A Great Summer Weekend in Seattle

Diane and spent a great summer weekend in Seattle over the last couple days - a testament to how much fun stuff there is to do just minutes from where we live in the Ballard neighborhood.

Here's what we did...

Friday Evening

After long and trying week at work for both of us, we ventured over to Senor Moose near where we live in Ballard. If you haven't been to "the Moose" and you like Mexican food - go! For those of you who've been there, well, you know. Diane had the carne asada and I had the enchiladas suaza (sp?). And margaritas of course.

Stuffed to to the gills with some of the best Mexican food north of Mexico, we packed in for the night.

Saturday

With temperatures once again warming up, we got our exercise in the morning. I went for a nice six mile run on the Burke Gilman trail. Diane went to a class at our gym.

After some yard work and a rest, we then went to the Majestic Bay theater in Ballard to see the movie, Julie and Julia. This is true story movie about a) a young woman in New York City who in 2002 decided to cook every recipe in Julia Child's famous Mastering the Art of French Cooking cook book and to blog about it, and b) how Julia Child became, well, Julia Child as she learned to cook in 1950s Europe. The role of Child is expertly played by Meryl Streep and is alone worth going to see this movie. Anyway, this was a much better movie than I anticipated. However, I could never quite get over how the younger woman, Julie, ends up (SPOILER ALERT) getting a book deal and becoming famous for....nothing.

All she did was cook the recipes in the book and blog about them. That's it. I guess that's how our society is today. You don't need to do something original. All you have to do is use something that somebody else has already done and then just comment on it or add a little something on top and, boom, you're famous and rich. This happens all the time in music these days where "DJs" take music that someone else wrote, performed and recorded and then the mix it around using different sections and portions to create a "new" song. Right.

None the less, amply inspired by Julia Child's French experience and efforts, we went for an outdoor French diner in the garden at Sambar. Sambar is a tiny but cool place right next to the Le Gourmand restaurant at the base of Phinney Ridge. In the summer, they open up a delightful little garden dining area that is nice green oasis right in the middle of the city. We shared a wonderful salad, beef shank and pasta, a chard greens souffle, and slices of pheasant. All of these dishes were divine. They were also small...which is perfect for sharing.

Sunday

Another warm sunny day in Seattle. After a trip to the Ballard Farmer's Market in the morning to pick up some berries and flowers, we decided to take a bike ride on the Burke Gilman trail from Gasworks Park in Seattle to the Redhook Brewery in Woodenville and back. It's about a 50 mile round trip, but along the well paved path you get to see great views of Lake Washington, a lot of neat houses and the halfway point is the brewery for lunch! There, we both had a brew and a brat. Delicious.

Following our return ride back to Seattle, we decided to stop by Molly Moo's Ice Cream on 45th Street for a hit of cold goodness. Diane had a scoop of the balsamic strawberry and I had straight away chocolate. Very, very good.

We finished the evening off with a Margherita pizza pie from Veraci Pizza - also a few short blocks away (across the street from Le Gourmand and Sambar actually).

Obviously, we had a great time. But on top of that, it's great to live in a city and neighborhood where so much goodness and fun is so nearby and so easily accessible. A great weekend indeed.

Get Milk

I am not gay. I do not live in San Francisco. I was not an adult nor politically aware in the 1970s.

However, this past weekend my wife and I saw a truly inspirational movie about a San Francisco man who, in 1977, became the first openly gay person to be elected to public office in America.

The movie, directed by Gus Van Sant, is titled "Milk" in reference to the real life subject of the story - Harvey Milk.

Played expertly by Sean Penn, the compelling character of Milk is portrayed beginning in his pre-San Francisco days, then on to his early efforts at organizing San Francisco's Castro district into a voting block with real power in city politics, through his early campaigns for office, delving into his personal life and continues on up to his profound victories in winning a seat on the city supervisor board as well as defeating a state-wide anti-gay rights measure.

