So, it isn’t a car picture I know… but I like it.
This is an image captured via the GOES widget yesterday morning. I love several things about this image… The coastal fog, and how it describes the valleys along Gray’s Harbor and the Columbia River so well. There is also morning fog through the Snohomish River valley. Most impressive though is the massive bulk of Mt. Rainier, rising up and dominating its corner of Pierce county, the rising sun illuminating the glaciated eastern slopes, and casting a dark shadow to the west.
If you look closely you can make out the forms of other mountains; Olympus, Baker, Shuksan, Glacier Peak, Mt. Adams, and even Hood and Jefferson in Oregon, but none stand out like Rainier.
I spent yesterday travelling from our house to Roche Harbor on San Juan Island (and back) to attend a wedding of a friend and colleague at digital.forest. Dave & Tanya Anderson married each other on a the day that dawned in the image above… in perhaps one of the most beautiful places in the world.
We drove out to Anacortes, and boarded the 11 am ferry to Friday Harbor, where we enjoyed a lunch, had a brief stop at the “English Encampment (from the “Pig War” that established the final boundary between the US & Canada. We’ve been to the American Camp before, but had never yet visited the English one.) Then on to the wedding ceremony and reception in the garden of the Hotel de Haro at Roche Harbor. It was a truly wonderful day. We returned via the 10PM ferry which stops at every ferry-serviced island in the San Juans, which allowed us a nice car-deck nap of two hours, interrupted only by the occasional docking and an idiot in an Audi who set his frigging car alarm when he wandered off to the passenger deck. (Thankfully the WSF tracks these idiots down and delivers public embarrassment.)
There’s always those alarm guys on every ferry. And they’re always BMW or Mercedes, which is weird, because almost every car these days has an alarm, yet it’s always the German ones that go off.
The biggest idiot I’ve encountered recently was a fat young dumbass in a blah car with a booming stereo which he would not turn down. Frankly, when I’m dictator, there will be overhead cranes on all ferries that can scoop up the alarm cars and the stero dweebs and dump them overboard.
We’ve had a beautiful summer, for sure.
On the outbound voyage there was a Toyota that had the alarm go off, so it isn’t a “Just German” thing.
I like your idea about the crane though. Too bad the car manufacturers don’t/won’t offer cars withOUT an alarm. All they do is annoy people.
When I worked in downtown Seattle, there was a car in the garage across the street from my office whose alarm went off EVERY DAY, for over FIVE years. Busses going by on 3rd ave would set it off. I’m surprised nobody ever took a baseball bat to the car.
hate them also – my wife worked part time in shop opposite the railway station where I live … all the freight trains going through at speed would set off all the alarms… the things the car did while the owner was away!
there was a house one going off constantly in the distance the other weekend for full 24 hours! what a pain for the neighbours… luckily only a faint noise for us
Jerome
When I had my ’62 Healey (about 1995), I worked at a Very Large Software Company in a building with a three level garage. By the time I crawled in to work, it was mid-morning, and I would end up on the lowest level. That car had a typical Healey rumble, and if you got the revs just right, it would trigger (what I imagine was) a certain brand of car alarm that every tech geek seemed to own. Or maybe someone in a department there got a group buy.
Anyway, coming in, I would be idling down the ramps, no problem. As I left, I could play my stupid little game and drive in second at just the right RPM. My record was 13 simultaneous alarms going off, on all three levels.
Chuck, I wasn’t being biased, on the Mukilteo and Keystone ferries, it is always BMW and Mercedes when I ride. Wee-ah-wee-ah-wee-ah-wee-ah-wee-ah-wee-ah…ugh.
ha – good old Healey – reminds me that I have seen this happen here in car parking buildings – my V8 won’t do it but the boy racers in the WRX or Evo toys with huge exhausts can do it easily, and race round just doing this – only time they do anything right! 🙂
Jerome
After just reading this entry just last night, I had a great laugh today as my family and I were heading back from a great day on the Peninsula on the Southworth-Vashon-Fauntleroy ferry. As the ferry is leaving the dock and cranking on RPMs and we’re heading topside from the car deck, I hear an car alarm go off -I chuckled to myself on the coincidence and walked over to discover that it was in fact, a BMW.
A little later while topside, I hear the announcement come over, “Will the owner of a black BMW 525, PLEASE come down to the car deck, and PLEASE turn off your alarm!”
Hilarious!