U-182 / The Miss Bacon

In this photo David is putting some of the finishing numbers on The Miss Bacon hydroplane, number U-182. He did a great job of choosing the number and the name. I bought the stickers.

And they aren't just your run-of-the-mill house number stickers. No, these are gasoline-proof vinyl stickers with adhesive from beyond the grave, available from your local hobby shop. You know the place...they offer balsa wood wind-up airplanes, RC cars and planes, train sets, and plastic models. They also attract kids who need to get out more, and adults who rarely see other people on a regular basis - at least the store we visited exhibited those attributes. One adult patron had breath that followed him from aisle to aisle. Another seemed to be abnormally excited by RC Helicopters. After David went over to the wooden train table to play, a boy about his age started talking at him; not to him...at him. And he didn't stop. In fact, he started following David around the store talking at him. To his credit, David took it in stride and eventually the boy's father told him it was time to go. Then David asked me if it was time to go, which tells me he was ready to bolt. On the way to the cash register, we passed a teenager who was playing a video game of flying RC airplanes in an open field.

Umm...let me get this straight; he's playing a physically non-taxing video game that represents an almost equal physically non-taxing recreational pass time?

Did I miss a memo? If it were me, I'd probably be flying the plane in the field rather than standing motionless - thumbs excepted - in front of a flat screen looking at virtual grass. It reminds me of the cartoon I saw once where a tubby kid walks into a bike shop and asks, "Do you have that new Lance Armstrong video game?"

In the future I think I'll find my vinyl stickers on the Internet. Miss Bacon U-182 deserves better!

Foo Photo - 12/29/07

Today's Foo Photo shows you how far technology has come. It was taken in November for one of David's school assignments, using the first digital camera we bought in 1999 - the indestructible Sony FD-75. The technology part? Well it has a whopping 1.0 megapixel capability, and uses floppy disks. Even the cellular phone I carry today has a higher resolution than that!

Despite the marginal image quality, it's a tough old soldier. It even has a great flash and a timer. The zoom lens works better than my Olympus digital, oddly enough. David uses it when we go looking for trains. Since our home PC doesn't have a floppy drive I purchased an external one that plugs into a USB port in the computer. So now 90s technology has a new life in the 21st Century.

Ain't technology grand?

Merry Christmas from The Clarks!

Wishing you and yours a safe and happy Christmas and New Years! The above photo is of Sherry with her Mrs. Beasley Doll on Christmas Day 1969. Below you'll find Sherry with her Mrs. Beasley Doll on Christmas Day 2007:

We had a great day over at the elder Clark household today with family - eating ham, swedish meatballs, potato sausage, ham, scalloped potatoes, and ham. It was followed up with coffee, cookies, and more ham. The Clark Boys got lots of car-related presents this year, including race tracks manufactured in foreign factories with questionable blueprints. In the end, a call to the toy company will be in order, because four parts don't fit where they're supposed to - making the track nearly useless. Next year, they get wooden blocks!

Hope your Christmas Day was as wonderful as ours.

Enjoy! Kurt

A Good Norwegian

A good Norwegian always has coffee with cake. Thank you Jack, for the illustrated lesson!

Shoreline Mystery Solved after 33 Years

Updated 12/22/2007

On Friday 12/21 a man was charged in a 33-year-old murder:

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/344494_coldcase22.html

This morning the Seattle Times posted a follow up on the case with more information, and we'll probably see more. King County Sherriff's department had a whole series of detectives assigned to this case over the last three decades, and they finally cracked it. I love cold case investigations, especially ones like this that are so old. When I read the original headline in the P-I - Man charged in 33-year-old slaying case - I thought, "cool...another DNA test has found a killer." But this was different as soon as I started reading the article; there's more to the story here...

Why did she look familiar to me? Something about the picture really caught my attention, like I had seen it before. Then I read that the murder had occurred in unincorporated King County - now Shoreline - in 1975, and I gasped.

