Eagle herding ducks


A bald eagle looks for lunch in a raft of ducks. The ducks evade the diving raptor the way schooling fish do, by moving in unison away from the attacker. The eagle did not have success while I watched, though I imagine it eventually caught its meal.

Bolts and Washers


$1.86 in hardware fixed up a wobbly hand-me-down chair that was missing a few bits. It seems pieces of these dimensions were only offered in stainless, doubling the cost. Fortunately, we won't be kept up at night with worry about our furniture rusting away.

Creeping Floating Bridge


The replacement for the SR520 floating bridge is creeping across Lake Washington from east to west.  The existing bridge used to draw open at its midpoint to allow arbitrarily tall marine traffic through.  Openings were reasonably disruptive to vehicular traffic, requiring a 30 minute closure and a fleet of WSDOT flagging trucks.

The new bridge will limit traffic to 70 feet underneath its east navigation channel.

Sleeping Canoes


Rental canoes sleep on a dock near Husky Stadium on a cold March morning. They'll need to wait for spring for paddlers to enjoy them.

Fort George Brewery


Astoria has a brewery that on our visit was specializing in stouts and porters.  Fort George was the beginning of the British part of Oregon from 1813 to 1846, via an acquisition of what became the Hudson's Bay Company.  The Oregon Treaty resolved a territorial dispute, ceded the trading post (and the Western states) to the US, and it was renamed Astoria.

Fort George Brewery now sits a few blocks up from the river, and makes quite nice beer.