First Ski Outing of the Season

On Sunday, December 16, the long-awaited ski season began with a trek to Crystal Mountain. It was a bit stormy there, though not all that cold so it was a mix of snow-and-rain at the base and snow-and-ice at the top. It was also a bit windy, so many of the lifts were closed, making the few that were open (mainly Forest Queen and Chinook) all the more crowded. But Dad, Jack, and Henry still got in some good ski runs to ease into shape for the season!

John's Trip To Virginia

No snow in sight for skiing this early December!

John went on one of his regular trips to Charlottesville, a quick trip at the start of the month. He got to go to a basketball game to see the #4 team in the country easily handle the Morgan State Bears. And with the weather beautiful he took a quick detour out of his work to go up to Monticello, thirty years after working there for a summer!

Madrid

Right after Thanksgiving, John travelled to Madrid on a short trip to visit one of the Amazon teams there. While he was only there for less than two days, he got a little bit of time in to see some of the sights. It's an old city with a bit of character, and a few large public squares.

A Spanish specialty - churros with a cup of very thick chocolate that
the churros are dipped in. Delicious, though very rich!

Thanksgiving 2018

Joseph came home for Thanksgiving late on Wednesday night and had a quick long weekend home before flying back early Sunday morning. It was filled with usual activities - Issaquah Turkey Trot on Thursday morning, Rodgers Bowl on Thursday afternoon, of course a turkey dinner, and then we got our tree on Friday morning. It was a rainy weekend, so rather than braving the mud to cut our own tree down, for the first time in a long time we just bought it on a lot. There was also lots of sports over the weekend - Virginia basketball won their holiday tournament versus Wisconsin, but a disappointing football weekend - UVA lost to Virginia Tech in OT on Friday, and Michigan was crushed by Ohio State on Saturday.

Waiting for the Turkey Trot to begin

Setting up the Rodgers Bowl

Getting a tree

Enjoying a turkey dinner

Jack Buys a Car !

A big incentive for getting a job at Pizza Hut has been having the money to buy a car. After a lot of research online, Jack decided upon a Jeep Patriot. He very much wanted a black one, and got a good deal on a 2014 Patriot. It of course has 4 wheel drive so he hopes to drive it to go skiing for years to come!

Michigan Football

Michigan has a great football team this year, up to #4 in the polls and contending for a spot in the college football playoff. In mid-November, John went out to Detroit for work and combined it with a trip to visit Joseph. He got to see Joseph's apartment, went out to dinner a couple of times, and went to the Michigan-Indiana football game with 110,116 other people. It was a cold evening, and a closer game than thought, but Michigan won 31-20.

New Ski's

Both Jack and Henry have grown quite a bit in the past year-plus, so they have outgrown their skis and needed new ones. Both picked out more unique skis offered online. Jack's were shipped to us; Henry's were made by a shop in Portland. We were headed to Oregon for a weekend, so we decided to stop in the shop and pick them up. It's called ON3P, and it's a small hole-in-the-wall in an industrial park, but they are well regarded for their skis. When we came by to pick them up they gave us a tour of their manufacturing facility so we could see how they start with a flat sheet of bamboo and turn it into the finished products that can be skied on. Very neat!

Henry's skis up against the wall when we first arrived at the ski shop

The lobby of the shop. No photos in the manufacturing area - top secret production methods in use!

Bringing the skis into our garage

Jack with his new skis

28th Anniversary Trip to Oregon

For our 28th wedding anniversary, John and Mary Jo spent the weekend on the Oregon Coast, at a wonderful new hotel on the beach overlooking one of Oregon's famous rocks that sits about 200 yards offshore. It was a gorgeous sunny weekend and we took a long walk along the sand, up over the surrounding dunes as well as along the flat sandy beach. Sunset was amazing, as the sun set right behind the Haystack Rock and we could watch it from the balcony of our room.

View from our balcony

Climbing up on the dunes for a great view of the waves coming ashore

"Haystack Rock"

Sunset

David Wright's Last Game

In late September, John went back to New York to see David Wright play in his last game. It was a playoff atmosphere at Citifield with a packed house and lots of ovations. The Mets won 1-0 in 13 innings!

David Wright's Last At-Bat

Hot Air Balloon

For John's 50th birthday, MJ and John took a hot air baloon ride over the Eastside! Our original plan was to take a sunrise ride, but cloud cover forced it to be postponed to a late afternoon/pre-sunset ride. We took off from just north of Woodinville at 6:30, and got up to about 3,000 feet. It was a bit hazy but we were able to see Mount Rainier, Mount Baker, the Seattle and Bellevue skylines, and the Cascade range east of us. We were in one of three balloons that were launched, with eight passengers and a pilot in each balloon. The balloon came down after about an hour. With no way to steer it, we were carried about 6 miles south and landed safely on a street in Redmond. All the neighbors came out to see us as the balloon was packed up and we got on our way!

Kayaking In Botanic Gardens

On Sunday of Labor Day weekend, Mary Jo and John kaayked through the botanic gardens near the University of Washignton. It was a very nice paddle, through lilypads, under bridges, and out into Lake Washington. We also saw an otter climb up on a dam!

Japan !

In August 2018 we took a nine-day trip to Japan, flying in to Tokyo and continuing on via train to Matsumoto/Omachi, Kanazawa, Kyoto, Hiroshima, and back to Tokyo.

