“It’s Ragnar Trail for babies,” I told my teammates a month from the start of the race. I’d seen the trail map screen and neglected to notice that the 800′ of climb shown was for the Green Loop only. A week later, while scrutinizing the site, I realized my mistake. Total climb: 4,500 feet, which …
Continue reading “Ragnar Trail Rainier: It Ain’t For Babies”
My feet hit the slick, rocky bottom of Whistle Lake’s shore. I stood. And tried not to cry. I’d just completed a quarter mile out and back swim with my friend Erin, relieved that I hadn’t drowned but afraid to do it again. Signing up for a triathlon from the comfort of my warm, dry …
“The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever,” said Jacque Cousteau. Spellbound seagoers who patronize Cornet Bay have the RCFB to thank for awarding a $1,664,000 grant to the Washington State Parks & Recreation Commission to fund a pier replacement project, which should improve their boating, or at least mooring experience at …
Continue reading “Dock Crabbing At Cornet Bay Is About To Become One-Third Less Fun”
The intruder made a beeline for the shore, slowed and placed her hands in the frigid water. I watched, hoping she wouldn’t notice something I coveted and wanted to keep quiet: an unusual sea squirt species. She rinsed her hands, shook them off, turned and walked away. My secret was safe. Three years ago, in …
A Washington Department of Natural Resources publication includes the article Paleogeography and Paleontology of the Early Tertiary Chuckanut Formation, Northwest Washington, “Residents of northwest Washington feel at home in a landscape where majestic forests provide a foreground for rugged mountain vistas-except on the many days when the panorama is obscured by fog and drizzle. Fossils in the Chuckanut …
Continue reading “Race Report: 2017 Chuckanut Mountain Half Marathon”
“Let’s run just for fun,” we agreed, lying to one another, though neither of us knew it then. Two years ago, my sister took up my favorite sport: trail running. Since that time, she’s gone from whining about the distance a few miles from the finish, to winning her division in a small local race. Last week, when we learned that she’d …
The buzzer sounded signaling the end of the match. Spectators cheered the outcome: the Anacortes Cyborg Ferret’s Blue Alliance outscored the top seeded Red Alliance in Carver Division semifinal 1 at the 2017 FIRST World Championship playoffs in Houston. Nearly one hundred teams of the 400 participating would compete in the semis. In 2017, the World Championship was split into two full competitions in two different cities. The …
I gripped the insect’s head with sharp-tipped tweezers. Its tiny front legs held firmly, refusing to release even as my skin stretched with the pull. I dug in with its pointy parts as far as I could stand. Within a minute…success! I dropped the bug into a plastic sandwich bag, sealed it and began to worry. In nearly a dozen years of walking, hiking and running hundreds of miles along the …
Continue reading “Ticked Off While Searching for a Glacier-Scraped Rock”
My arms ached as I pulled back and down on the boom, windsurfing towards an island on one of the last tacks I had the energy to make to avoid the embarrassment of a rescue. I zigzagged shoreward. The wind on my sail brought me closer, but the tide pulled me away. A fall would …
Four camouflaged men carrying semi-automatic weapons materialized at the train station in Paris while we were breakfasting, welcoming us to the way the world had changed since my last visit three decades ago. While deciding go/no go to Europe, it was my teenage son who insisted that our fears about potential terror attacks were unwarranted and …
Site Title