STP packets and marketing advice for REI

Today I went to REI during lunch to pick up my STP rider packet, as well as packets for my wife and six other friends. In retrospect, I should have gone mid-afternoon, not during lunch, as the line was terrible. Oh well; at least I had an excuse to get espresso from Vivace midday.

So here's an observation for REI, which managed to make itself the exclusive rider packet pickup location for Seattle, ensuring that thousands of people will come into their store this week to get their STP packets: Put a bunch of temporary display racks full of bike-oriented stuff (Cliff bars, gloves, trip computers, socks, tires, etc.) along the STP line. There are so many opportunities to goad people into impulse buys while they're waiting for their packets, and you are missing out on them. Free advice; take it or leave it.

Discussion on the Middle East

This is a great discussion between Michael Totten and Jeffrey Goldberg on Israel, Iran, and the Arab World. Really interesting.

Seattle International Beerfest

Yesterday I went to the Seattle International Beerfest, spending three hours pouring beer and then another few hours drinking beer. There are several beer festivals throughout the year in the Seattle area, all of which have at least some assortment of Northwest beer. SIBF is known for its selection of hard-to-find foreign beer, and while the local breweries all show up, they usually only serve their rarer brews at SIBF.

These types of events -- and especially SIBF -- attracting an interesting mix of people, particularly when it's a beautiful 4th of July weekend at Seattle Center. You really notice this serving beer because (1) you interact with a lot of people and (2) you're completely sober for three hours in a drinking environment. I was pouring some fancy European beer, and my "customers" ranged from the chubby middle aged guy who raced through in a businesslike manner with a clipboard right when the doors opened pronouncing everything in accurate German to the 20-something women who asked me "what was good," to which I responded "What kind of beer do you like?", to which they responded "The kind with alcohol."

Google and my blog

Two things that make me proud about my blog and Google: (1) I'm #1 for "Hannah Montana Jem" (which should be a blindingly obvious connection for (a) women about my age, (b) men about my age who grew up with a sister (e.g., me), or (c) anyone with a daughter about my age, and (2) I'm #2 for "Cartman Morning Train." Sweht.

California state parks to go federal?

Apparently California is thinking of closing a bunch of state parks because the state has no money, and the federal government might seize those parks. I'm not sure this is really a precedent the feds want to set, especially if the National Park Service plans to operate the parks as national parks. If the National Park Service offered to take over all of Washington's state parks, I'd accept that in a heartbeat. I care about having public parks nearby; I don't much care whether they're owned and operated by the city, county, state, or federal government. Each level up means more taxpayers other than me to subsidize the parks, so converting Washington state parks to federal parks would give me the same benefit with less expense attributable to my taxes. Same for a Californian. If Californians don't want to raise their taxes (or revise their tax system by getting rid of Prop 13), then they can live without parks. But I certainly don't want to bail California out or operate its parks when California could solve its own problem by raising its own taxes.

A Big, Hilly Kitsap Loop

Today we biked a 70-mile loop mostly through Kitsap County, crossing over on the Seattle-Bremerton Ferry and returning on the Edmonds-Kingston Ferry. Hilliest long ride yet -- not a century, but harder than Flying Wheels mile-for-mile. Here's the route we took (the mileage is off because Google Maps counts ferry mileage), and here are approximate elevation profiles of the ride split into four parts (the elevation profiles come from this site; it's not a perfect site, so if you know of anything better, especially something that calculates total elevation, please let me know:

Home to the ferry in Seattle


Bremerton to Poulsbo


Poulsbo to Kingston


Edmonds to home


Some notes from the ride:

• The Kitsap Peninsula is very hilly. No huge mountains (the Olympics are one more peninsula to the west), but enough hills of several hundred feet to make a bike ride a challenge.
• We saw two Navy bases, three firing ranges (not associated with the Navy Bases), and one bald eagle.
• Eating lunch at a pub in Poulsbo, I think I saw Judge Jay Roof of the Kitsap County Superior Court. (I had a case in front of him several years ago; no, I don't know what all the Kitsap judges look like.)
• There are a lot of fireworks stands along the portion of the ride that went through the Port Madison Indian Reservation and in a couple of other non-reservation locations. Fireworks are illegal in Seattle, but they are legal in much of the rest of the state. As a result, it is easy to get fireworks into Seattle, and their illegality won't stop many people from setting them off inside the city limits. That always makes it a challenge to get sleep on the 4th. (The first year I lived here, a group of people were setting them off in the street right outside my house. That was fun.) Every time I see a fireworks stand, I think of that classic Simpsons line: "Celebrate the independence of your nation by blowing up a small part of it." (See script here.)
• Unlike last week, the weather started out grey with a few sprinkles, but it was nice by late morning and stayed that way. A few drops of rain, but no soaked socks.
  

