaduct.  The replacement will be a tunnel.  The old viaduct sustained damage in an earthquake and WashDOT realized it might collapse when we have the next big one.  Tunnels don’t have so far to fall.

The other big reason to replace the viaduct is that it annoys some of the nearby property owners.  Regular people want to live close to the city where the busses are free and so are some of the street people.  That means a good use for many of the old buildings is conversion to condos.  It’s hard to sell a condo if the view is just a noisy six lane highway.  That’s low rent stuff and not very attractive.  Condos also get much higher property tax for the state.

Hundreds of thousands of cars use that corridor every month so we can’t just tear it down and pass out good luck charms.  If those cars went over to I-5 it would be horrible.  We experience that from time to time because they shut down the viaduct for inspections and damage repair.

I-5 runs under the convention center in downtown Seattle and nobody can figure out how to make the highway wider and still have conventions.  I have an idea but nobody listens to me.  It involves dynamite.

Back to Alaska Way.  Many years before I was born, more than 10,000 years ago, Seattle was covered in ice.  I read someplace they think it was 3,000 feet thick here.  That ice carried huge boulders, sand and gravel, dirt, and maple leaves from Canada and left much of it in Seattle.  The debris included chunks of ice caught beneath the other stuff.  When the surface ice melted this stuff was left behind.  The buried chunks of ice also eventually melted and left voids.  Some of those voids are still there.

Most of the lakes around the area were formed by ice gouging out depressions.  The Seattle area terrain was largely formed when the glaciers melted away.  This is important when you want to dig a tunnel.  It’s also a nuisance when you want to plant a flower.

Seattle has about 40 miles of tunnels.  They first ones were dug over 120 years ago.  We like to dig tunnels.  To dig an adequate tunnel years ago you needed a good sturdy shovel.  They use powerful Tunnel Boring Machines now.  These are custom built to the diameter of the expected tunnel.  They have carbide tipped teeth that are supposed to chew through anything.

 The conglomerate left by the glaciers makes it a particular challenge.  What if you crunch through a granite boulder right into one of those voids?  What if it’s still full of water?  There are other risks as well.  What if you punch into one of the existing tunnels or an old abandoned well?  What if the Governor shows up with her giant bulldozer?  These are all questions the planning team has to answer.  Certainly not me, I can hardly plan cereal for breakfast.

Tunnels in Seattle carry trains, cars and busses, water, gas, electricity, beer, and sewage.  If the boring machine hits any of those it could delay the project for decades.  Thus planning and testing are important.  Already around town we’ve seen rigs poking holes in the proposed path of the new tunnel to verify what might be down there.

During the actual tunnel operation that Verizon guy will be yelling “Can you hear me now?”  If anyone in the bus tunnel hears him then they have to back up and try again.  Maybe they could get an iPhone and just ask it.  We at the Lake Boren Rapid Transit Report have many suggestions (actually Glen, the Lake Boren Carp) for how to avoid hitting existing tunnels.  I imagine WashDOT has its own suggestions.  Theirs is probably “Don’t punch a hole in another tunnel.”

 Another key to successful tunneling is to make sure the TBM doesn’t get stuck.  That’s what happened in the Brightwater discharge tunnel.  The plant sits over in Woodinville and they want to run clean former sewage through the tunnel to Puget Sound.  The plant has plenty of cleaning processes so the waste water should be OK for the fish.  Anyway, during the digging a machine got stuck.  They couldn’t move it any direction now matter how hard they cussed.  Finally a world class tunnel rat worked it out.  Whew!  Lucky for us that fiasco was hidden underground or we might have had Occupy Brightwater.

One of the other characteristics of boring a big tunnel is they need a huge staging area.  They need to dig a big hole and assemble the boring machine down there.  They need a place to pile up the tunnel lining modules before hauling them into the tunnel.  They need room for the muck they pull out behind the TBM.  That muck has to be trucked to Maple Valley.  That means they also need room for big trucks to turn around, load up, and head out.  There will be several construction trailers, big orange machines, and hundreds of feet of rented fence.  That fence is to keep me out because otherwise I’d be right there watching.

The plan is to open the new tunnel in about 2006.  We don’t think they’ll make it.  But if we keep our fingers crossed they might get started before summer.  They’ve already torn down about a mile of the viaduct to make room for the huge staging area.  The rented fence is everywhere.  Everyone grab a shovel and come on out to Seattle and help out.  It’s better than just pitching a tent and complaining about everything.

