Thai, Occupy, Frank

I feel like running. 

RIGHT NOW 

but it's quarter to twelve, and I have to work tomorrow. 

I'm afraid if I run now I won't sleep at all tonight. 

I'm one of those weird people that the more energy I burn, the longer I stay awake. 

Figure that one out. 

Tonight we went out to my favorite Thai restaurant (we can only go there when we have a babysitter because it's not really kid friendly), got some coffee and took a stroll downtown to look at the Occupy Seattle crowd. I really need to invest in a nice point and shoot camera for the times I don't feel like, or am not comfortable, lugging my DSLR around. Just something about carrying an $800 camera around after dark makes me uneasy.

Over dinner we talked about things we'd like to do, and decided that over the summer if we can get the little man in a summer camp program that we'll take up bouldering at the local bouldering gym (hear that Jim?) Pretty excited to get a chance to give that a try - just hard to do with the tight schedule we have.

There had been a march yesterday which saw the movement spread into the thousands. They marched form the park they have been occupying to the famous pike place market, sitting down in one of the roads closing it for around 10 minutes. There's been some arrests - but all of it has been respectful and peaceful - protestors even thanking the police for doing their job respectfully.  The park is supposed to close at 10 pm - but they have only been arresting people who refuse to take down tents/shelters.

Where they are gathered, or 'occupying' is in an open area smack dab in the shopping district of downtown - across from the mall. Today there was tons of tents (I think I read about the night of 500 tents to take place yesterday evening...) When we went by it was still fairly early in the night but there was at least one news stations, a big police van/bus and at least 5 cop cars. Interested to see what happened with all of that tonight - so far nothing on the news websites about anyone else getting arrested.

Afterwards we headed back up to Neumos to see Frank Turner. As a side note, Neumos is a great venue, but to tell you the truth Seattle has tons of awesome, small venues. There was a few bands playing before him, we managed to miss the first one and the second one, while not bad, seemed to go on forever. We were only able to stay for about half of Franks show, but it was good and fun none-the-less.

Not bad for a GO phone cell pic eh?

During the opening act (that we caught) there was a bunch of kids (guessing high school) moshing. Which is funny - because this is sort of folk punk music. The band stopped to tell them during the set - it wasn't Pantera or anything, chill out.

When Frank came on the guitarist that was playing as part of the band looked drunk or drugged out of his mind, or maybe he was just suffering from heat stroke and dehydration from the amount of sweat pouring off him. All I could think was damn, these guys must be really well hydrated.. and the fact that the people way up front must be getting spit on.

But! it was a good time, glad we went, and need to figure out a way to do it more often.

By the way, if you don't use Pandora, you should.

And Now For Something Completely Different...

UPDATE:
He had a court hearing this morning and no charges were filed at this time.

Seattle has a "Superhero" who goes by "Phoenix Jones"

He roams the streets of Seattle in full anonymous gear looking for crimes in action. When he sees one he alerts police (he has an automatic dialer built into his superhero suit - no lie).

He states "I symbolize that the average person doesn't have to walk around and see bad things and do nothing"

Phoenix Jones was arrested over the weekend for assault.

The whole thing was caught on tape by one of his companions.

Not sure if the other parties involved in this whole thing realized that it was being taped, or were too drunk to care.

The accusing party states that they left the club and were dancing when Mr. Jones approached them and sprayed them with pepper spray. One of the female 'victims' then started chasing Mr. Jones and his companions around and hitting them with her stiletto heels..

Mr. Jones said there was a fight and he went to break it up - alerting police as he was running towards the scene. After breaking up the initial fight, Mr. Jones is chased by previous mentioned woman with her shoe. We also see another female hit another member of Mr. Jones companions. Then things get really crazy...

If you watch the video, you can hear it said they are still fighting after they move away from the initial scene. At one point you see a car appearing to try to swerve into someone to hit them, barely missing. The police still haven't arrived. Mr. Jones keeps his eye on the other parties - at one point they get into an SUV and chase Mr. Jones and his companions into the ferry terminal. They then throw things at them while they seek cover.

I can't even make this stuff up....

The cops finally arrive

over 10 minutes later

that's worth repeating

over 10 minutes later the police respond

in the middle of downtown Seattle

The shoe woman tells the police the story about how they were dancing and Mr. Jones came and pepper sprayed them for no reason. Mr Jones offers the officer to watch the video of the entire incident. Officer refuses and arrests Mr. Jones on assault charges because that is what the shoe wielding woman wants to do. Of course this reveals his true identity, giving up his anonymous cloak he was able to work under previously.

