Ketchikan Totem

It’s not so hard, being without Internet. The ship publishes a news digest from the NY Times. But I definitely felt out of touch. I have a ton of Emails (mostly trash).

Our first day of cruising was at sea, just trying to get from Seattle to Alaska. Wednesday we had a good long stop in Ketchikan. Ketchikan is the rain capital of Alaska. They have about 15 feet of rain a year. You would never guess it from the weather we experienced. It was warm and sunny, a perfectly pleasant day. The highlights were the totem center and the (very touristy) lumberjack “competition”. It was a lot of fun, and the young men were highly skilled athletes. We were expecting to get internet n Ketchikan, but the library moved several miles out of town. It wasn’t worth the time it would take to ride a public bus out, just to check Email.

On Stage

Back on board that evening, we saw a delightful magic show. Danita was chosen as one of the assistants.

Us

Thursday we went up one of the straits to see our first iceberg. We were scheduled to go up Tracy Arm, but the weather forecast called for strong winds, so the captain chose a wider strait. Of course, we both forgot the name. But we won’t forget the view. We went to the ship’s bow to witness the approach to the iceberg. Then the captain turned the ship sideways, and we went to our room’s balcony for a very good view. It’s difficult to judge distance and size because everything is so large. As we were approaching, we saw another ship near the ice that looked like a dot on the water. While we were “close”, we saw the ice calf. I noticed the sound was 3 to 5 seconds after we saw the splash, so we were somewhere between half a mile and a mile away from the ice. The show was over before 1 PM. It was rainy and foggy for the afternoon. We were very lucky to have such great weather for Ketchikan and the iceberg.

Waterfall At the Mendenhall Glacier

Friday we stopped at Juno. Of course, we had to visit the Mendenhall Glacier and hike some of the trails. The weather was more typical for this part of the world — rainy and a little cool. We were well prepared with good boots and rain gear. There was a little flooding along the trail. It was only a few inches of water, but it made a lot of people in tennis shoes think twice about the importance of walking the trail.

Today (Saturday) we stop at Icy Strait. It was supposed to be rainy, but the weather is cool and cloudy. As they say in Alaska, “It’s only a forecast”. This is an abandoned cannery turned into a tourist stop. I doubt whether anybody lives here all year. We have to use a tender to get ashore. But this place has the first convenient internet we have had yet. (Juno had internet at the library, but I didn’t want to take my busted computer out in the rain. ‘More about the busted computer later.) It sure is beautiful country.

Mendenhall Glacier

Mike, Tony, me, Tina, Mary, Chuck, Rose, Bill, Donna

Saturday evening we split up. Danita had signed up for the neighborhood crab party. It was all you can eat steamed crabs for $20, which is a very good deal. She ended up eating with our next door neighbor. I’m OK with crabs, but I don’t find them to be all that special. I had decided not to go to the crab party. So I represented us at a dinner with Circle. Danita even made our desert. I thought you might enjoy seeing this picture of us.

Chihuly Forest

Our flight Sunday was unremarkable, which is a very good thing. We arrived at our hotel at 1 pm local time. The Fairmont is very nice. It’s not worth what they charge. But we got the room as part of our cruise, paying just the taxes. It amazes me that less expensive rooms included free breakfast, free coffee, free snacks in the evening, and free internet. Expensive hotels charge to check you into the room (the bellman tip). Unfortunately, I “didn’t understand” the system and “accidentally” took our suitcases up to the room. I felt I coup when I scored a free map of downtown and a free paper this morning.

Big Crabs

Chihuly Glass

We visited the famous food and flower market. We experienced a lot of good energy and a funky vibe. The market’s fame is well deserved. And yes, we saw the “flying fish” stall, which had a good quantity of excellent-looking, very large crabs. We also saw the first Starbucks. The market was well populated but not crowded. But there was a long line outside the original Starbucks. I never felt their coffee was a particular bargain. We managed to survive the afternoon without a sample of that shop’s drinks.

Chihuly Glass

As you can tell from the pictures, the highlight of our day is certainly the Chihuly glass exhibit. This is a permanent display of Chihuly’s art, located at the base of the Space Needle.

Chihuly Glass

For dinner, we went to a restaurant just a few blocks from our hotel. We had a small pizza and a pasta dish with sausage, bacon, and a zesty white sauce. The pizza was the best we have had in many years. The pasta dish was the best pasta we have ever had.

They’re bent — maybe we can get a discount

The day was a total delight. We leave the hotel at 11 am Monday for our transfer to the ship.

Chihuly Glass

Chihuly Boat

There are pics.

Comfy Chair

When Ryn visited Twin Oaks, she sent me a genuine Twin Oaks hammock chair. It is made with rope and oak. It is quite handsome looking. But sitting in the box, it didn’t look very comfortable.  When I got it hung, it still didn’t look very comfortable. But when I sat in it, I came to appreciate the genius of the person who designed it. This is a very comfortable chair. I sat in it for a couple of hours today while I was breaking our new website. Thanks for the very cool chair, Ryn.

The thing I didn’t like about the chair was their suggestion for how to hang it. They provided a large lag screw and suggested drilling a deep 9/16″ hole in the overhead joist. My joists are “two bys”, which are about 1 3/4″ wide. I didn’t want to remove all that material from the bottom of the joist because the bottom is in tension and needs all of it’s material to keep from pulling apart. My solution was to get a couple of eye bolts and drill a hole through the center of the joist. (One can remove great gobs of material from the center of a joist without affecting its strength.) Just to get some overkill, I used two adjacent joists to split the load. And I used carbides with screw-closures, which are much stronger than S-hooks and also keep the forces aligned with the center of the chain. Now my comfy chair will never come down, and neither will the deck.

That bit about breaking our website … I added a new tool, called a plugin. I decided I could edit the plugin to make it work better. Only when I was done, the site stopped working. I couldn’t fix my mistake because — well, did I mention the site wasn’t working? I finally went into the server directly with ftp and deleted the plugin. Problem solved. But for a little while there, I wasn’t thinking at all about how comfy my new chair is.

We’re leaving in just a few days. The plans are set. The suitcases are ready to pack. We’re looking forward to a great time.

I hope everybody is doing well.

There are no pics this week.

We’re getting ready for our cruise. We leave next Saturday, returning Wednesday, Sept 8. We will be much less connected in Alaska than we were in China. Emergency contact information and our itinerary are at the bottom of this message. Emergency calls to the ship cost you $16 per minute. It might be better to call our regular numbers when we are in port. Our phones will not work in Canada. If you call our regular number and leave a voice mail, we will get the message when we have Wi-Fi (at a coffee shop in port).

We have a very unusual weekend. Danita spent Friday evening and all day today at a church women’s retreat. She’s looking forward to a good time.

We finished our neighborhood’s test website. I think it came out quite well. You can see it here: hoawebpages.com/snowdenoverlook/.

Emergency Phone to the Ship

IP NAME: STATENDAM
STATEROOM: 176
Booking No: VC9THW
Telephone: Shore to Ship
Connecting to a Holland America Line vessel at sea is simple by using Ship Dial Service. A credit card is required for all inbound phone calls to a ship. The rate is $USD16.00 per minute and billing begins at the time specified. Please have the ship’s name**, your party’s name and stateroom number before you call.
Instructions:
1. Dial 1-800-993-5483 (US). From outside the U.S. access 1-321-837-6106.
2. Listen to the announcement.
3. Listen to the menu and select the number that corresponds to the ship you are calling.
4. If you receive a busy signal or message, please hang up quickly and try your call again.

Itinerary

Sat Aug 22 SEATTLE, WASHINGTON, US arrive 1:00pm
Sun Aug 23 SEATTLE, WASHINGTON, US
Mon Aug 24 SEATTLE, WASHINGTON, US leave 4:00pm
Tue Aug 25 VANCOUVER ISLAND – CRUISING
Wed Aug 26 KETCHIKAN, ALASKA, US 8:00am 5:00pm
Thu Aug 27 SCENIC CRUISING TRACY ARM 12:00pm 5:00pm
Fri Aug 28 JUNEAU, ALASKA, US 8:00am 10:00pm
Sat Aug 29 ICY STRAIT POINT, ALASKA, US 7:00am 2:00pm
Sun Aug 30 At Sea
Mon Aug 31 ANCHORAGE, ALASKA, US 7:00am 11:00pm
Tue Sep 1 HOMER, ALASKA, US 10:00am 6:00pm
Wed Sep 2 KODIAK, ALASKA, US 7:00am 2:00pm
Thu Sep 3 HUBBARD GLACIER 3:00pm 5:00pm
Fri Sep 4 SITKA, ALASKA, US 8:00am 4:00pm
Sat Sep 5 At Sea
Sun Sep 6 VICTORIA, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA 1:00pm 11:00pm
Mon Sep 7 SEATTLE, WASHINGTON, US arrive 7:00am
Tue Sep 8 Home, arrive 10:00pm

Dennis: 410-417-8854
Danita: 410-709-8854

There are no pics this week.

