This past week I traveled with an old friend who likes to talk to strangers and tends to be curious about everything and everybody. Which, of course, adds greatly to the fun of travel. Not only greeting everyone he passes, it seemed that he was able to begin a lively conversation with anyone, from hotel and housekeeping staff to waiters to shop clerks to police on the street to dogwalkers, often within minutes extracting brief life histories and even laughter. I was reminded of this when almost the first piece of the day I read from my Quartz newsletter came up, and can be seen at this clickable link:
Guess I’m gonna have to start a mini-series of posts to document this week’s “Spokane Adventure”. Old college (CMSU, Warrensburg, MO) friend from 1963-64, Herman, flew out from his home in Kansas City to join me in a road trip to Spokane, WA, the unlikely venue for the 2017 staging of the annual event known as the “Porsche Parade”, a nine- or ten-day celebration of the Porsche automobile, sponsored by the Porsche Club of America (largest Porsche fan group in the known universe) and by Porsche of Stuttgart, Deutschland, itself.
The event rotates between places like Vermont and Michigan and Indiana and Miami and wherever — sort of like the Olympics; I heard that one was also staged in South Africa — but we never expected it to happen within striking distance. The original plan was for Herman to drive his 2005 911 Carrera S cabrio out here and join my friends and me as we all convoyed up into eastern WA (maybe even via Rattlesnake Canyon) driving our respective Porsches. But Herman had some foot surgery, so decided to fly and get a rental car (with automatic trans), and my local driving buddies ended up unable to participate.
So, I will introduce this little series with a photograph that Herman sent in the aftermath, when we returned to LaG City and dropped in to see Janet and unexpectedly stumbled upon the briefly visiting Boise contingent. The following is a photograph that Herman took and referred to as “Two Pretty Girls”.
Photo by Herman G. K.
More to follow, backfilling over the past week. Probably everything will be presented in reverse order …
Early morning, on the move down Adams. Grabbed a quick shot from the driver’s side window without a chance to compose or focus, hoping not to hit other cars in traffic…
Another scorcher. Forecast was for 99 F., didn’t get an actual reading.
The big news of the day was old friend & ex-colleague Zach (and Nikon shooter, along with his wife!) took a break from working his new hosting/security consulting/IT management company to come over and meet Charlie. Actually, what he did was to help fix my suddenly broken computer network. And he showed me pics of his two-month-old daughter.
In today’s visit, not only did I learn more about the recent lightning strike, but I find that over the weekend an out-of-control pickup crashed into the corner front window of EONI’s front office/store. Aftermath:
Today, while visiting ex-colleagues at EONI, I learn more about the lightning strike a few days ago (see Yesterday’s Storm). Here is some video footage from a webcam at EOU that captured the event. Here, we overlook the downtown area from the EOU campus, looking north toward Mt. Emily. The Sac Annex is the large brown building about midway vertically in the frame and at about the ten percent mark from the left side (nine o’clock position?). About three seconds in.
This past week I traveled with an old friend who likes to talk to strangers and tends to be curious about everything and everybody. Which, of course, adds greatly to the fun of travel. Not only greeting everyone he passes, it seemed that he was able to begin a lively conversation with anyone, from hotel and housekeeping staff to waiters to shop clerks to police on the street to dogwalkers, often within minutes extracting brief life histories and even laughter. I was reminded of this when almost the first piece of the day I read from my Quartz newsletter came up, and can be seen at this clickable link:
