Anya heads back to home from Choate for summer vacation. In the morning, she has to take an SAT subject test on the Choate campus. When she’s done with the test, she has to finish packing and then catch a school-chartered shuttle bus to JFK. As she’s packing, a friend calls her: “Where are you? The shuttle’s leaving.” It turns out that, while she was taking the test, they’d sent mail telling the students booked on the bus that they were moving the bus’ departure time earlier. Anya ends up missing the bus.
She ultimately has to take an Uber ride to JFK. She’s coming down with a cold and generally exhausted, so falls asleep in the car. She wakes up at JFK, and in the process of getting her luggage sorted, she leaves her phone in the Uber. Then her flight’s delayed.
So it’s not exactly a fun travel day — but she does make it home safely! We’re thrilled to have her home.
Bree’s 5th grade Tech class holds its annual Programmer’s Potluck dinner at which they share the video games they’ve been working on for the past couple of months. Bree’s game, Candy Run, has a Halloween theme: the player needs to try to gather as much candy as possible before time runs out.
Bree’s Tech class also had to make packaging and marketing materials for their video games. For her Halloween-themed Candy Run game, Bree creates an orange pumpkin marketing piece. It includes a motor-driven Lego ghost that pops up out of the pumpkin, then drops back down. This pumpkin is the only student piece with any kind of automated motion, and the motion makes for a successfully eye-catching bit of marketing collateral.
Jan sets out from our front door to hike to Snoqualmie Pass, 75 miles (120 km) away. He’s wanted to do this hike for a while, ever since he first noticed that it was possible to string together a series of dirt trails that start just in Bellevue — a mere 6 miles away — then run all the way east up to the pass.
The hiking on the first day isn’t too hard, but it’s still a long day. After crossing I-90, he heads up the Coal Creek Trail, then over Cougar Mountain, then over Squak Mountain. He comes down into the town of Issaquah, where he’s arranged for an AirBnB just off the route. In the evening, he goes into town for pizza — by Uber.
Seattle to Snoqualmie Pass, Day 2. Jan leaves Issaquah early in the morning, heading up over Tiger Mountain. From there he makes a somewhat difficult connection to Rattlesnake Mountain. That requires bushwhacking walking along a loud highway for a bit, through a boggy thicket, following a powerline, gently walking through public land that’s nevertheless been marked “Private Property” by someone, and scaling a steep, gnarly, seldom-used trail. Once he finally reaches the official Rattlesnake Mountain Trail, the hiking is straightforward enough, although the trail’s climb is still long and hard. Jan finally makes it down to Rattlesnake Lake, where he cools off, then to a nearby AirBnB. The AirBnB is actually a treehouse bedroom, which is rustic but comfortable enough.
Seattle to Snoqualmie Pass, Day 3. Jan leaves North Bend on the Palouse to Cascades Trail, a converted railbed. It’s long, but gently graded, so the hiking all morning is easy enough. The weather is nice, so there are lots of groups of cyclists biking along the trail. Once Jan’s close to the pass, he strikes up an sketchy, informal trail up to an abandoned road that leads to the Pacific Crest Trail. The PCT leads up and over the final mountain, then down into the small village at Snoqualmie Pass. It’s pretty fun to be standing on the PCT having walked there from our house.
Lyn meets Jan at The Commonwealth restaurant, where Jan has a late lunch, and then the two of them drive back to Seattle. Jan has enough time to shower and nap before heading out with everyone to Luc to enjoy a Father’s Day dinner.
To make some spending money for an upcoming trip, Anya babysits Kalyani, a neighborhood girl whom both Liya and Bree have babysat before. Anya has to get up early: her shift goes from 6:45 to 2:00 or 3:00. Anya and Kalyani have fun together, but Anya’s exhausted at the end of each day.
Liya begins a summerlong intensive class in American Sign Language at the University of Washington. A friend of hers at school expressed interest in starting an ASL club. Liya thought that would be fun to do, but wanted to learn something of the language herself first. At 15, she’s the youngest person in the class — many of the other students are UW seniors who need to take one more class in order to graduate.
Liya enjoys the class. Each day she comes home and shares some of the new signs she’s learned, as well as some things she’s learned about Deaf culture.
For years, Jan and Bree have gone to breakfast on Saturday mornings at the Starbucks down the street. When she was little, she would wake up before Jan, then wait and wait until he was finally ready to go too. This month, Bree’s been less and less interested in going — she’d rather stay in bed and read. Jan and Liya end up going out for breakfast instead.