She looked familiar because she had gone to school with my oldest sister, and her memorial picture was on the back page of Jan's 1974-75 Shoreline High School annual.

The memory of this case rushed back to me like a tidal wave. It was a picture that I had looked at time and time again, with an 11-year old mind trying to understand why someone this pretty had died. One look at the picture today and I was in 5th grade all over. I remember feeling sadness and confusion back then, listening to Jim Croce and looking through Jan's annual - lingering long on the picture of Diana Peterson. I guess I didn't really know why at the time, and I now find it interesting that over three decades later I still remembered once I saw the picture.

After I read the article I called Jan. "Do you have your annuals handy?" She did. "Do you remember someone in your class being killed?" She didn't, but started looking through her annuals - only to find Diana Peterson's picture in one of them. Jan was just as shocked about the incident as me, and just as relieved that the crime appears to be solved. While talking to Jan about it, I actually started getting choked up. 33 years later, and I still had feelings about it inside. The Peterson family also has a huge sense of relief now that they know something has broken free in the case.

Kudos to the King County Sherriff's office for their determined work over the years. Rest In Peace, Diana.

Clark Neighbor Web Marshall Passes Away

Today at 11am we lost our neighborhood's only surviving World War II veteran - Web Marshall - to complications of Parkinson's, Diabetes, and Alzheimer's. He was 80.

Sherry remembers him as a lively and humorous man when she was growing up, always helpful and filled with jokes and cool stickers for the kid bikes in the neighborhood. He is credited for cutting down one of the most irritating trees in our backyard in the 1970s (I wasn't around then). Web was retired all the time I knew him; he always waved and asked, "How you doin?" anytime I was around.

His wife Jan gave him everything he needed in later life, including the care necessary to address the multiple issues that hit him. It was a huge struggle for her, but we have tremendous respect for Jan in her efforts to make Webbie's life a bit more comfortable.

May you Rest In Peace, Mister Marshall. It's been an honor knowing you.

Bumps to Blanket: Regrading Seattle

I happened across this Wikipedia article about the Regrading projects in Seattle during its early history. Being a huge history nut, it was great to see something like this posted on the Internet for the world to see. What I didn't realize was that there were many many more than just the "Denny Regrade" project I had heard about for years. Executive Overview: Seattle cuts the top off high places and puts the dirt in low places to create more land. Try that today! EPA and Activists will be all over you like history professors on the dollar rack at the used book store...

As a young boy living in Preston I lived next to the elderly Charlie Erickson, whose family was instrumental in the regrade project. I wish I could have remembered more of Charlie than what he fed me after Kindergarten in 1969-70. My parents, and a book written by his daughter, indicate that he was quite a character. He was also one of the best logging road designers in the Northwest, and could out-hike both my sisters...even in his eighties.

So in a sense at 6 years old I had a brush with Seattle history, one that fed me Spaghetti-Os.

Airfield-Beacon Christmas Lights - Part II

Christmas lights and Disco? Yeah baby...

Mobile Moment - Airfield-Beacon Christmas Lights

News Flash: You've been outdone this Christmas! The two houses in these marginal camera phone pix shine bright enough to route air traffic. The FAA should probably issue them call signs. Both houses can be seen near the athletic field at Lake Washington High School. One of them was decorated in one obvious color - Retina-Searing Blue. The other one not only had lights, but incorporated every 3D plastic display mannequin in existence:

If you're in the Rose Hill area of Kirkland, drive by and decide for yourself. If you're not anywhere close to that, be thankful and know that from afar you've been outdone. BTW - Sherry and I both love that these folks went to the trouble. It was quite a site!

Enjoy! KDC

Foo Photos - 12/15/2007

Last Thursday Grandma Dee came to have dinner with us. This week's Foo Photos were taken that evening. In the first one David is doing his best impression of a biker, inked up from watercolors on his forearms at the Y. Visions of things to come? Guess we'll know in about 12 years! His mouth is open because he is singing "The Oww Song" after Mommy stepped on his foot by accident (woops!)

