When river levels get low in the summertime, whitewater kayakers like me head over to the Powerhouse run below Snoqualmie Falls to practice on little holes and surf waves. Putting in at the base of Snoqualmie Falls takes some extra effort – you have to carry your kayak nearly to the end of the boardwalk, hoist it over the rail and then use several people or a rope to lower your boat down to the rocks – and then there’s another jaunt across boulders to the edge of the pool below the falls.
But… it’s all worth it! I was so glad my friend Chris Peele took these shots last time she was up there because I never seem to bring my video camera when I go there.
Heading up to Snoqualmie Falls - Photo by Chris Peele
Wind and spray from the falls make it feel like a blizzard. Photo by Chris Peele
And on sunny afternoons there's always a rainbow.... Photo by Chris Peele
I’ve finally updated this website with my most recent listings, and an improved resource list. Please check out the ‘See Photos’ sections of my home listings and tell me what you think! I spend a lot of time preparing homes before they go on market, and these days I always hire Seattle home photographer Tucker English to take the photos when the home is ready. I think you’ll notice that these turn out far better than typical listing photos.
I’ve also made the Resources section easier to search through, and I’ve added ten of my own favorite links that I use quite often.
Next up: Videos explaining some important techniques I used to transform my clients’ homes before they went on market.
I’m just about to incorporate some new features to the TeamIrene blog that I think you’ll like, including an expanded resources section and videos showing some of the pre-listing home staging I’ve done for homes I’ve sold.
These are scheduled to be up and running on Saturday – I’ll post again as soon as I make the changes.
I posted earlier about the Hancock Wildlife Foundation’s bald eagle nest cameras with live streaming video. I just saw that one of the nests has chicks, and as I’m posting this it’s feeding time. The footage is so amazing I’m trying out embedding the video here on my blog.
Click the ‘play’ button in the middle of the video and you should get live footage, complete with sound. (When the ad pops up you can just click the ‘x’ button in the corner of the ad to close it out.)
Need a break from staring at the computer? OK, you’ll still be staring at a computer, but I promise you it will be worth it.
Check out the Hancock Wildlife Foundation’s nest-cams that provide live streaming video footage of bald eagles on their nests in the Pacific Northwest.
Here’s a link to one of the bald eagle nest videos – when the page loads just click the play button on the video frame. (It also has sound, so you hear the wind blowing and birds singing in the background – pretty neat!)
OK, this is NOT me in these photos. My friend Butch Vision returned from a Grand Canyon trip with these photos of himself kayaking through Lava Falls, the biggest rapid – they’re so amazing I had to share! (Photos by Steve Burger.)
Entering Lava Falls rapid
So far so good.
Oops...
Going for a second try at a roll. Notice the huge wave coming up on the left.
Picking up the pieces at the end of the rapid... (Butch was fine, just took a little swim.)
I’ve never been in waves like these, but just from running regular rivers I can tell you that the waves look 2 or 3 times bigger when you’re actually in the rapid, so just imagine what these were like!
I’ve been whitewater kayaking a lot with the Washington Kayak Club (an AMAZING group of people, by the way) and I often attach a video camera in a waterproof case to my life jacket and tape our runs.
Here’s a funny little video of me being bested by a shrub on the South Fork of the Snoqualmie last Sunday:
I can hardly make it through a Seattle Times article these days without running into some inane and often offensive comment from a reader posted at the bottom.
Why does the Seattle Times, unlike many major newspapapers, allow reader comments on ALL of its articles, including ones involving deaths and serious crimes?
And since they do, why do they show excerpts of the last few comments at the end of each article, so that it’s almost impossible to finish the article without reading someone’s usually off-the-cuff and occasionally racist or otherwise cringe-worthy opinion?
For comparison:
The New York Times and BBC News allow comments on most opinion pieces and selected articles, but keep those on separate pages. The Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post allow comments on nearly everything (or maybe everything) but the Journal requires you to be a paid subscriber, and both papers keep comments on separate pages.
(In other words, if you click into the comment section to read it at least you know what you’re getting into.)
I do comment on blogs and newspaper articles (and by the way, if you want to comment on this post just click on the article title and scroll to the end of the post,) but making reader comments part of the reporting, which is what the current setup effectively does, brings the quality of the newspaper down. WAY down.
(And yes, I’ve already written to the Seattle Times about this. )
I took my dog Libby for a run on the Sammamish River trail early Saturday morning and couldn’t believe how gorgeous it was with the early sun shining through the snow-covered branches. Here are some shots I took with my camera phone.
Tip: I recommend clicking the ‘Show as Slideshow’ option.
I was clicking around on BBC News today and came across this video showing a seagull sneaking into a store and trotting out with a bag of chips – funny stuff.
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I was clicking around on BBC News today and came across this video showing a seagull sneaking into a store and trotting out with a bag of chips – funny stuff.