(Photo of Harvey Milk from the Living Cinema blog.)

These were all real and important events - both personal and historical - and they were well played by actors who you completely believed. 

But, as good as all that was, I felt the movie was far more than just believable replay of events centering on gay rights. No, this movie carries more importance in my mind...transcending a single issue and moving into the broad territory of heroism and political inspiration that we should all seek to emulate or - at least - seek out as we try and build a better America in our own towns, states and country. To me, these broader themes are evident in the movie in three ways:

1. It doesn't take an "elite" to make change happen - Milk was a everyday guy, with a regular education, with a regular job and went through the same ups and downs in relationships and with family as most people. However, he had the backbone to do something when he saw wrong happening in his neighborhood, his city and his nation. That "wrong" was the way gay Americans are treated by their fellow citizens and by the government - denying them the same basic rights against discrimination among other things.


2. The right thing to do for one group is the right thing to do for everyone - Milk's message became broad. While he plainly said his political efforts were primarily focused on gay rights, he also acknowledged that it became more than that. Society has discriminated and dis-empowered gays, but it has also done so to minorities, the unemployed, the poor, seniors and others. In the end, Milk was carrying the banner for these other under-represented groups and said so. To me, this was very appealing aspect of his character and how his political ideas evolved.


3. Relevance -  Broadly speaking, important change takes time and typically involves struggles requiring inspiring leaders. The issue of gay rights, and human rights really, has just as much relevance today across the country as they did in the 1970s. Think of all the state initiatives to ban equal rights (employment, housing, benefits, military service, etc.) for gays or to establish them, to ban marriage for gays or to recognize, that come up every election cycle. And, think about how much debate, heat, hate and love those contests bring to the surface...including the best recent example of Prop 8 in California. So, Milk's fight goes on today.

Sadly, Harvey Milk is no longer with us. For those of you who have not seen the movie or heard of Milk before, I won't spoil why that is for you because I think learning this fact on your own is important...offering up further evidence of how difficult it can be to make change in the U.S.A. and the lengths some will go to try and stop it.

My bottom line on this movie is - do yourself a favor and see it and judge for yourself. 

China Report #2 - Mt. Hua Shan

Hike on Sacred Chinese Mountain Becomes Script for Cheap Hollywood Horror Flick

When most people go to China as tourists, they see one of the expected sites like The Great Wall, the Forbidden City, the burried terracotta warriors, Shanghai or similar. Interesting to say the least, but predictable. We did these things. But, no matter where people go on vacation, they usually don't build in an aggressive, super-steep 6,500 gain-over-six-kilometers hike up a sacred mountain.

But we did this too. Or rather, our 14-person REI Adventures group did. And as it turned out, the climb and overnight stay on top proved to be memberable for two very separate and unanticipated experiences - one physical, one sureal.

Act One - The Hike
First, let me say that in a trip of favorite destinations and experiences our hike up Mt. Hua Shan took the crown as the best thing we did - at least for Diane and me. Mt. Hua Shan is one of five sacred mountains of China. There are three ways up to the top - really steep trail number one, really steep trail number two and...gondola. On this warm sunny day, most of our group took steep trail number one.

The trail is actually paved with stone the whole way, and it's only six kilometers, but it's just that for a very long section of that 6K it's so steep that you have to pull yourself up with chains over miniscule steps.

Why would anyone want to do this you might ask? Well, several reasons. First, the views from this mountain are spectacular...jagged, ragged peaks jutting up around you. Second, the rock is a sacred mountain to the Chinese, so you're experiencing something of their culture. Third, the great workout and sense of accomplishing something most people don't do.

As we made our way up we came to two firm conclusions: 1) wow, this is an incredible hike, and 2) ice cold Red Bull is the nector of the gods! We bought these at a number of small family run store huts on the way up the trail. Invaluable. We also enjoyed the number of small beautiful temples and pagotas built alongside the trail.