The next photo was taken just before J.T. stuck his tongue out at me and started giggling. The little wiseacre! Always the sneaky type, he stole the hat from his big brother. His shirt says, "I do all my own stunts," which is essentially true only the shirt should also say "without fear."

All is well in the world when there are noodles involved. I'm represented in this photo by the flash...my lot in life.

Enjoy! KDC

December 7th

To many people - including my parents - December 7, 1941 is their 9/11. No matter what the motivations were, the response was, or how much of the conspiracy theories surrounding the day you can believe, we're still left with an event where attacking forces laid a heavy toll on man and machine. The emotional damage of the attack was mind-numbing and the physical damage of the attack is still visible today, 66 years later, with the USS Arizona still lying at the bottom of the harbor as a virtual tomb for over a thousand service personnel.

Today I salute those who - while defending freedom - paid the ultimate price in that defense. Their service to God and Country is honored in our home.

Foo Photos for Week 49

Foo Photos are pictures I'm just not sure where to place. So I put them in a Picasa folder called "Foo" instead. So here goes Foo for Week 49!

If Jerry Lee Lewis had donned a helmet when he played the piano, maybe he wouldn't have...oh who am I kidding? He'd still be Jerry Lee...

David wanted to make sure the poster he got for Jack at the Motorcycle Show was put up for Jack to enjoy. He even chose the location and found the tacks to do the job. We'll see how long it lasts next to the stairs!

Taking a break in South Cle Elum on our search for trains, November 3rd.

Enjoy! Kurt

The Two Davids Ride the Santa Train

Like the previous post, this is one that provides duplicity. The Clark Boys are named for their Grandfathers, and by chance we had events this weekend that involved both of them on different days. Saturday was Santa Train Day....a cold snowy Santa Train day for once. In past years the trip has been rainy, but this year a freak storm moved in and started dropping snow on the area. By the end of the ride the skies were dumping white stuff sideways, the ground was covered with 3-4 inches of snow, and driving conditions worsened. But more on that later...

North Bend - where the Clarks met to board the train with the Grandparents and Cousin Eric - is at one end of the railroad to Snoqualmie, a part of the Northwest Railway Museum. We met there to board the Santa Train for a short ride to . Each year their sold-out trains rumble over the tracks once owned by the Northern Pacific Railway, now disconnected from the outside rail network.

While Jack has ridden a train before down at Tacoma Rail, this time he seemed to be more engaged on the trip. He was looking out the window and laughing, bouncing up and down on the seat, and talking away as landmarks would pass by. David and Eric sat toThe passenger car we were in was built in 1913, as part of the Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railway (a fully owned subsidiary of the Great Northern and the Northern Pacific....you got all that?). During the ride to Snoqualmie one of the museum volunteers walked through with a public address system singing Christmas songs. Once at the depot in Snoqualmie we headed straight to the Cookie Car where we picked up our cookies and hot chocolate (and coffee for us Norwegians). Lots of people stood in line to see Santa...lots and lots and lots and lots of people. Sherry elected to have The Clark Boys visit Santa at Crossroads Mall instead.

There was some time in Snoqualmie before boarding the train back, so we headed across the street for some shopping. when we returned to the station, the snow had started to fall heavily. By the time we got to North Bend the snow began piling up and blowing sideways. It felt colder outside than when we had gotten there.

The drive to North Bend took us 30 minutes. Because of a jack-knifed semi on I-90 the drive home took us two hours. The air was right around freezing and causing ice to take hold under the thousands of cars that were stuck behind the semi and the rescue work. Traction control is a wonderful thing in our minivan. The Clark Boys even slept a bit. We did see a lot of cars off the road with flashers on; oddly (or maybe not) they were all expensive sedans of some sort. The crusty Aries K in front of us in traffic attacked the ascent like a mountain goat. Sad that the $90,000 Mercedes in the ditch wasn't able to do the same. I just realized that I should have taken a picture of all the cars backed up for over a mile. It was a site.

Once we did get home, Jack wanted to watch train videos and David wanted to play in the snow that had accumulated throughout the subdivision during our absence. Two hours later, we had built snowmen, used the sled with little Karl across the street, and conducted a snowball fight. This morning much of the snow was gone, but this blog and the pictures remain to describe the fun we had yesterday!

The Two Jacks visit Chuck E. Cheese

The Two Jacks - one has the other wrapped around him. Little Jack convinced Grandpa Jack to play with him ad infinitum during our visit to Chuck E. Cheese tonight. Big brother David took a cup full of tokens and disappeared into the game jungle on the other end of the restaurant, but he was around just long enough for me to snap just one pic of him the whole evening:

At one point David and I were playing road racing games - the kind with seats, steering wheels, gas pedals etc. - and he somehow managed to network the two machines together. Here I am, driving in Arizona on my screen, and I get sideswiped by a gold Corvette. "Dad, I just smacked you." What the? I looked over on his screen and there was my `40 Ford. How did he do that? I'm still not sure.

Grandma Dee and Sherry sat in the booth most of the time talking. Visits from Dee and Grandpa Jack are always welcome, since they live so far away. It was amazingly relaxing tonight at CEC, despite the dings, dongs, beeps, rings, and screams of over-stimulated children throughout the establishment. Maybe we've become accustomed to mayhem!


By the way, their pizza is pretty decent!

The Clark Truck

Our 1994 Chevy truck is much like an old friend; it starts, drives, stops, and repeats said steps over and over and over. Since buying it two days before David was born, we've added 80,000 hard-earned miles to the odometer. We've put more miles on it than it had when we bought it. Yes, it's lowered. And No, the lowering job doesn't pose a problem usually. Yes, the purple paint is from the factory. And No, it is not Husky Purple. You won't see any videos here of rancid tire-smoke shows and touts of 1/4 mile prowess. It's no speed demon, but knows how to get out of traffic's way (plus it rumbles nicely through the pipes I had installed a few years back). While the Clarks are known for naming their vehicles, this truck never got a name that caught on. "The Truck" has served it well.

It's possible that aliens landed on our street this week - cloaked of course and probably behind a fence - because our electronic marvel of a pickup took a big hit. The wiper motor, the battery, and the alternator went bad, all in a matter of 24 hours. To be truthful the wiper motor has been on the fritz for 3 years, inadvertently shutting off at the most inappropriate times unless run on Delay, but it waited patiently until last Monday night for a torrential downpour to seize up entirely and become a paperweight. Once the wiper motor was replaced ($69.99 and an hour/half of elbow grease), the alternator started howling like a air raid siren while the volt meter fluctuated all over the dial. Turns out the alternator had built up resistance to doing its job over 13 years, and took the battery out with it. That second frazzled event - finished up in the rain with water dripping off the open hood and down my back - cost about $200. (side note: all the parts running for this wave of electronic failure was done by our crustier trustier road warrior - Big Daddy the `59 Chevy). Last summer we put $1000 into the truck when the transmission quit using 1st gear and overdrive; yeah, that was an enlightening drive home from Seattle, with the engine turning over at 3000RPM and chugging fuel like a Coug Beta House post-game function. That $1000 was a turning point for us, and with some divine intervention I got a $1000 bonus just in time to pay for the repairs. It was then we decided to keep it. So why on earth would we hold onto and put this kind of money into a truck that was around when Kurt Cobain was still alive?

Because it's paid for.

It's hard to argue with owning a truck that has a very low cost per mile overall, because in suburban America - like it or not - a pickup makes life a lot easier. I came home from my wiper motor test drive with a ten-foot piece of downspout pipe in the six-foot bed. You going to get that home in a Kia Spectra? Not likely unless you cut it into three-foot sections, thereby nullifying any reason for getting the pipe in the first place. Bikes For Tykes has benefited from the Purple Pickup in more ways than just hauling bikes; people know Bikes For Tykes by the truck. Law Enforcement knows Bikes For Tykes by the truck, which helps because hauling ten bicycles in the back of a lowered short bed can look really sketchy (I was pulled over once, and thankfully I had a business card with me).

