Category: Goolsbee News

-4°F/-20°C

-4°F/-20°C in Arlington, WA right now. Likely colder here at Chez Goolsbee. Easily the coldest weather we’ve ever seen in the decade we’ve lived here.

I’m running a timelapse out the kitchen window. Captured the sunrise, and should get weird when the wind arrives later today!

Meanwhile I’m digging out and stacking firewood in preparation for the inevitable power outage we’ll experience once the wind picks up.

Here is a photo I took of the boys on Thursday before we left for the airport. They called last night and are having fun… skiing with their grandparents.

Stuck

This winter storm has hit us pretty hard. We have about 2 feet of snow at my house. I had to spend the night at work last night… finally came home about 2 pm. The roads were “ok” … mostly packed snow. I made it 62 miles from my office to my driveway. I rolled the car right into the same spot I dug it out of two days before… then thought I should turn it around so I could exit. Boy was that a dumb idea!

I backed up, could not get it oriented properly, then slid off into the deep snow. It sunk up past the door sills and stopped. The body was high-centered on snow… no traction and could not “rock” it at all.

I think I’m stuck here until it thaws. 🙁

More XC Nick, last meet of the season.

Nick’s last meet of the JV XC season was yesterday. Same location as the meet I posted about earlier, but a different course. Sue & I arrive early enough for me to scout a good photo spot. It is right at the “3 Mile” sign, as the course arrives at the stadium for the finish. However the race passes this location 3 times during the course of the event, so hopefully I will be able to get photos without running around as much as the contestants!

I stand near the start line and am amazed at the size of the field. A huge number of kids, which stretches beyond either end of this photo right as the starter gun went off:

Nick is at the point of that big red arrow. It is very handy to be able to spot him. 😉

There they go! There’s Nick, right in the middle of the pack.

From the start I scurry to my “3 mile sign” spot and wait for Nick to come by. The first time the pack arrivesthey were still bunched up in a thundering herd of humanity. I am inches away from the course and proximity defeats my ability to spot Nick in the group. He runs RIGHT by me and I never see him. Thankfully by the second time the field is thinned out and I am able to pick him out long before he arrives at my spot. I shout some encouraging words and grab some photos as he goes by:

He comes around for the last lap, and kicks it up a notch for the finish. When he passes me there was only a tenth of a mile to go, and I am impressed to see him pass a couple of kids on the home stretch.

After the rest of the field goes by I cross the course, met Sue and wait for Nick to arrive. There he is, looking tired:

Getting the post race hug from his mom.

Post race photo.

The competition in his class is very tough. He ran the 3.1 miles in about 21 minutes and finished in the middle of the pack.

X-C Nick

Nicholas tried out for the High School Cross-Country team … and made the cut. We’re very proud of him. A couple of weeks ago we attended a big meet at Lakewood, about 6 miles SW of Arlington. Kids from all over Western Washington were there… it was HUGE. Nick traveled by bus with his team mates. We arrived just in time to see his race. The course was sprawled all over and I had to scatter about to catch Nick going by. He stayed in the middle of the very large pack and turned a pretty respectable time. I don’t have any of the details though. Here are some photos:

Not long after the start, the pack comes through the stadium. That's Nick wearing #134.

Going by, hair flying! Mt. Pilchuck on the horizon.

Coming down the hill, about halfway there.

Pushing hard!

Going by. I yelled encouraging words for him.

Coming through the baseball fields, the last mile.

Just past the finish line.

I called out to him from the stands. Looks tired.

Sue & Chris waiting for Nick to exit the finish maze.

Congratulation hug from his mother.

Yes, that is Chris in the photos. He rode a bus from Olympia to Tacoma, and a train from there to Everett where we picked him up Friday night. It was a surprise visit. Very nice to see him and have him home for a weekend. I drove him back to Olympia Sunday night. He’s enjoying college… despite having a LOT of reading to do.

Nick has another XC meet this weekend, if I go I’ll get some more photos. Hope you liked these!

A big buffet of blog.

Here is a veritable smorgasbord of Goolsbee news, and a heap of excuses why I haven’t been posting much since my return from the GTTSR (besides my backfilling those pages when I have had the time)…

That is 90% of Christopher’s worldly possessions stuffed into the trunk of his mother’s Jeep. Yep, weekend before last we ferried the elder Goolsbee child off to college. The Evergreen State College to be exact. The trip to Olympia was a traffic-choked adventure in and of itself, but I’ll spare you the boring details.

Upon arrival there was endless queuing and parking lot trauma, but eventually we managed to get Chris into his living space for his Freshman year. His dorm room is quite nice, on the top floor with skylights.

His mother was horrified, but I pronounced it “good.” He has this space to himself, but shares a bathroom with three suite-mates. The campus is nice, and we a few of the parent things, as well as paid tuition, room & board of course. We also made a run to some nearby stores (once the Jeep was emptied of Chris Crap) and stocked his supplies, desk, etc. Chris made a list for me of things he forgot over the next week and I’ll be visiting him later this week with that stuff, along with his bicycle, which we didn’t have room for on this trip.