I thought I was making great progress in the training for my Bike and Hike. So I decided to do long and hard rides 2 days in a row (Monday and Tuesday). Tuesday evening I had problems with leg cramping. Wednesday I was tired and took the day off. Wednesday afternoon I felt better and decided to ride up to Target to get a few things. It’s a 1.5 mile ride round trip. And it was not pretty. Four years ago I could do this stuff. Now I can’t. So I decided to cancel the “Bike and Hike” in the Adirondacks. Instead, I will drive from hotel to hotel, use the bike to get from the hotel to the trailhead, and do the hikes. I’m calling my new plan “Bikes, Boots, and Automobiles”.

Danita’s birthday was yesterday, and I blew it. Half of my mind said “Danita’s birthday is on August 8”. The other half of my mind said “Danita’s birthday is coming up.” But the third half of my mind never said “Today’s August 8”. I didn’t score very many points. I had plenty of clues — including, we took advantage of one of Danita’s birthday freebies when we went to dinner Thursday.

I’m making great progress on the new website. It’s functioning almost the way we want. Content has been moved over from the original website. The E-calendar is up and running. Our Office Manager said she would enter the events in the calendar this week. We’re meeting Tuesday to discuss processes and procedures. I still have to install some security modules, but nobody looking at the site can see that. What they can see is that the site doesn’t look at all like what we want it to look like. And that’s my next project. I’m not sure how much I’ll get done before going to Alaska, but it looks like we’ll be close enough to show it to the community and ask for feedback.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

There are pics this week.

Eastwind East Coast Contingent

The Eastwind East Coast Contingent arrived Tuesday. In addition to Kathryn, there was Bert and Sabrina. Bert was attending the art workshop at University of Baltimore as an artist. His polyhedra were accepted in a peer reviewed exhibition. Sabrina was attending the art workshop. chief fundraiser (through Kickstarter), and driver.

The art workshop was about art and math. Bert is the inventor of several polyhedrals, including the one shown here. Bert was kind enough to donate this piece to us. We started things off with Danita’s famous spaghetti dinner. I didn’t see anybody holding back!

Playing with a Liquid Magnet

Wednesday Kathryn and I spent the day together. The weather was very nice — not too humid or too hot. We visited the local nature center and walked around one of the parks while Danita went to work. In the evening, we all went up to Baltimore to meet Mark and have dinner at the Blue Moon Cafe.

Ryn and Mark

Thursday Kathryn and I watched the 1940 movie “The Mark of Zorro”. It’s a surprisingly good movie and we both enjoyed it very much. After that we had a compare and contrast version against the 1998 movie with Anthony Hopkins and Catherine Zeta-Jones.

Eating Crabs

Dinner was steamed crabs. We didn’t have any idea where to go for steamed crabs. The people in the neighborhood I asked didn’t know either. We finally decided to go to a place about 12 miles down the road. It was terrific. They said the crabs were “medium”, but we would call them “large”. Danita and Kathryn couldn’t eat a dozen. We took several home. (I had a shrimp salad sandwich.)

At the Aquarium

Friday Danita took off of work. We spent the morning visiting the aquarium. This was the first time we have been to the aquarium since they finished all the renovations. We spent the entire morning, then had lunch at their cafe, then spent another couple of hours.

Virtual Reality at the Art Sow

Then we took the free Baltimore “Circulator” bus to the University of Baltimore and visited the art show Bert was in. We saw some amazing work, including some virtual reality gogles. These put us in the middle of a piece if art, looking out. It was unnerving moving our heads around, looking at different parts of the artwork. For dinner, we had some very excellent BBQ pork.

Sump Flow Switch

Saturday, we solved a plumbing problem. Actually, Kathryn did most of it, but she let me do enough of it to use the word “we”. When I installed the backup sump pump, I had the workmen install a flow switch. The idea was that the back up pump makes almost no noise. If the backup pump started leaking, the flow switch would sound a beeper and I would know it’s throwing water out the yard. Unfortunately, the flow switch didn’t work. I finally found a good flow switch, and it came in this week. Kathryn re-did some of the plumbing and installed the new switch. Everything worked perfectly the very first time. After that, we went out to watch the new Mission: Impossible: movie, which was quite good. We had Ed, Lynne, and Bud over for dinner last night. We ate an excellent beef tenderloin dish, along with home-made deserts.

Tonight the Eastwind East Coast contingent re-gathered at our house to travel down to “Acorn”, another community in Virginia. Kathryn deboned a chicken. Danita stuffed it with her famous stuffing  and served an amazing dinner. In addition to the deserts Danita has already made, Kathryn contributed some of Baltimore’s famous Berger cookies that Mark had given her. (We made sure Kathryn had plenty of Berger cookies for the road.) There was so much great food, we were eating like kings. Danita said she’s getting me ready for the cruise. I say the cruise is going to be boring after this.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.