Police didn't even know who he was prior.

They have continuously told him not to get involved. To call 911 should anyone see an infraction of the law being committed.

which again brings up back to

10 minutes in downtown Seattle

If you were being assaulted, do you think you'd have 10 minutes to wait around for the police to show up?

How would you feel if you saw someone standing across the street doing nothing to help you while you're being assaulted while waiting for police to arrive, which you know may or may not happen while you're still breathing?

This is basically what the police are telling you to do.

The way I view Mr. Jones and his posse, is a bit like a community watch group on steroids.

Here's the video

Blow it up to full screen and pay close attention.

Phoenix Jones Stops Assault from Ryan McNamee on Vimeo.

1. He is not coming up on them quietly, and he is alerting the police as he goes to the scene. There is no way they did not hear him coming. 
2. If you watch closely you can see that there are 2-3 males fighting on the righthand side of the crowd.
3. Mr. Jones runs into the crowd. You're unable to really see what is happening here, but lets go ahead and assume that he used pepper spray to break up the fight when his yelling and screaming didn't do the trick. 
4. The woman then assaults a man with Mr. Jones and then turns on Mr. Jones and continues to chase and assault him. 
5. They leave and are watched by Mr. Jones and companions. 
6. You then see the car nearly miss hitting someone. 
7. More watching and waiting on police. 

You get the idea..

But this story gets better. The woman went on a radio show and said, there was indeed a fight which means she lied to police.

Radio interview here

warning - she sounds really smart.. it's a bit painful to listen to. You can really just skip to the end where she says yea there was a fight but it was with some other people that were standing right next to us and her sequence of events just don't match up with the video, but oh well...

More audio at MyNorthwest.com

Now I don't know about you, but if I was feeling threatened I'd probably be trying to run away from what was threatening me, not towards it. Maybe I'm just weird....

We also learn with the exposure of his identity that Mr. Jones is a mixed martial arts fighter AKA if he wanted to he could really mess you up so you're probably lucky that he decided pepper spray was an effective method.

He has a court hearing set for thursday..

It will have to be seen if Seattle has seen the last days of its super hero. With his identity revealed, it's even riskier business for him to continue than it was previously because it puts his family (wife and two children) at risk.

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Decision-in-Phoenix-Jones-superhero-case-2213166.php

http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2011/10/phoenix_jones_real-life_superh.html

http://abcnews.go.com/US/citizen-superhero-phoenix-jones-arrested-seattle/story?id=14704985

Oh Seattle, you're so strange. 

Falling Into Fall

I love fall. 

It's by far my favorite season. Probably part of the reason I love living in Seattle.

I love carving pumpkins. 

I love some nice hot apple cider.

I break out my tea in fall. 

I enjoy the crispness of the air. 

Nice to see you fall.. hope you stay a while. 

ps. I did another night time run this weekend. No rain this time. 

Running in the Rain

Sunday I managed to make it to REI to get a headlamp. So Sunday night I went for my first night time in the rain run.

and it was awesome. 

I took music, put on an upbeat tune (It was Matt and Kim, but I don't really remember what track? I think it was block after block but you should also check out daylight, and cameras by them.. I'll link at the bottom. And you're welcome in advance!)

I had a good pace (couldn't tell you what since I didn't look at the clock) and my legs were moving on their own as I was rocking out. Stuck with just 2 miles since I hadn't ran in a while.

There's a certain amount of freedom that the dark brings. It's so much easier to just pretend the rest of the world doesn't exist when it's just you, the darkness, your light and some music. An added bonus is that you can really tell if you're being all sorts of bobbly when you're running with a light on your head. As I was gliding along my light made a steady line, no jerky up and down movement. Sweet. And it was raining, which made it just that much more fun.

I know a lot of people dread getting out in the rain, but I love the rain.

You don't live in Seattle if you don't have a certain amount of affection for the rain. After living in Arizona for 1.5 years.. I LOVE the rain. I don't love the downpours type rain the rest of the country seems to get, but the misty don't even really notice it rain we have here, is wonderful.

Just Some Random Days

I've been a slacking a bit on my posting. Lets see what have we been up to.

We went berry picking - our seasons are all out of whack because of the cold weather we've been experiences. We got our Raspberries from Biringer Farm -they just came into season about a week ago. We picked our Blueberries a few weeks ago at Bill Pace Fruit and Produce . We'll probably go back to the blueberry fields before the seasons over to stock up a bit, but we went a little overboard with the raspberries and ended up picking 12 lbs. Opps!

