Imagine Dragons, Evolve Tour 2017

For my birthday Jan surprised me with a trip to Seattle to see Imagine Dragons life in the Key Arena. What a show!!! But I'm getting ahead of myself :).

After my morning lecture I drove back to Wilsonville, we made sure our kitties had enough food until Saturday, and then we settled in for the 3.5-hour drive to Seattle. 

The hotel was nice, and very conveniently located (just a block from the Key Arena!). Jan ordered some pizza for dinner

while I nibbled on an apple ;).

(I had some bread with salami too.)

Off to the Arena!

We were early enough for the two opening acts, K. Flay

and Grouplove.

Both were rather meh. K. Flay has an interesting voice, but for the life of me I couldn't understand a word she was singing. And the music was too "aggressive" for my taste. I knew some of Grouplove's songs (like Tongue Tied and Welcome to your Life), and I enjoyed listening to those. The rest of the songs they played, though, wasn't quite my cup of tea. That's OK; they're just the opening acts ;)!

Now, Imagine Dragons was a whole nother league! What a show! We were super close (thanks for the great tickets, Jan!!), and it was a lot of fun to see the joy the group has when playing their songs. Great light effects, too. Overall, an amazing experience!

We tried to go up the Space Needle on Saturday morning, but they had just recently changed their hours to 10 am (instead of 9).

Since we were too early and didn't want to wait that long we decided to grab a coffee and head up to the roof of our hotel instead. Not quite as high, but a nice view nevertheless! Awesome trip :)!

Total Eclipse 2017 (Salem, OR)

I can't believe it's finally here! Well, over, really. Can't believe that either! When we moved to Oregon in 2008, that was one of the first things we realized: We'd have a total solar eclipse in 2017, with Salem being in the path of totality! I remember I told my Astronomy class about it, without realizing (at that point) that 8 or 9 years is a very long time for students, and that probably none of them would be in the Salem area at that point anymore! 

Well, but we're still here and we were EXCITED! Since traffic jams had been forecast for Monday, we decided to pack our hiking gear and drive to Salem on Sunday evening. The traffic at that point was absolutely fine (as in, same as always), but we really didn't want to miss it. Our two mattresses fit snugly underneath my desk, and Pepper immediately claimed them (despite having a fantastic dog bed in his kennel!).

I won't lie, it wasn't super comfy. So I got up early (as in 2:30ish). Traffic turned out to be fine until about 5 or 6 am; that's when the roads started filling up a little. But camping in the office just added to the overall excitement!

Breakfast was frozen waffles & fruit (luxurious!), 

and after a walk through Bush park (where lots of excited visitors had camped over night) we set up camp on the roof of Collins.

As the Moon started nibbling away at the Sun, the light became very ... odd. Kinda like looking through sunglasses without wearing any. I can't really describe it, but on a very basic emotional level, it just felt... wrong to have that lighting at that time of day with the Sun that high in the sky. Here are two photos that capture it a little (although it was a lot more drastic in real life). The first is earlier in the day, before the first contact, and the second is just a few minutes before totality.

Another fun thing to watch while waiting for totality were the crescent Suns that popped up underneath trees (the leaves acted like little pinholes and were projecting an image of the Sun onto the pavement). 

We could also recreate that by forming a small whole with our fists!

All the while, Jan took photos of the ever slimming Sun with our Nikon. We had cut one pair of eclipse glasses and attached them to the camera, so the image quality is not super-awesome. 

And then - BAM! Totality was here. Photos (and words) just can't do it justice. It is an immensely emotional experience. The sky goes dark, the center of the Sun is a very black black, and the corona around it is a lot wispier and fluffier than it looks in photos (the dynamic range of a camera just isn't as good as the one of our own eyes!). Absolutely stunning. Jan was constantly saying "Wow. Oh wow.", while I was sobbing. The two minutes flew by! And we were left wondering when we would see the next one.

And here's a video of "nightfall". The camera auto-adjusts (that's also why you can't really see totality in the video), but I think the overall feel still comes across!

Windsurfing season has started!

 

Finally! The stars aligned on July 1st: there were ideal wind conditions in Rowena (I used 3.4 and 4.0 sails), it's a Saturday, warm enough and I had time.

This is me after the first half hour on the water...I stayed for a few more resulting in a LOT of muscle pain, but totally worth it! On the right are my brand new 'Mutant' boots (my 'Ninja' boots had finally worn out at the end of last years season). Turns out they are slightly too large and too thick - surfing barefoot turned out to be much better. 

Summer's brutal side has arrived

Today was hot. Very hot. The Willamette Valley had around 100 degrees (and the same is forecast for tomorrow before it'll cool down a little on Monday). I can do 80. Even 85. 100? No way! Our usual refuge, the coast, didn't cooperate either: close to 90 there! So we got creative and headed to Mirror Lake just outside of Portland near Mt. Hood. The maximum temperature there was a nice 75 or so degrees, which sounded awesome to us!

Parking at the trail head is always a challenge. Today we didn't arrive early enough; all the spots were already taken. So we ended up parking a good half mile further up the highway. 

The trail goes up a mountain through several switch backs for a total of about 700 feet elevation gain. Most of it is in the shade, so we had no trouble reaching the lake. (This is as far as we had gotten the last time we did this hike). 

From there another trail enters the Salmon-Huckleberry Wilderness and leads to a nice overlook from which you can see not just Mt. Hood, but also Mt. Jefferson in the south, and Mt. Adams, Rainier, and St. Helens in the north. Well worth the climb! The trail was mostly easy (forest floor); just the last few meters were on loose rocks and exposed to the sun. The view was spectacular!

Mt. St. Helens, Rainier, Adams, and Hood. 

Our brave little warrior did well, despite the heat and the fact that it was going uphill (as he's getting older, that combination is no longer easy for him). Downhill from the overlook took a little bit more encouragement; for one thing, he had already done that trail, so why do it again? No new smells. Doh! In addition, the loose rock was a bit tricky to navigate. But he made it!

On the way back we went around the lake one more time before heading back to the parking lot. All in all, a good 4-hour walk with 24,000 steps :)!