In total we stayed in six different hotels, took over 30 trains (including subways; we took ~6 Shinkansen bullet trains), and took over 600 photos. It was hot, but not unbearable; we saw a lot of crowds but it didn't really affect our trip too much. It rained just one day. We ate lots of sushi and some great Japanese steak as well, also a lot of Japanese Shave Ice and ice cream. We also sampled "new" food like Okonomiyaki (Japanese crepe with noodles and sauce layered on) and an eel omelet (a specialty in Hiroshima).

Our top items from the trip, in chronological order:

Walking Around Tokyo
Our first day in Japan was the hottest - we did a mini-walking tour around four areas of Tokyo - the Imperial Gardens, Akihabara, Tsukiji Fish Market (sushi lunch!), and Tokyo Sky Tree (tall tower with great views of the city).

Henry at Imperial Palace Gardens

Walking through Tsukiji Fish Market

Looking up at the Tokyo "Sky Tree" from the base

View from the top of Tokyo Sky Tree

Japanese Steakhouse
For our second night in Tokyo we ate at a Japanese steakhouse. We got a private room and ordered a few platters of thin steaks that you cook for yourself at the table. One of the top restaurants on the trip!

Steakhouse Dinner 

Getting ready to cook some dinner

Platter of Japanese beef

Matsumoto
Our first leg post-Tokyo was to the mountains (the "Japan Alps"). We took a train to Nagano (host of the 1998 Winter Olympics) and then on to Matsumoto, which has a beautiful castle. From there we continued to Omachi.

Matsumoto Castle

Comfortable Shinkansen train

Familiar setting - getting off a train !

Alpen Route: Omachi to Toyama

To travel across the mountains, we followed the famed "Alpen Route" from Omachi to Toyama. We stayed in a traditional Japanese hotel in Omachi (no beds, just straw mats and then they setup futons for us), and we gave them our luggage to be transported to the end of the route. To make the journey ourselves, we took a bus, followed by a trolley-bus through a tunnel, a cable car, a gondola, another bus, and a railway train. You can stop at each place to see scenery, take hikes, or eat. We had intended to stop and do a hike at one of the stops but the weather got progressively worse as we ascended the mountain, so we wound up just having a nice lunch and then continuing on. While not as nice as it certainly could have been, it still was a neat experience to travel through.

Traditional Japanese hotel room in Omachi

The Alpen Route !

Kurobe Dam, first stop on the Alpen Route

Above the dam, from the second stop on the route

Funicular car, third leg of the Alpen Route

Kyoto Temples

Kyoto was the capital of Japan for hundreds of years and is famed for over 1600 temples throughout the city. After arriving there in the afternoon we walked around to see a few of the more notable ones - some very beautiful views.

Crowded climb up winding Japanese streets on the way up to the temple
(Starbucks on the left!)

Henry's Birthday Evening

We were in Kyoto for Henry's 14th birthday. Amazingly, the same restaurant we'd gone to for his birthday last year (a Taiwanese dumpling restaurant) has an outlet in Kyoto, so we went there, followed by some games at a Japanese video arcade.

Din Tai Fung

Kurama to Kibune Hike

We took a train ride to the mountains about a half-hour outside of Kyoto for a beautiful hike over a mountain to another village where we caught the train back to Kyoto. Along the way you walk along some more Japanese temples and lots of bright orange lanterns. 

Enjoying shave ice - a common treat at the end of a hot hike 

Henry finds a geocache on the way back to the train!

Japanese Baseball!

We took a Shinkansen 20 minutes south of Kyoto to Osaka to see the Orix Buffaloes host the Soft Bank Hawks. We sat on the first base line in the domed stadium. Groups of fans in the outfield sing and chant (home team in RF, away team has an equally large contingent of fans in LF), complete with trumpets and megaphones. 

Hiroshima Atomic Bomb Museum

Hiroshima has a large park in the center of town where the epicenter of the bomb blast was, including the remains of a building which oddly wasn't destroyed and a museum. The museum was a bit one-sided We learned that Japan, after trying to setup an independent Manchuria (some might say they invaded it) and simply "surprising" the Americans at Pearl Harbor, were victims of the atomic bomb largely because the American government, after developing the bomb through the very expensive Manhattan Project, had to justify the cost to the American people by then using the bomb. 

The "Atomic Bomb Dome" building which survived the blast

In general, Hiroshima is a beautiful city, surrounded by mountains with a beautiful castle. Our hotel overlooked the castle and we had a wonderful view of it. We also got to visit a cat cafe in Hiroshima - a cafe that has about a dozen cats that you can play with - and also our favorite sushi restaurant of the trip.

Miyajima

A short boat ride from Hiroshima is Miyajima, which is a beautiful island with a famous "Torii Gate" in the water, which you can walk out to during low tide. There are also hundreds of wild deer on the island. Joseph and John hiked up to the top of the mountain on the island, which is a beautiful hike leading to great views of the bay and islands.

Tokyo Disneyland

We spent our final full day in Japan at Tokyo Disneyland, which is about 30-minutes outside of Tokyo. It was very crowded (Tokyo Disney has about twice as many visitors as California's Disney and 50% more visitors than Florida). The layout and rides are very similar to the US parks; we rode Pirates of the Caribbean, Thunder Mountain, Splash Mountain, Pooh's Honey Hunt, and Space Mountain. We stayed at the Sheraton next to the park before flying back home the next morning!