And since I actually remembered to bring my small camera this time, here are some pictures for your enjoyment:

Ominous weather on the Bremerton Ferry in the morning. (This wasn't a hailstorm like we had last week on the Sammamish River Trail; it was just your standard Northwest summer marine layer. But still not something I was excited about riding in. Fortunately it only lasted for the first hour or so of our ride, and there was barely any rain.)


Best bumper sticker spotted in Bremerton: "What happens in Seattle stays in Seattle." I guess that's how they think of us over on the west side of the water.


One of the great things about the Northwest is that random rural gas stations often have these little espresso stands out front. The coffee isn't fantastic, but it's usually passable, and much better than what you'd expect in a random rural gas station elsewhere in the country. This one is along NW Holly Road between Bremerton and Seabeck.


The Hood Canal at Seabeck.


A huge malamute in Seabeck.


The top of our hardest hill, at the intersection of Anderson Hill Rd. and Willamette-Meridian Rd., between Seabeck and Poulsbo.


Norwegian theme in downtown Poulsbo.


Norwegian Bakery in Poulsbo. (I had a Trollhouse Cookie and a Grandpa's Cookie.)


Selling fireworks and asking for a lawsuit. My other favorite sign was for "Benny's Jets Fireworks Stand."


Horse nursing on Squamish Rd. between Poulsbo and Kingston.


Cruise ships headed to Alaska, viewed from the Edmonds-Kingston ferry (note how much nicer the weather is).


View of Downtown Seattle and Mt. Rainier from the Edmonds-Kingston ferry.


Finishing our last big hill at Shoreline Community College.

A Ninth Circuit en banc argument

Warning: law-related post!

Earlier this week I saw that the Ninth Circuit was hearing its first en banc arguments in many years in Seattle's newly-refurbished Nakamura courthouse, formerly the regular federal courthouse, and now mostly a federal appellate courthouse. I had not seen an en banc panel live before and thought I'd go watch while I had the chance. (For those of you who aren't lawyers, federal appellate courts normally hear and decide cases in 3-judge panels. But occasionally, a federal appellate court will decide to rehear a case en banc meaning that the entire court hears the case, except that the Ninth Circuit (the federal appellate court for most of the West) is so large a panel of 11 judges is chosen to hear the case instead of the entire court.)

The case being argued was a habeas challenge to a very old (1980s) death sentence out of California. As far as I could tell (and I know enough about appellate advocacy to know that you can't know everything about a case just from watching the oral argument), the defendant's attorneys were arguing that additional evidence regarding his difficult childhood should have been presented to the sentencing jury, and his previous attorneys were ineffective by not obtaining and presenting that evidence.

Without commenting on the merits of the case or the death penalty (I might do that later), I'll just note that this was a very watchable (and by "watchable," I mean interesting to watch) argument. Those who know the Ninth Circuit knows it has some strong personalities and sharp political and philosophical diversity among its judges. This panel included several strong personalities with various political leanings, such as Judges Kozinski, Kleinfeld, Reinhardt, Pregerson, and Berzon. (The other judges, who were not quite as active at the argument, were Rymer, W. Fletcher, Paez, Wardlaw, Smith, and Bybee.)

Here's a link to the audio of the argument. You'll notice that a lot of the argument consists of the judges arguing with each other, which often happens when some judges already come down on both sides of the issue and they are trying to use the argument to persuade their swing colleagues. Most of the good parts are after 35:00. Some particularly good parts (all from the defendant/petitioner's argument) are at the following time stamps. If you're a fan of the Ninth Circuit or appellate advocacy in general, I encourage you to give these a listen.

