Pictures Along Green River Path

Hi Everybody!

I took pictures with my cell phone today, but alas I haven't been able to get them off of there yet! Here are some pictures I took with my camera the other day of an historic house right along the path where I walk the dogs. Evidently this house has been there since the late 1800s and this spot on the Green River had a grocery, and a post office. It was a popular dock to stop by when you were floating down the river. I loved the front porch with the tree limb reaching the entire length of the porch railing. In a picture from the 1890s this tree was just a little sapling. The gingerbread trim is just the same now as way back when. I'll try to get some pictures of Green River, the amazing golf course, and Russell Park tomorrow and post them.

Misty, Misty Mornings

Hello Followers,

My beloved has flown and here I sit at this historic mobile park created especially for the 1963 Seattle World's Fair. Really, I have the post card to prove it. It shows its age as I do. I graduated from high school in 1963 so I understand it's delimma. So far Circle K has been very kind to me, and I'm grateful for the grass to walk the puppies and the proximity to shopping and lovely Russel Road Park and Green River walking trail. I'm taking advantage of the area and loving exploring a new place when I'm not down in Bonney Lake with Stacie, Nathan, and the kids.

I'll take the camera with me next time I'm walking with the fancy golf course on my left and Green River flowing along on my right. Russel Road Park is also worthy of a photo with it's many baseball diamonds, huge trees, and grassy lawns. My canine companions and I love going to the park. It's fun watching the city league guys play baseball. They are a dermined bunch, and yesterday I got to see the pitcher leave the mound and tag out the guy stealing third. When was the last time you saw a pro game where that happened! These guys are truly "the boys of summer."

Miss all of you! Write soon!

Love, Cheryl and company

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity-Jig...

I'm back in Phoenix. I flew in Saturday morning. The photo shows Mt. Saint Helen out the plane's window as our pilot buzzed it. I was really surprised to see him come as close as he did.

I finished the sprinkler project on Friday. The photos show how it turned out. I expect (hope) it will hold up to cold weather much better now, especially with the heat tape installed under the insulation.

Being here at the house alone is weird. No puppies begging at my heels when I fix a snack, the house feeling empty and echo-ie as I rattle around in it.

Cheryl remains in Seattle, living in the camper, in the trailer park and helping her daughter through this dark time in her life. I will fly back up there and bring her and the puppies and the trailer back to Phoenix when things settle down.

Later,
Lonesome Frank

Chipping away at PVC

As I said yesterday, it’s now my job to replace the broken PVC pipe in the Sprinkler Valve Assembly. So today I went forth, did battle, and conquered!

The problem I faced was a straight splice connecting two ¾” pipes between the valve assembly and the old ball-valve shut-off. The splice was flush up against both the valve assembly and the ball valve so there was no way to cut the pipe and re-splice it. My only recourse was to remove the in-line splice. The good news is that Nathan had a Dremel Tool (a small hand grinder) for which I was able to buy a small rotary cutter bit. I used the bit to cut a slot lengthwise into the in-line splice without going deep enough to damage the internal pipe. Then I stuck a screwdriver into the slot and twisted it thereby causing the splice to breakaway from the pipe, or at least partially break away. It actually came away in pieces, but with careful chipping and prying it did come away.

Once I had the splice off I was able to clean up the surface of the pipe and install a new splice to which I connected the new pipe and new ball valve. I know this sounds confusing so the short version is: “I came, I saw, I conquered.” The sweetest part about this victory is that when I explained my plan to the experts at Home Despot they all assured me it would never work as PVC glue ”melts” the parts together like welding and they would never come apart in any usable fashion. Ha! So much for experts! I spit on their expertise! I’ll post a couple of photos showing the pipe stub and how I connected a new, relocated shut-off ball valve to the valve header.

Tomorrow I’ll hang the heater tape and the insulation and the job will be done.
Gee, isn’t this fun! Well I had a good time.

Later,
Fixit Frank

Waiting for Electrons

Frank: It’s Wednesday and I’m supposed to be in Phoenix but I’m not. I’m still in Seattle (Kent) Washington as SOMEHOW the air ticket I bought to Phoenix is for this coming Saturday instead of yesterday. I truly do not understand how I did that as I have purchased tickets online before and not screwed up so. Oh well, it gives me time to do some work at our daughter’s house and it lets me be here today to supervise the installation of the Comcast HDTV & Internet service. It’s about Noon:15 now and the installer is supposed to be here between 1 and 3 PM. We’ll see. (Late update: He actually showed up at Noon:45 and you are reading this complements of Comcast Internet! We’re back on line!)

Here’s a catch-up. Last Sunday we met our daughter Kimberly and her kids, Rowan (11) and Hailey (6) at a “Pioneer Farm” about 30 miles south of Seattle for an afternoon of civilization decompression. The farm has a collection of actual cabins and farm building collected from the surrounding areas. For the adults there were the histories of the families and insights of how they survived in the pre-everything world. For the kids there were dozens of neat “let’s go back in time” activities like dressing up in pioneer clothing, touching and feeding farm animals, a ride on a horse, and best of all for both a grandfather and grandson the chance to operate a blacksmith’s forge and heat red-hot and pound on and bend some horseshoes! OK. I gotta admit that I had as much fun as Rowan did, maybe more.

Sunday we took the ferry to Vashon Island and had a laid-back afternoon at Michael & Shannon’s house. We took Peanut and Cleo with us and their two daughters Daalny (6) and Aine (4) had a ball “walking” the dogs and chasing them around. In the meantime their dog, Teak, a beautiful Golden Lab sat around looking bemused at the antics of the two little yappy-dogs.

Monday and Tuesday we went over to Stacie’s house and I got a chance to make myself useful for the first time in too many days. It seemed her sprinkler system blew out a section of pipe last winter (it froze) and sent water cascading out into her back yard. A neighbor crawled under her house and found the source pipe, cut it off and capped it nicely, restoring water service to her and her kids. So yesterday I learned the joys of “crawl spaces” which are great examples of architectural humor. Believe it or not the builder built the house about 18” off the ground (OK, maybe 24”) on pilings and called the empty space a “crawl space.” HA! Can you say “Slither Space?” Anyway I was able to slither in to where the pipe was cut, reconnoiter, and decide on the parts needed to repair same. Then I slithered out and did a Home Despot parts-run. I repeated this process three times and eventually was able to replace the pipe all the way from the source connector to the sprinkler valve box. That’s when I found that the original burst pipe was actually in the sprinkler valve box. I have no problem with the neighbor who cut and capped the source pipe because it would have been next to impossible to cut out and cap the broken section in the valve box. But now it is my job to replace said burst pipe. I’ll work on that part tomorrow. I think it’s gonna be “fun.”

Cheryl: There are many reasons for our lack of attention to the blog, but the biggest one got solved today. As Frank already mentioned, we now have High-Speed Internet access at the trailer though our TV cable provider, Comcast, (giving us 998 Channels of which we’ll probably watch 12),. Other reasons include laziness, going totally crazy on the Seattle freeways, and taking long languid walks with Peanut and Cleo in the various tree-lined parks in the vicinity of Circle K Mobile. Oh, yes, and playing Gin Rummy in Bonney Lake with my daughter, Stacie.

On Monday on the way to see said daughter, we saw a sign for the Meeker Mansion, so we stopped there only to find out it’s open Wed. thru Sun. each week. Hopefully, we’ll make an official visit before Frank takes off for Phoenix. Years ago, Frank stayed a night in Meeker, Colorado, while on a m/c trip with his buddies. I think he has posted this story before, so I won’t tell it again here. At any rate, we’re just interested to find out if there is any connection between this Meeker guy in Seattle and the one in Colorado. It appears not, as the little informative sign outside the Mansion tells of Meeker’s travel on and promotion of the Oregon Trail as his primary legacy. I also found the Neely Mansion on one of my walks down by Russell Road Park and hope to get a tour one day soon.

All in all, I’m loving staying awhile in this small suburb of Seattle called
Kent. The parks here have wonderful ball parks, playing fields, trails, dog runs, picnic tables, nice people and Green River running through them. An interesting aside: there are huge sandbag berms on both sides of the river because there is dam upstream that is about to fail and has been declared not repairable according to local doomsayers. Kent also has all the things a vagabond like me needs: Laundromat, BIG K, hair salon, MacDonald’s, Starbucks, and a Farmer’s Market every Saturday in old town. We’ve hunted down each one of them with our handy dandy Garmin GPS. It has a battery and we can take it in the trailer and program it with places we need to find next as the notion hits us. I’m set. The weather up here is delightful right now with lows in the 50s and highs in the 70s. SeaFair is scheduled for this weekend and the Blue Angels will have to fly in the rain and 68 degrees, but on Monday we’re back to sunny and the 70s again. Go figure.