After about two and a half hours of solid "up," we reached our first goal - the north peak pass. This is where we rested, met our friends who took the gondola and had lunch in a restaurant way up there - a good, solid Chinese lunch of soup and noodles. And beer.

From here it was another hour and half up to another peak to our hotel. Yes, there are hotels up there. Most of them were built before the gondola, and have since fallen on hard times as tourists can now easily get up there and back in one day.

Act Two - Through the Looking Glass
After another hour of hiking, we neard our lodging. This is where the venture took a turn for the sureal. Somewhere, somehow at this moment our existance at that top of the mountain latched onto a parallel narrative fromm an alternative bizzaro universe where a hack movie script writer was sweating out a cliched horror screenplay.

It started when we realized our hotel was clearly one of those "fallen on hard times" places. Looking like some sort of half baked attempt at a European style min-resort, the hotel presented itslef more like the movie set for a cheap Hollywood movie. Some of us even made the crack that it looked like "that hotel from the Shining" or some haunted mansion from an episode of Scooby Doo. We even decided we knew who the murder would be in this scenario - Chaz. While the rest of us wanted to call it a day, fellow hiker Chaz, age 11, was the only one of us who wanted to continue hiking into the evening. He really wanted to do this, and I think we let him down bitterly by overuling and packing it in. So, motive - "I-wanted-to-hike-to-the-west-peak!"

After seeing our dank little rooms with no hot, running or sanitary water we hapily left the premisis for dinner at the next building down the trail. As we sat outside eating at tables set in a courtyard among the trees, the roll of thunder started and the sky closed up with thick low clouds. At this point, eyebrows were raised and more jokes were made about how a thunderstorm was right on time and just perfect to add to the ambiance of the hotel. Chalk another one up for the script writer.

Soon, it dawned on all involved that we needed to cut this dinner short and get back to the hotel before the heavens opened up, lightnight starting stabbing its way around the moutaintop or worse. So, off we went in a hurry. Our guide sayed behind to pay the bill.

Then it started raining hard.
Then the thunder and lightning commenced.
Then it got dark.
Then the power went out.

At this point, the horror movie cliche we were now living was driven home to all of us. All the elements were there and openly discussed:

• A group of relative strangers stranded and isolated on top of an exotic mountaintop - check
• Dilapedated and empty old hotel that had seen its glory days pass by - check
• Thunderstorm complete with lightning and driving rain - check
• Power outage to the whole mountain top, making candles are the only light - check
• Cut off from our guide, the one person who could speak both Chinese and English - check
• Spooky hotel manager creeping around in the dark - check
• A small group of "other hikers" spirited off to another part of the hotel - check

The perfect set for murder. Somewhere in bizzarro universe, that script writer had hit all the right buttons. The only thing left was one by one we would start to dissapear so that by morning we had all met our violent ends atop this mountain. Who would be the killer? Chaz? The creepy hotel manager? Someone from the other group of hikers? The hotel itself?

With this playing around in our minds, the group sat up, huddled together in one corner of the hotel hall way holding our candles and, well, yes, driking beer one of our members procured and talking about the spookiest nights (other than this one) we had ever spent.

Act Three - Dawn Breaks

Eventually the huddle broke and all went to their respective rooms for a fitful night. When morning broke, slowly everyone exited their rooms. One by one we realized we had made it through the night. One of our group, Marcus, however was suspiciously missing. His traveling buddy, Kirk, calmly and convincingly announced that while he himself had live through the night "Marcus is dead." We all laughed except Kirk...then he relented. Marcus soon joined us at our dark, dank breakfast. After that, we departed the hotel in once again warm sunny weather and made our way back down to the gondola station where we stepped aboard for a quick and easy desent.

So, one hike, two experience and one lesson. That lesson is, if you're going to sit out a thunderstorm on top of a remote Chinese mountain, make sure to have a supply of beer. No, kidding. I think the real lesson is that sometimes unexpected challenges you encounter actually can create better memories than if everything went smoothly.