Last weekend Nicholas attended a big dance at his high school. This required a clothing run, as he has outgrown just about everything. I swear he’s three inches taller than he was a month ago! Here he models his new threads:

Pretty studly eh?

His mom gave him a big hug and I shuttled him off to the dance in the Jaguar. That was my contribution.

Speaking of the Jag, I finally got around to giving it a good wash and wax this past weekend. The weather was glorious… a sort of Indian Summer after a few weeks of rain & cold. Sue & I took a drive as she had an errand to run down in Snohomish and actually suggested we take the E-type. I was planning to relocate it from the barn to the garage for the winter so it was a good excuse to take it out. As I was waiting for her to complete the task we drove to Snohomish for, I noted the car was seriously grimy from the long rain & bug filled road trip to Montana & back. When we arrived back home I washed it and pulled out the Meguairs wax and gave it a good rubdown.

Wax On!

Wax Off!

Pretty soon the rains will return in force and the car will go into hibernation until spring. I have a few projects to complete with it, but it will have to sleep in the garage as our damn cats have manifestly failed in the ONE real job they have, namely keeping mice out of the barn and therefore my car. Last winter I found signs of the damn thing all over the engine bay. Oh well.

So all this, along with some projects at work (involving more time with my nose in spreadsheets than I care to ever do) have kept me away from here for a while. Hopefully I can return to regular posting soon.

Entropy.

When I was a college kid I had a t-shirt that read “Fight Gravity.” I was a climber and it made for a good joke. Now as a middle-aged homeowner I should get one that says “Fight Entropy.”

My son Christopher’s summer project was going to be painting our deck. His reward was to be a laptop for use at college. The first step in the job was sanding and scraping. That took quite a bit of time, especially as the weather here stayed rainy until early July. A couple of weeks ago, when I started inspecting his job as it neared completion of this step, to my horror he had uncovered a LOT of rotten wood. Major portions of our deck have been held together by a layer of paint!

Above: This is the worst of it. We replaced those big main beams two winters ago when they broke under the weight of a big snowfall. Long-time readers of this website will recall that bad winter. After Chris sanded, I tapped the exposed wood with a claw hammer and it basically vanished. Lots of rot in both the intermediate beams, the deck top, and the facia under the railings. I suspect I’ll be completely dismantling this part of the deck soon.

What started as a paint job has transformed into a complete rebuild. Ugh.

Above: Chris painting the trim around the windows.

Above: The same spot, viewed from below. You will note the deck railing is off, and there is a pile of lumber in the driveway. Most of what Chris is standing on has to be replaced. He has a plank-painting factory going on in the garage. I prefer to pre-paint all the beams and planks.

Above: The deck on the south side of the house has two parts, the main part near the kitchen, and the other part near the back bedrooms. A thin walkway connects them. It is still in good shape, with only one support beam that requires replacement. This is a view of that part. Chris has already painted most of it. You can see some rotten planks out in the yard that I removed from the main part near the kitchen. The tarp is up because rain is in the forecast tonight and tomorrow.

Above: This is the main part of the deck. This is where we cook out, sit in the evenings, watch the stars, etc. You can see I’ve replaced three planks here, and done a lot of patching here and there. I bought some uber high-tech deck coating for this section, which requires 4 days to put on, and 7 days of curing. Hence the tarp to make sure it stays dry and out of direct sunlight. Hopefully it will last longer than the 2-3 years we’ve been getting from the paint.

Oh yeah… it has been REAL hot this weekend too. In the 90s, which is very rare here. 😛

Nick & I visit the Reyns’ at Pacific Raceways

I received an email earlier in the week from Philippe Reyns, who along with his wife Francoise and his Jaguar XKSS, I met at the Going to the Sun Rally last year. He let me know that they were going to be in the Seattle area for the Northwest Historics at Pacific Raceways. My plan was to take the Jaguar to work on Thursday, along with Nicholas, and spend the 4th at the races. Unfortunately the weather ruined my plans. Wednesday and Thursday saw some rain and thunderstorms… the latter a VERY rare event in the Pacific Northwest. The Jaguar stayed home and Nick and I took the Jetta. After work we drove south to Pacific Raceways (in horrendous traffic.)

There we found Philippe and Francoise Reyns, and their two race cars: a Lola and a Lotus Formula Ford. I spent quite a while chatting with the two of them, catching up from the past nine months, etc. Nick behaved himself, though I could tell he wasn’t interested in what the grown-ups were talking about. Nick was enthralled with the cars, and was amazed to be offered a seat in them.

The grown-ups continued to chat while Nicholas’ imagination had him doing laps around the track.

The Reyns are really nice folks. It was very cool of them to let Nick “test sit” the cars. Weather permitting Nick & I hope to head back down later in the week to watch the races and cheer Philippe on. Stay tuned.

Above: Nicholas helps Philippe put the wrapper on the Formula Ford.