Al

2011 Stumbling to a Close

As a public service I’m going to provide a list of New Year’s Resolutions.  Later.  As a preview: get a riding mower (unless you already have one) and join a racing team.

First let’s review the year.   Local municipal construction took a break.  They finally broke loose and began the Newcastle Library and the Lake Boren Condos. 

Everyone in Bellevue fought the light rail plans.  Some are against it because it gets too close to their house.  Some are against it because it’s too far from their house.  Some don’t like it because they think cars are a much better way to get big spenders into Bellevue Square.  Others are against it because they just don’t like Bellevue.  And everyone thinks it costs too much.  So last month the plan was unanimously approved.  Pretty logical.

 The Brightwater Sewage Treatment project is wrapping up.  Except they now think there is too much capacity.  Kind of a funny thing to say.  Anyway, the point of the new plant was to provide sewage service to the urban expansion in the north King and south Snohomish county interior.  Most of the Greater Newcastle Metropolitan area near water has a pipe that takes care of stuff.  Unlike Costa Rica where you can’t flush toilet paper because it makes the sewer back up.  Thus the project to take care of the huge future sewage problem is in question because the future has not yet arrived.  More logic.

Lake Boren Park requires all pets to be on a leash.  It’s part of the Newcastle leash law.  The City Council has been discussing a location for an official off-leash area for a long time.  They (my understanding anyway) chose a section of the new sports park down by May Creek.  It’s a big undeveloped area where they intend to build several ball fields and an ice rink or something.  However, many pet owners use Lake Boren Park to toss tennis balls to their unleashed pets.  Many.  Every time I go there I see dogs chasing tennis balls or squirrels.  It’s not a priority for enforcement.  What I don’t get is why the Council spends so much time talking about it when the citizens have already made their choice.  More logic.

The Alaska Way Viaduct is scheduled to be replaced by a tunnel.  The tunnel will connect the existing SR 99 near the stadiums and the existing tunnel up north.  One expects the project to bore into the soft underbelly of Seattle and make a smoother commute.  However, it seems that digging a tunnel requires lots of closures of the existing viaduct.  It’s above ground and normally tunnels go underground.  Oh, it turns out they need a huge space for the construction stuff.  (Not the same “stuff” that goes to Brightwater.)  So in order to get the big staging area they need to remove the southern mile of the existing viaduct and make a bypass.  Just a few weeks disruption.  But it trains drivers for what to expect when the viaduct finally closes for good.  Clear?

On another front the SR 520 Floating Bridge is getting tolls.  They need to replace the bridge since they think this one will sink in the next earthquake or an 80 MPH wind.  Apparently it’s fragile.  To afford the new one they need to collect money from people who use it.  Starting last spring.  Except the company they hired to put the tolling system in place was suddenly swamped with contracts from several other projects around the country.  They had to rapidly expand in order to handle all the work and the newbies were not up to speed.  They think it’s all ready to go now and tolling will start before the end of the year.  So here’s the plan: make people using the fragile old bridge pay a toll to sink it.  One imagines that if you happen to be on the bridge when it sinks you’ll get a refund.  It’s the logic I like.

The Museum of Flight near Boeing Field is building a large hanger for the Space Shuttle full fuselage trainer.  NASA has decided to give away the current fleet to museums around the country.  Seattle gets the trainer.  It’s the same size as a regular shuttle except it doesn’t have wings and it never flew into space.  Regular shuttles can fly on the back of a 747.  NASA is taking it apart and hopes to ship it to Seattle in the “Super Guppy” cargo plane.  That means NASA is shipping plywood from Texas to Seattle where one of the main industries is lumber.

New Year’s Resolutions:

·         Don’t sell your car yet because it’ll be another decade before Bellevue gets light rail.

·         Go ahead and flush because we have enough sewage treatment capacity to handle it for years to come.  We might even take some of Costa Rica’s.

·         Throw tennis balls to Fido as much as you want.  He’ll enjoy it.

·         Keep away from SR 99 and SR 520 for the next 15 years.

·         Visit the Museum of Flight often because it’s so big you won’t be able to see it all in one visit.  Resolution for next year: visit again and see the full fuselage trainer.

·         And, of course, get a riding mower and soup it up for racing.  Replace the blade with a discus because when you flip it over you don’t want to hurt anyone.

Prediction: When the new SR 520 Floating Bridge opens they’ll have a parade of riding mowers first over.  You’ll be right there with your 420 HP racer.

 Al