• 35:55-37:55 (Kleinfeld)
• 41:45-45:40 (counsel, Kleinfeld, Reinhardt, Pregerson)
• 46:57-51:30 (counsel, Kozinski, Berzon)
• 1:01:38-1:05:40 (counsel, Kozinski, Reinhardt)
• 1:05:40-1:07:36 (Pregerson, Kozinski, counsel)

Michael Jackson

A very thoughtful post about Michael Jackson.

And Thriller. Also, interesting that Michael Kinsley wrote this back in 1984.

Literal Videos

A few weeks ago I learned about "literal videos" via a link on the Volokh Conspiracy. A literal video is a music video with the words rewritten to literally describe what is happening in the video. A fantastic concept. Unfortunately, it's often executed poorly, because it's difficult to write funny lyrics for an entire video, and you need a good enough singer to approximately match what the original song actually sounds like. If you google literal videos, you'll find some examples of bad ones. I'm embedding a few of my favorites:

Take on Me: Literal Video Version - watch more funny videos

This version of "Take on Me" is my favorite. The literal video is well done, and I think this one is particularly good because the "Take on Me" video is one of the absolute classics of the 1980s -- such a classic, in fact, that if you were putting together an 80s time capsule, the original of this video would probably belong inside. Really an amazing piece of art.



"Total Eclipse of the Heart" (the video VC linked to) is, to me at least, better known as a song than a video. The literal video is well done, but the video's boring compared to "Take on Me," and it gets a bit long and repetitive.



Meatloaf's "I Would Do Anything For Love" is also a good literal video (and a good video), but given that it's (1) from the 90s and (2) directed by Michael Bay, I can't bring myself to put it on the same level as a true classic like "Take on Me."

Misadventures Biking the Lake Washington Loop Today

As I noted last week, I had hopes of riding an expanded, 80-mile version of the Lake Washington Loop today. The regular loop is about 55 miles, and with a 10-mile addition for Mercer Island plus another 20 extra miles for a detour to Edmonds, I figured we'd have a nice near-century STP training ride. As it happens, the ride was plagued from the start. We were meeting friends at Leschi for the ride, and before we made it that far, (1) our friends had a flat tire, caused by a worn out tire that needed to be replaced and would keep destroying tubes until replaced, and (2) a bee flew into my helmet in Wallingford and stung me. But we pushed on. (The bee didn't leave me with a stinger. It hurt, and still hurts, but nothing worse than stinging pain on my forehead.)

By Renton, it became apparent that our friend needed a new tire, but there were no bike stores near our route opening anytime soon. So we kept going to downtown Bellevue, where there were plenty of open stores. That meant missing Mercer Island, but we decided to partially make up for that by taking the longer 520/Sammamish River Trail route rather than the shorter Kirkland/Juanita route. That worked fine, until downtown Redmond, where cloudy (but dry) skies turned into a light rain, which quickly turned into a heavy rain with thunder. The Sammamish River Trail follows the river under a number of bridges, so during the particularly heavy rain, we'd stop under a bridge to try to wait it out. Each time, the rain let up, we started riding again, and then the rain became heavy again. The second time, it also started to hail. For a while, we avoided crossing the threshold from "merely wet" to soaked, but that happened after Bridge #3. Once soaked, our feet were in no condition to do the Edmonds portion of the ride, even though it quickly stopped raining and was sunny for the rest of the ride. Oh well.

Unfortunately, skipping Edmonds meant that we still had to take the North Seattle portion of the Burke Gilman Trail to get home, and that stretch of trail can be crowded and unpleasant to ride on a summer Sunday afternoon. Today was worse than usual, with a half-marathon and one or two organized bike ride sharing the trail with its regular users. Then we made it home, happy to dry off and, given the bees, tire problems, and hail/thunder, reasonably content with 64 miles instead of 80+.

Update: One particularly fun part about the Lake Washington Loop is riding around the south end of the lake, which cuts through the Renton Airport and Boeing's 737 plant. The bike trail goes surprisingly close to the tarmac where the mostly-finished 737s live. If you go to SeaTac, the vast majority of the 737s are painted in Southwest and Alaska colors, but if you go to the factory, you'll see them painted in all sorts of colors for foreign airlines you've never seen or heard of before.