This was the result of our berry picking adventure. He enjoyed himself.

This is what his hair always looks like.. it's uncontrollable.

We also went down to visit my in laws who live down by Portland and went to the county fair. Lots of cows, chickens, llamas and the like and a bunch of a cool old firetrucks.

I have a soft spot for llamas. They're so goofy.

 They also had a live pony merry-go-round. Surprisingly he liked it more than the fake kind. He's usually busy trying to grab back onto one of us as soon as it gets going.

We took a walk downtown. I'll have to write about Pike Place Market and how there's so much more to it than the fish throwing that everyone sees. Pike Place is huge and includes several levels and alleys.

Silver man repainting his glasses...

Almost forgot to add - I'm now up to running 2 miles at a go.. and the other day I ran a mile in the morning and another 2 in the evening. Baby steps, baby steps.

Rattlesnake Ledge and Rattlesnake Lake

 Monday evening we got a text message from one of our friends asking if we were still on for hiking Tuesday. We had invited him to go with us on a hike (that we ended up not going on) last Tuesday and he asked if we could do it this week instead. We said sure, and then promptly forgot. So when he messaged us we said sure, see you at 9 a.m. He's dependably late, so we figured that meant we'd get out of the house by 9:30 a.m.

We decided that an overcast chance of rain Tuesday morning would be as good a time as ever to finally hike the ever so popular Rattlesnake Ledge. When we got there we were pretty surprised by how many people were still there, still not nearly as many as usual. There was several large groups of kids presumably out with camp and youth groups. We were happily surprised that besides occasionally passing people coming back down, the trail was pretty vacant.

Rattlesnake ledge is a 4 mile round trip out and back hike with elevation gain of over 1100 feet in the two miles up. It's basically just a bunch of switch backs on a very worn and well taken care of trail. There's isn't much to see on the way up. Honestly I don't really get why it's so popular. It was an alright hike but when comparing hikes in the same area, I prefer its neighbor Cedar Butte.

The view at the top was nice but within a few minutes of getting up there we were joined by about 4 other groups. Since the rock platform with large gaping hole didn't strike me as being very toddler friendly and safe, we opted to just snap some pictures and head back down the trail instead of stopping to eat lunch. We did see one guy running the trail in some Vibram Five Fingers.

At the base of the trail head for Rattlesnake Ledge you'll find Rattlesnake Lake - the lake the ledge looks out over. Another beautiful Washington lake. I hiked this one in shoes as to not over do it since we had done a 1.5 mile run + .5 mile walk Monday (slow and steady slow and steady) after hiking that 9 miles in my Lunas on Saturday.

Seattles Summer Of Rain

We've recently just been taking the time to fall into somewhat of a schedule. My sons twice weekly school/play group has started up again, as has his swimming lessons. His school classes are 1.5 hours long twice a week, and this is the only time that he is not with either me or my husband.

He's been taking swimming for a little over a year now, and absolutely loves it. By the end of this session he should be able to swim short spurts on his own. Not too shabby for a 2 year old (he just turned 2 in May).

The weather in Seattle has been.... lackluster. It doesn't feel like summer, and the collective we are becoming more convinced that this is all we're going to get this year (I'm not complaining, I love this weather). The only slightly frustrating part of it is that the mountains are still covered in snow, the blueberries aren't ripe for picking, and rain and hiking with a two year old doesn't mesh well.

We have gone a few places that I'd like to show you, but alas, I didn't have my camera, so it will have to wait for another day.

Fremont Solstice Parade

Seattle is a rather eclectic and eccentric city. Yesterday was the annual Fremont Solstice Parade (Fremont is one of the districts here in Seattle). Though an unofficial part of it, the headlining point of this parade is always the naked bicyclist (hundreds of them) that take over the street immediately before the parade begins. They are painted in body paint to degrees of barely painted, to fully painted.. to fully bare, to somewhat bare. That's not the only part of the parade that's a little ......different than 

parades you'll find most places.

 

 

 

Parade participants consist of community groups and there's everything from drag queens, children on stilts, a geoduck float, a giant dung beetle float, floating spaghetti monster, lots of belly dancers, a giant beach ball, people giving out free hugs, marching bands, kickball teams, some others that honestly I have no idea even what they were supposed to be and of course zombies.

 

 

Fremont is also home to the troll that lives under the bridge and a statue of Lenin.

If you like to view more photos of the Fremont Solstice Parade they can be found here and here