Lakeside 15U defeated Granite Falls 20-0 on Saturday, May 13 in their first American Legion game of the season.
Jack played LF for the final two innings (the game only went 5 innings, ending early due to slaughter rule). He got up twice (both times in the 13-run fifth), singling and scoring in his first at-bat, and getting hit by a pitch and scoring in his second at bat.
Joseph had a short stay home between the end of classes and his volunteer trip to Africa. He was home on April 24, and then left for Malawi on May 4. He's going with a group of Michigan students and will be there for seven weeks teaching math and science to high school students.
His flight path took him from Seattle to Detroit, where he had a six-hour layover and hoped to get some sleep. From Detroit he flew to Dulles, from there to Ethiopia, and from there to Malawi. He left Seattle Thursday afternoon and arrived in Malawi on Saturday afternoon. Total time of travel was about 39 hours.
Here he at Seatac before embarking upon his journey. Yes, this is all the luggage he took for seven weeks.
(Amazon Prime hasn't extended delivery to southern Africa yet, so if he's forgotten anything he'll need to buy it there!)
The Newport Knights wrapped up their schedule on May 5 with a loss vs. Issaquah. Jack had pitched in both of the games prior to that.
Last Thursday (4/27), Jack started versus Bellevue at home. He gave up 3 runs in the first inning, but then settled down and cruised through the next few innings. The Knights came back and tied the game, and by the end of the 7th, it was still knotted 3-3. Jack's pitch count was low enough that they sent him back out for the 8th, in which he threw another scoreless frame, and, after Newport did not score in the bottom of the 8th, he went back out and threw yet another scoreless 9th. Then in the bottom of the 9th Newport scored and won the game 4-3 with a walk-off! Exciting game!
Then on Wednesday (5/3), Jack got the start again at Garfield High in the city. The Knights scored 1 in the first and for a while it appeared that might be all they would need. Jack continued his scoreless streak into the 7th inning (that's 14+ straight scoreless innings!), and took the mound with a 1-0 lead. He wound up giving up a run in that inning, sending it to extra innings. He pitched another couple of batters in the 8th before being taken out. The Knights wound up losing 2-1 in 9.
Here's a clip of a typical at bat, culminating in a routine ground ball to SS.
On April 30, the three of us went ziplining on Camano Island, just north of Seattle (near where Jack and I go crabbing each summer). It was a six-line course, about two hours through a forest on a large farm. We went with some guides who helped us navigate the course and get us safely from platform to platform.
Google Photos put together an automated video of our day (including the cat in the parking lot at the start of our day):
For those of you who don't know what it is, geocaching is a popular worldwide treasure hunt activity. Hundreds of thousands of people have hidden objects - typically small tupperware bins about 6 inches square - along hiking trails, in the woods, or even hidden in near plain sight on suburban streets. There are about 3 million of these objects hidden worldwide! You can go on a website (or an app) and get the GPS coordinates of one of these hidden items. You then go out to find it! You usually take your phone with you, which guides you close to the GPS settings, and once you get close you need to find the actual object - it's often hidden under a rock or behind a stump off a hiking trail, or on the underside of a utility box, or literally camouflaged in the bark of a tree. If you are able to find it, you typically just sign your name to a log book (leving it behind for others to find as well) and log on your account that you have found it.
Henry has been very active lately. He's found about 30 caches in the past six weeks, to push his "lifetime" total to fifty. Here he is with his fiftieth find - hidden in a small tube which was velcroed to the wood underneath a bridge on a hiking trail not far from our house.
We knew the Geocache was somewhere near this bridge, and the hint said it was near the northwest corner of the bridge
Henry found it! Can you see the geocache in this picture? (Hint: it's a black tube under the beam; you can see it's left edge just in front of the vertical silver panel with the bolts in it)