I'm hoping we can put a lot more miles on this identifiable paid-for vehicle in the coming years. Maybe in time we'll finally name it.

David's Hydroplanes

As I've mentioned before in another posting, this appears to be a Seattle-only phenomenon. Pulling wooden hydroplanes behind a bike mimics the real thing in bizarre ways, only without the extreme expence of actually racing on the water. Heck, they even float...

David is never satisfied with just one hydroplane either. He must have two, so they can race each other (he's very innovative). The following video shows him in the midst of "The Cul De Sac Cup" and ultimately being chased by neighbor Rachel. I love watching this, because it reminds me of being 9 years old and pulling some scrappy piece of plywood behind my banana seat bike in Shoreline. For some reason lately I'm being drawn to them again, and David ends up hauling all the boats I build (with the exception of a few that I'm putting a lot of detail into).

More on these wooden wonders in later blog posts!

What Would Mercedes Do?

What would Mercedes do? Well for starters, I'm sure they wouldn't permit this color combo on their assembly line. Kind of hard to tell from the cameraphone photo, but the roof is white...really really white. I'm thinking the body color is named "For Hire Blue." Would "moxie" be the right word to describe the act of painting a $96,000 car to look like a taxi cab?

The colors are somewhat alluring on this car, until you realize you've seen it on a whole line of ex-cop Crown Victorias while dropping someone off at the airport...

Christmas Season has Started

There's no telling what a job layoff and FotoFlexer does to my spare time! Fotoflexer's new "Holiday Card" feature leaves the world open to new interpretations. David and Jack have new roles with Santa now!

David & The Swing

Taken last summer during one of our many many many playground visits. Not much you can say about this one, other than "That's David for you!"

Happy Thanksgiving from The Clarks!

You know what I'm thankful for? It was a great day outside! The weather really cooperated today, only providing a chill but no rain (like last year). In the early morning Sherry, David and I snuck out while Jack and Grandma were sleeping and got some donuts at Krispy Kreme over in Seattle. Naturally this required cameras, because Krispy Kreme is near trains. As America's first great industry, the railroad never stops working even on Thanksgiving - especially now that freight traffic has increased in the last ten years.

The afternoon was spent with with the extended Clark family at sister Janice's home in Bothell. Emily was home from college this week (Go Cougs!). Jan's in-laws - the elder Rendahls - also joined us. As usual there was a jigsaw puzzle out in the corner of the living room. Dinner had it all - turkey, ham, two kinds of potatoes, snacks, snacks, gravy, snacks, and pickles. Jack got to eat Chex Party Mix for the first time, this batch made with macadamia nuts. Without giving him the nuts I gave him several of the Chex, with no ill effect from nuts thankfully. David was more interested in playing with cousin Eric's toys than eating (wish I had that kind of will power). Jack wowed the family with his ability to move step by step on his prosthetic behind a walker. He still is a lot faster without the leg, but he's getting better and more balanced when he wears it. The physical therapist recommended that we reserve something that he really likes - in his case it's throwing a kid basketball through a low hoop - for when he wears the prosthetic so there is incentive for him to practice.

In an effort to get a good picture for our Christmas cards this year, we asked my Mom to take the shot below. Behind us is a blanket that was made by one of my Great Grandmothers, between 1900 and 1910. She died in the Spanish Flu Outbreak of 1918, and the blanket was passed from my Grandmother Clark to my Aunt Carolyn - who in turn gave it to my Dad. It's now at my sister's place, in full view for us to love. Considering its advanced age, it's in phenomenal shape. Click on the picture to see it closer.

We had a wonderful time today. It's great to reconnect with family, and in my case take a quick nap on the couch. My hope for you - ClarkBlog readers - is that you also had a great day today are can find things in your life to be thankful for.

Enjoy! Kurt