I’m pretty sure this whole area runs on Espresso and Teriyaki chicken. There’s a coffee kiosk on every corner and a Teriyaki chicken take out behind every second coffee kiosk. Frank brought home two orders of Teriyaki chicken the other night, and we had at least 3 meals each out of it. This morning we followed “Jill Bitch” (back to her maiden name) to the local IHOP and had a terrific pancake breakfast (read here, two senior specials) at 10:00 a.m. This being retired shit is really groovy.

So long for now,
Slithery Sam, Gin Rummy Mamma and two pooped pups

More Photos . . .

Underground Seattle, 1200 Crappers Up a Steep Hill, the Smith Tower and Otis the Elevator

Cheryl: It sure seems like a very long time since Tuesday when we last blogged! Today screamed by as we signed on the dotted line for a mobile space at the Circle K Mobile Home Park, Space #10 right next to Jeff Pennington, a good guy who knows all the ins and outs of RVs. Christine, the park manager, gave me the scoop on the tenants of the small park. She’s nice and has three BIG cats! Oscar seems very big, glossy, and black until you see furry black and white Bear! The other one, who shall remain nameless, hides under the bed. One of the reasons I chose this “park” rests with this scrappy lady from Montana. I feel like she’s honest and has a good heart. She has been very helpful to us in our search for a spot to park Ali-the-Gator and about general area information. Tomorrow morning we make the big move. Frank will hang around here with me until Tuesday or so.

Cheryl and Frank: Another reason today seemed to scream past at light speed involves a tour through the Seattle underground. The underground tour shows you some of the original store fronts which are now the basements of some of the oldest buildings in Seattle’s City Center, Pioneer Square. Seattle burned down in 1889 so the city fathers decided here was their chance to solve the perennial flooding problems by raising the height of the whole city 16 feet. In doing so they moved more dirt down from the surrounding hills into the city than was excavated during the construction of the Panama Canal. The whole project took over 20 years! However, the business owners couldn’t wait 20 years to rebuild, so they built new fireproof buildings in full knowledge that the ground floors would be underground eventually. So they simply built their buildings with two ground floors, one above the other. Now the former second story floor is the ground floor! The old ground floors are on the underground tour.

An interesting side effect of building the buildings before raising the level of the land was that for a dozen years the streets were raised 16 feet above the level of the sidewalks. REALLY!!!!! To cross the streets the residents had to climb up ladders to get to street level, cross through heavy traffic and then climb down ladders on the other side to the sidewalk. We’re not making this up! This is true, we swear it!

If your mental image now is of dusty glass-fronted stores filled with antique mercantile items, then it matches what were our expectations. The actual store fronts underground are not that pristine, but the dusty brick, twisted plumbing and generations of reinforcing supports still make the tour both creepy and fascinating. Besides, the guides are excellent storytellers and funny as all get out. They kept us regaled with stories of shady ladies who called themselves seamstresses, mayors who stole the city blind yet were reelected multiple times, and business leaders who would literally do anything to make a buck. Add to that mixture the rudimentary sewer system that was fed by 3000 of Thomas Crapper’s modern sanitary toilets feeding one wooden sewer box down the hill, through the center of town and directly into the bay. The fact that reverse pressure from unexpected high tides backed the whole system up regularly, created a recipe for people being blasted off their toilet seats on a plume of poop. To avoid the back surge, and we’re not making this up, some people put their “Crappers” on pedestals as high as 15 feet above the floor. All and all we had a ball walking through these ghostly corridors from the past, and listening to a bright young man telling us incredible stories.

We topped off the day by taking Otis the elevator to the top of The Smith Tower which is just up the hill from Pioneer Square. The tower was built by Mr. Smith (of Smith-Corona Character Processors) in 1914, and at 42 floors was the tallest building west of the Mississippi River for almost 50 years. The building even included six of the new fangled Otis elevators which are still operated by real live human beings and are still smoothly powered by their original DC motors.
Well, it’s 10 o’clock at night and we’re tired, so good-night.

Drowsy Frank, nodding Cheryl, and already asleep Peanut & Cleo.